[OPLINLIST] Console Gaming

[Chapin Longden]

Greetings Libraryland: 

A couple of questions for those of you who provide gaming consoles for public use. 

We have had a Nintendo Wii for some time now and have more or less made it up as we have gone along. This was relatively simplistic as we were not really collecting many games and the ones we did were all of a family friendly nature (also not high chance of theft). 

We recently purchased an X-Box 360 and got the bundle that came with Halo 4, along with a few other games that we purchased separately. I just finished setting it up (I think) but as the last console I have personally owned was/is a Playstation 2, I'm a bit unclear on how to manage all of this online stuff. 

So here is what I did so far: Turned on, set up user account, set parental controls (more on that later), downloaded updates for games. 

My questions: 

1. We may be looking at XBox Live at some point, but not yet. I am assuming that a Live account cannot be registered without payment information, even the "free" trial. Would that be correct? 
2. We are planning on allowing M rated games to be played by older teens (and have purchased a couple), but are planning to limit these to non-peak evening hours. Is this feasible? How do you "regulate" game ratings, if at all? 
3. We would like to get a long service life out of both the console and the games, therefore they will be used in-house. For the Wii, we have just used a sign-up sheet. For the X-box, however, we were planning to keep the games and the wireless controllers at the desk. From here, I supposed we would have 3 options, one not so great - pay attention to who gets what (not so great); use a paper sign out system; or barcode the games/controllers and check them out. What do you all do? 
4. If anyone has any policies in place, would you share them? 


Apologies got the wall o' text, but I wanted to cover everything 


Thanks in advance! 



Chapin Longden, Reference 
Henderson Memorial Public Library 
54 E Jefferson St 
Jefferson OH 44047 

http://www.henderson.lib.oh.us/ 
(440) 576-3761 phone 
(440) 576-8402 fax 
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