Hugh Spencer, a writer and designer of museum and public educational exhibitions, is a fantastic contrast to many of the parents of kids who play games today (read: all of them). Spencer recently had a dilemna about his son, Evan, a 13 year-old with a hankering for Call of Duty. Should he let him play the game? It's rated Teen (well, it was, later versions are rated Mature), but...

"He's only just a teenager and point and shoot first person games worry me some. Evan is relentlessly reasonable sometimes -- he outlined why he wanted to play the game and he was pretty upfront why he knew my "parent-sense" would start tingling. So I had to be reasonable too. I looked at the game. I've done a lot of research for military museums so I could tell that the content was accurate -- but there was lots of shooting and blowing things up. But there was a fair bit of that during World War II. So it was undeniable that Evan was experiencing history and there was this teamwork factor...

So we compromised. Well, sort of."

Spencer got his son to read up on the Geneva Conventions, the four treaties created in Geneva, Switzerland, which set the standards for interntional law for humanitarian concerns; they primarily regard treatment of non-combatants and prisoners of war. The agreement between him and his son was to play the game according to the treaties (his teammates are included in this) -- if not, no Call of Duty.

Yes, this would seem hard to enforce, but as Spencer explains, his son and himself have this whole "trust" thing going on:

"We'll see how it goes, but Evan keeps his word. Especially about his games."