(CBS) GameCore is a weekly column by CBSNews.com's William Vitka, Chad Chamberlain and Joey Arak that focuses on gamers and gaming.

---

The FCC's V-Chip is the bane of eager adolescents craving Mature rated content on television. The purpose of its initial design was to give parents the ability to shield their kids from programming they deemed unsuitable. Some TVs allowed caretakers to program schedules for viewing times; a feature that let parents create a kind of allowance for watching the boob tube.

Soon after, when the Internet proved itself to be a wondrous playground of all things lewd, similar software was created that was supposed to prevent kids from stumbling onto mature content. Those programs have a spotty track record and, when they actually work properly, have led to severe disappointment on the part of smut-seeking hormone rockets otherwise known as teenagers.

Now, with concerns about violence in video games growing, parents might be looking for some way to manage their children's PC gaming. A new program called WallFly, from SMARTGuard aims to do just that.

It's a computer program that monitors video game use and, if the parents deem it so, blocks certain games from being run. The easiest way to think of it is a V-Chip for the PC. WallFly is designed to assist parents who want to monitor the software that is run on the home computer.

"We do a lot more than give parents a tool to help control content," Jerald Block, CEO of SMARTGuard, told me. "We also allow parents to setup time zones where gaming and computer use is or is not permitted, allow parents to setup weekly budgets for game and computer use, and provide informative reports that detail game use on the computer."

WallFly reemphasizes what readers, gamers, parents, and -- pay attention here, dear politicians -- that coveted 18-34 year-old demographic have said: parents are the ones ultimately responsible for their offspring.

"Our goal with WallFly is to give parents a tool to help them oversee the gaming content and time used gaming on family computers. Most parents know considerably less about computers than their children do and yet they are being asked to oversee the computer use. They need some help. WallFly gives parents an easy and transparent way to manage the family computer."

WallFly uses the ESRB's ratings database as a guide. While running, it checks to see if a launched game meets with whatever criterion has been set by the parents. If Mom and Dad don't want their kids playing anything rated above 'Teen,' then they won't be able to.

"We stop games as they are launched. That is very different than using batch-like processing. Studies show that programs that rely on batch processing, like some of the antivirals, are rarely run and ineffective. So, we did it differently.

"I'd say we are the V-chip for the PC AND that we offer quite a bit more."

Since computer usage is being monitored, privacy concerns could become an issue. Does SMARTGuard, or anyone else, know what I'm playing? Someone playing something like "Improperly Proportioned Teen Naughtiness" might be concerned about sensitive information.

"No," Jerald told me. "Only you know what your computer has been used for."

By William Vitka
©MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Back To Top