Well, any game that has children screaming on mics immediately loses its playability for me. I understand that you can just mute people if you need to, but it's so bloody commonplace to need to mute one of the little brats that you end up needing to just mute-all and be done with it. That transforms the game from co-op to a bunch of lone ranges blowing up a bunch of enemy lone rangers.
So, while I have (watched) people play Halo and COD in dead mic silence, I'll never see the appeal of that.
So far with TF2, I've only encountered a few children, and only had to mute one. The one I muted wouldn't stop begging for an item even though no one would trade with him and everyone was pleading with him to stop talking, so we had to eventually mute him if we wanted to win. Aside from that, mic-talk is essential to get strategy going and to save someone from a Spy attack unless you have the most envious WPM rate ever.
It really does make a big difference. I don't care if they're "too young to handle this game". I do care if all they do is just spout gibberish that does nothing to help their team out. A ten year old child that is constantly screaming "fags" at the top of his underdeveloped lungs is doing nothing for anybody besides making himself feel cool for saying a naughty word without mommy catching him.
Any game that attracts enough of them where "oh, you just play with mute-all, it's easy" is either so accessible that everybody loves it or is so stupid that little kids love it. In the case of Lag Ops, I'm guessing the latter. Given how much money you have to shell out for a game like BlOps, I'm surprised that anyone would be okay with having to immediately cut out a good chunk of online co-op play strategy because of screaming kids. It'd be like saying you love going to the pool, but that you shouldn't go into the deep end because all of the children that aren't allowed to swim there yet are standing by the edge pissing into it. Just because something is common where you go, doesn't mean it's okay.
