Got Haggis?
07-29-2005, 01:35 PM
Ah yes, another slow news day. <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1841228,00.asp">ExtremeTech</a> has an article up covering Windows Vista and gaming. Some of the features they are cooking up for gamers sound pretty cool (in theory anyway)
<blockquote>
The Games Explorer functions much like a media player. Microsoft is working with a company that collects metadata (title, publisher, box art, ESRB rating info, etc.) for games and will automatically pull down the box cover art and data for any game you install. These are stored in game-definition files, which the system can also use to check the version you have against a master server to see if there are any patches or updates to download.
The Games Explorer is also where you'll go to set parental controls for games. You can limit each user account to only playing games with a certain ESRB rating, but you can get a lot more granular if you wish. You may want to let your child play games with brief nudity, but not realistic blood and gore, for instance. There's a long list of descriptors that fit in with the ESRB content descriptors that accompany the ratings. When a game is locked out, you won't get any information other than its title, and even the box art is hidden.
</blockquote>
I actually think the parental controls are a good thing, that is if the parents actually know how to use them. I remember being in middle school playing the old Leisure Suit Larry games. The form of age verification was you had to answer historical questions that probably only someone older than 18 would know. Luckily I had a encyclopedia, which provided most of the answers, heh.
<blockquote>
The Games Explorer functions much like a media player. Microsoft is working with a company that collects metadata (title, publisher, box art, ESRB rating info, etc.) for games and will automatically pull down the box cover art and data for any game you install. These are stored in game-definition files, which the system can also use to check the version you have against a master server to see if there are any patches or updates to download.
The Games Explorer is also where you'll go to set parental controls for games. You can limit each user account to only playing games with a certain ESRB rating, but you can get a lot more granular if you wish. You may want to let your child play games with brief nudity, but not realistic blood and gore, for instance. There's a long list of descriptors that fit in with the ESRB content descriptors that accompany the ratings. When a game is locked out, you won't get any information other than its title, and even the box art is hidden.
</blockquote>
I actually think the parental controls are a good thing, that is if the parents actually know how to use them. I remember being in middle school playing the old Leisure Suit Larry games. The form of age verification was you had to answer historical questions that probably only someone older than 18 would know. Luckily I had a encyclopedia, which provided most of the answers, heh.