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Games - The Jury Is Out And Confused
Thanks to Blue's News for pointing to a New York Times article entitled 'On Video Games, the Jury Is Out and Confused' (registration required). It talks about the mixed messages being given to parents about video gaming, especially with regard to violent content, and its effect on their children: "In the face of contradictory, inconclusive or just plain confusing evidence, some parents... agonize over what limits to set." One concerned mother even has to keep her spouse in check as well: "My husband is a little hard to control. Sometimes he lets them rent games with little figures on top of buildings trying to shoot each other off." What limits do you or your relatives put on their children's gaming, and why?
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The article mentions a mother fearing that her sons will become socially isolated if they play video games, I think this is totally wrong. I just graduated high school and the majority of the guys all had atleast one gaming system and played them regularly. Those who didn't play video games were normally the kids that were in either the church group, or the alcoholic jocks.
It's great that video games improve your visual skills, but if you shelter your children then they'll never learn.
Another thing, I don't think there should be any laws deciding what I can and can not buy in terms of video games. On more than one occasion my mother has went out and bought the game for me because I wasn't allowed to. If you don't want your kids playing a game, then it should be your respondsibility to make sure they don't, not the governments/corperations. I feel the same way about movies, I was able to buy rated R tickets when I was 14 but for the last two years I couldn't. Thank you very much Tipper Gore.
Bugs are just features that have been fixed.
They made me pay for anything related to games (though occassionally I got a big xmas present of a new console, or one birthday game). No limit on what type of game.
When you make a kid work for the $50 each time instead of buying it for him/her, they keep a firm foot in reality.
Right you are - no two kids are alike. It seems to me that all the laws, censorship, "good ideas" and age restriction won't tell anyone anything about how their kids will react.
;-)
It'll just make it easier to blame someone (or something) else when the kid doesn't turn out right.
Of course my opinion is cheap, since I don't have any kids
For boys at least, 13 is the age when they start getting more competitive and agressive. I think that videogame violence helps them deal with those agressive tendencies in a positive way. Up until about 5000 years ago, if you didn't kill your food with your own hands, you didn't eat. Violence has been programmed into us, and we need to find a way to release it or bad shit start to happen.
I would argue that videogames are just as good as sports when it comes to relieving agressive tendencies. When playing online or with friends, gaming can not only be a social event, it can sometimes be an intellectual one as well (Civ III, for example).
So unless there's sadstic or explicitly sexual content, I think a little fragging will do your teenager good.
OK, so with the violence deal, the folks who blame violence on video games should take the fire hydrant out of their ass that's holding their head in. These fuctards who think video games cause violence aren't mature enough to figure out the difference between reality and a video game themselves. They are also people who don't really seem interested in raising their kids. "It takes a village", Bullshit! It takes time, your time, spend it with your kid and help them grow up right
I pay close attention to the games my son plays. I check them out with him, I help him play through the hard spots, and I don't let him play adult games.
Things will change as he gets older, and what I let him play will be determined by his level of maturity. I have friends and relatives who don't game who look to me for advice about the games their kids are exposed to. My cousin bought her third grader GTA Vice City, I could have smacked her when I found out, but she already knew at that point. That just isn't appropriate for kids in grade school. No, I don't think the one time he played it is going to make him go out and run someone over, but you don't give a little kid a game that they don't have the mature thought processes to handle, that's why it's rated M, mature, don't give it to your fucking grade school kids.
But there you go, she bought her kid a game that wasn't appropriate, but she sat down with him on Christmas day as he played it for the first time, and said "oh shit."
Another example, "War of the Monsters" It's a T rated game, but I let my four year old play it. I let him play it because we only play in two player, and we just run around and break up buildings. Good clean fun. He gets mad at me if I throw his monster around, and he doesn't like the normal single player mode because the other monsters are mean to him.
I am a gaming parent, I have a 12 year old son. Before the age of 5 I didnt let the boy have a console. We played PC games. I did let him play wolfenstein, haha it was free and was funny to watch a 3 year old running around a maze of nazis shooting.
"Parents need to think about what is being displaced when kids play video games, and balance any possible improvement in visual attention with that," said Jeanne Funk, a professor of psychology at the University of Toledo who has conducted several studies on the effects of video game violence.
What is being displaced? Watching TV? Learning to Smoke? Finding alchohol and drugs? Basically my son and his freinds DO go outside, they do, have fun and ride bikes and skateboard, but when they skateboard they are Tony Hawk. When they play they are Shinobi or Ryo. How does this differ from I as a child playing I was Batman? His freinds are all bright interesting geeky boys.
I believe the only thing being displaced by games are things that are best pointless and at worst abhorrent. Gaming brings our family together. when you sit and game with your child you share an expierence not unlike visiting an amusement park or playing softball. You compete and you co-operate. The most important thing is you spend time with your child sharing an activity they do and can enjoy the rest of their life.
"Bang bang! You're dead!"
That's right, all the generations of kids who played these horrendous, violent "street games" turned out to be monstrous asocial killers in real life huh? Didn't they?
Hell, when I was a kid, my mom wouldn't let me have toy guns, so I made myself guns from lego blocks. When I was done with them I would dismantle them into 3 or 4 easy to reassamble pieces that I would hide in separate sections of my lego chest (Ã la Nikita).
Kids play war. This is what kids do. The fact that kids play war using games that didn't exist when the current adults were kids just scares the old farts like any new tech scares the old geezers. "In my time, kids were respectfull of their elders, we walked a 100 miles in snow to school, barefoot and uphill both ways, every morning, and didn't play violent games".
Yes, put limits to your kids. Yes, don't let the lil'uns play adult gore games (silent hill scares me, I wouldn't let a 9yr old play it), yes, don't let them spend ALL their times on games. But for crying out loud, relax allready! Boys will be boys and trying to hide the fact that there is violence in the world will only leave them unprepared to face it.
You can't take the sky from me...
First, before I say this, it's worth noting that I am a hardcore video game fan. I own all major systems, and have been finding myself caught in front of a TV for hours playing games since I was about 10 (I'm 24 now)
Having said that, there is definitely a correlation between violent behaviour and violent video games. I know this, because I have felt them.
Last year, a close friend and I spent an entire afternoon/early evening inside playing Grand Theft Auto 3, stealing cars, passing missions, running around and shooting people. We blasted the jungle radio station through my surround sound system, laughed, smoked, and had a great time.
Later that night, we went out with some other friends clubbing. After last call, we were stuck about a 20 minute walk from home, so we decided to hike it on foot. About half way home, a cop car suddenly pulled up in front of us, and two officers got out and walked into a chinese restaurant. The window on the passenger's door was wide open.
I looked at my buddy Drach just as he looked at me and then I said "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" And he's like "My dear god... My urge to steal the cop car is ridiculous."
Of course, we're rational human beings, and we did nothing of the sort. But the fact is that after joy riding in cop cars all after noon, it sort of romanticized the idea. Now you could argue that because we didn't go through with it, video games are safe. And I'd agree with that, as I continue to play and just beat Return to Castle Wolfenstein : The Tides of War. But the idea here is that they can be just as suggestive (or moreso, as interactivity increases) as other media.
A game like GTA3, with it's violence and glamorization of criminal acts has no place in the hands of a toddler, or a young child. After that, it's the parent's responsibility to determine whether or not their child can handle it.
-RW
My mom took this approach when I was young and playing video games (NES/Atari days, but still applicable). She would watch me play occasionally and say stuff like "Eeww!" or "Gross!" or "That's nasty!" whenever someone exploded or got shot. I thought it was funny at the time, but looking back it reinforced the concept that killing people/things was a violent and 'gross' thing to do. Subtle, but it got her point across.
--trb