Anti-violence group grades retailer's game displays

2:41 PM on 11.24.2008   |   Dale North

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Project Peacemakers is the name of the group that apparently goes around and inspects retailers to grade them on their displays of violent videogames. They call it Toy Inspections 2008. Brilliant.

Visiting fourteen chain stores, they checked out displays of violent toys and games, and WalMart and Toys 'R' Us received poor marks. They complain about M-rated game placement in some stores:

Where video games are sold, there continue to be an overwhelming number that contain violent and sexually explicit themes.  In the stores that sold video games, the games were not organized by their rating category, which results in the “mature” games being placed alongside the “everyone” games, within reach of a young child. 

Complaints about some games' proximity to mature rated ones and "eye-level" placement are silly, as many items in the store are at a child's reach, but are not intended for them. Freaky tall kids can reach the porn mags. Kids can reach condoms and drain cleaner too, but as a parent, you don't let them. 

The group told the Winnipeg Sun that:

The kind of toy we're trying to encourage here are those that build a child's creativity, a sense of collaboration and skills of co-operation.

With [video games], you don't determine the level of violence of your interaction -- the game determines the violence for you... It's not only that they're engaged in violence, it's violence directed against specific ethnicities ... and violence against women.

They're trying to make retailers and even the government "more aware" of these violent toys and games in hopes that they'll limit them in the future.

[Via GamePolitics]