Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

I am not a foul-mouth; far from it. In fact, I consider myself somewhat conservative in that regard, and if I had children I certainly wouldn’t want blue streaks coming out of their mouths either. But perhaps it is wise to consider the target demographic when placing profanity in games, or conversely, removing it.

After a few rounds of Lumines II, I can safely say that removing every third word of a song is very annoying. I’m talking about Hollaback Girl. While it’s not my favorite song, the fact that it’s there and half the words are missing bothers me far more than the fact that it’s there at all. Blanking out words is very noticable, and it ruins the flow of the music as well as distracts from the game. Perhaps if you want to keep your game rated E, it would be wiser to feature a song that doesn’t need censoring, rather than including one that must be significantly altered in the name of protecting our children. Either that, or invent some magical way for me to prove I’m over 18 and legally old enough to hear cuss words.

Admittedly I’m not a fan of the FPS genre, or war games, but I imagine they would be far less realistic if a character were to say, “Oh darn, it seems I shot my partner! Golly gee, I am being attacked by 50 enemies at once!” I can see that in these games, cursing is less objectionable, if not entirely appropriate. But these games are also rated T or M (or even *gasp* AO). I’m not completely against all forms of profanity, as I’ve cartainly heard far worse. My point is, save the cursing for games with these ratings, and use friendlier music for a rated-E game.

I find it interesting that Lumines II censors out the “s-word” from Gwen Stefani’s song, yet Sonic Rush for the DS, which is also rated E, has the word “damn” in it. Apparently some curse words are appropriate for everyone. The ESRB certainly isn’t consistent.

I’m not even sure how much good it does to censor curse words, when you can’t stop Joe Schmoe on the street from yelling out bad words to his friends in front of your child. I think any child who’s been to a public school (and probably private schools too) has heard an entire dictionary of profanity. You can’t protect your kids forever, but you can teach them that while they may hear certain words, those words are not appropriate to use in certain situations.

Then again, maybe by the strictest of standards, I am a foul-mouth. My mind boggled when not long ago, a friend asked me about a game in front of her children. I said that it sucked, and she quickly corrected me. “We don’t say that word in this house.” Wasn’t aware that was profanity. Boy, am I chastened.