Kids’ entertainment juggernaut Nickelodeon announced this week that it will blow out its already 5000-strong game library by 1600 more games, including three more kid-based MMOs, according to Joystiq. Pursuant to my admittedly unprofessional rant a few weeks ago, Nicktropolis Looks Like Ass, i have to wonder whether the newest projects in development over there will follow suit, or if they’ll pay closer attention to quality.

Certainly, Viacom/Nickelodeon’s acquisition AddictingGames.com isn’t exactly a bastion of quality. i was actually astounded when a supposedly reputable corporation like Viacom, with shareholders n’ everything, and a reputation for making quality kids’ entertainment, picked up AddictingGames. Let’s take a quick tour through the library shall we?

i dip into the Action game category and come across two gems. First up, there’s Light People on Fire, where your goal is to run around setting as many people on fire as possible. Innocent bystanders include (naturally) mothers pushing baby carriages.

A few icons down i notice Cannon Crotch, by “F****N Amazing Games”. In it, you must destroy Adolph Hitler’s reanimated corpse with your crotch-mounted cannon before he uses a laser to blow up the moon.

There’s High School Cheerleader, where your scantily-clad character pulls off dance moves in a low-cut top while pervy students watch from the background, and Blood Car 2000 Delux, which has you running down as many pedestrians as possible with your car. Blood Car 2000 Delux proudly states that it’s “Rated M for Awesome”.

No Ratings for Young Gamers

In all my time on the site, i didn’t see a single bona fide ESRB rating or content warning on any of these games.

Addicting Games is one of these online kids-only havens that adults don’t really know about. In every user-focus test i ever did with a room full of kids, we’d let them surf wherever they wanted, and inevitably they’d end up at Addicting Games. The site’s acquisition by Viacom/Nickeloden certainly ensured that adults heard about the site, but honestly: how many adults have actually played the games there? i assume most grown-ups who have visited Addicting Games have followed the link after reading about the acquisition in the trade papers and, after seeing the overwhelming array of icons, promptly left.

i worked at a teevee station that received regular viewer complaints about its programming, most of which came straight outta CrazyTown. One father was very upset that some characters in a show were pretending to be pirates, because pirates “rape and murder people.” Over-protective, i think, but somewhat fair. But imagine the gasket this guy would blow if he found his kid poking around on Addicting Games.

It’s a lot like the fact that Video Games Teach Kids to Gamble. No concerned grown-up ever bothered to drill 20 hours into a Pokémon game to find the full-fledged casino. Likewise, no adult seems to care that while teevee adheres to some pretty tight moral standards, the kid-targeted online world is packed with crap. What’s worse, the people behind this site aren’t shadowy, hard-to-find folks like pornographers - they’re bloody Nickelodeon. It boggles the mind.

Concerned Parents Gotta Step Up Their Indignation

i suppose that concerned parents can only be concerned about what they see, and they’re not bothering to see all aspects of kid culture. Maybe parents can only be so concerned?

Or maybe it’s another symptom of media dinosaur thinking, where somehow the teevee rules don’t apply to the Internetz? (see Building a Coffin for Nielsen) Who knows? You could even chalk it up to the old habit of thinking that certain kid-associated media are “safe” (cartoons, video games, etc). That mode of thinking has proven particularly tenacious.

Fed Up

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that i think playing Light People on Fire will turn kids into raving mad pyromaniacs, or that kids can’t see that the cheap autocidal thrills in Blood Car 200 Delux aren’t a great idea in real life. i just get a little peeved that parents like the Pirate Dad get so irmy about the slightest breach of ethics on teevee, yet Viacom is hosting this overboard, lurid junk-culture free-for-all online and no one says a word.

i worked for Big Media creating advergames for kids. i’ve had my fill of feeding junk to children; i feel the need to purge. The next product i create for children, if i ever hoe that row again, will uphold a solid value system. It will affirm the sanctity of childhood. And it will be a restorative, detoxifying experience for the kids fattening themselves on the trash fed to them by Nickelodeon and Viacom.