'What They Play' gives parents helping hand

SAN FRANCISCO -- So your family was lucky enough to get a Nintendo Wii this past holiday season. Or maybe you got your kids a Microsoft Xbox 360 or Sony PlayStation 3 to play Rock Band or Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.

Now the kids want some new games to play and while you aren't really concerned about content on Dora the Explorer, others like Halo 3, Assassin's Creed, God of War and the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Brawl have you wondering what your children might come across in them.

The recently launched site What They Play (www.whattheyplay.com) attempts to lend parents a helping hand in navigating the video game landscape. "Parents are largely scared to death of video games unless they are video gamers themselves," says CEO Ira Becker, formerly with Ziff Davis.

He and former Ziff Davis editorial director John Davison raised $3 million and founded the San Francisco-based company What They Like last spring after years in the business of producing video game magazines aimed at hard-core gamers. Their initial goal has been to provide parents with an easily digestible, unbiased and informative source for information about games. Their first project, the website, became operational in November 2007.

So far, the site has 750 write-ups about popular games and their catalog is growing. "They are not reviews. They are not subjective. They are meant to be objective," says editorial manager Zoe Flower, a former games developer and journalist who along with Davison help write the descriptions. " We don't rate them on whether they are good or bad. We let you know what is inside the content that might be of interest."

Each write-up mentions the game's rating (for age-appropriateness from the industry's Entertainment Software Ratings Board) and the descriptions assigned by the board. For instance, Assassin's Creed is rated Mature for ages 17 and older, because it contains "Blood," "Strong Language" and "Violence." But whattheyplay.com goes deeper to explain how the game plays out — they actually play the games — and that some of the assassinations performed can be "quite bloody" and that "indiscriminate violence is punished." Also noted: swear words.