The American Amusement Machine Association (AAMA) governs all amusement machines in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 including video arcade

Video arcade

An amusement arcade or video arcade is a venue where people play arcade games such as video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers , or coin-operated billiards or air hockey tables...

 games since 1988. It is considered to be an advocate

Advocate

An advocate is a term for a professional lawyer used in several different legal systems. These include Scotland, South Africa, India, Scandinavian jurisdictions, Israel, and the British Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man...

 before the United States Government and the United States Congress

United States Congress

The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

 dealing with issues about video games. In addition to this, the organization is also the voice before the media

News media

The news media are those elements of the mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public.These include print media , broadcast news , and more recently the Internet .-Etymology:A medium is a carrier of something...

 and searches for ways to have arcade owners improve their profitability.

During the year 2000, the American Amusement Machine Association was faced with a lawsuit by Ms. Terri Kendrick who believed that minors should be limited access to video games that featured violence; it was eventually settled in 2001 with a reversal of the original judgment.

Their goal is to foster responsible

Moral responsibility

Moral responsibility usually refers to the idea that a person has moral obligations in certain situations. Disobeying moral obligations, then, becomes grounds for justified punishment. Deciding what justifies punishment, if anything, is a principle concern of ethics.People who have moral...

 attitudes towards gaming in both child gamers

Gamer

Historically, the term "gamer" usually referred to someone who played role-playing games and wargames. Since they became very popular, the term has included players of video games...

 and their parent

Parent

A parent is a caretaker of the offspring in their own species. In humans, a parent is of a child . Children can have one or more parents, but they must have two biological parents. Biological parents consist of the male who sired the child and the female who gave birth to the child...

s. Their parental advisor system help determine mature games from games intended for general and teen audiences. Games are analyzed for their violence

Violence

Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...

, adult language

Profanity

Profanity is a show of disrespect, or a desecration or debasement of someone or something. Profanity can take the form of words, expressions, gestures, or other social behaviors that are socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rude, vulgar, obscene, desecrating, or other forms.The...

, and or sexual content

Sexual intercourse

Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...

to see whether it's mild, medium, or strong. Currently, the goal is to diminish the level of violence in video arcade games and develop more games that are suitable for all ages. The AAMA also encourage parents to help make video gaming decisions for their younger children that are suitable for them.

Color	Rating	Recommendation
Green	General Audiences	This game would be recommended for a general audience and would be suitable for all ages.
Yellow	Caution	This game features some adult content and would be recommended either for teenagers or children with parental discretion.
Red	Danger	This game features mature content and would be recommended for a young adult audience. Teenagers and young children should be spotted and not allowed to play the game.