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Parents Not Informed About Gaming?
Thanks to GamerDad for their opinion piece advancing the claim that parents don't pay enough attention to the videogames their children play. The article argues: "While the mainstream press has reported on the push for games to become adult entertainment, and games makers have tried to create so-called 'mature' games to fill this apparent void, the reality is that many of these M-rated games are being played by children under the age of seventeen." It goes on to put forward the theory: "Parents simply are not informed about gaming... [and] probably believe that even games like Grand Theft Auto III are video games, and therefore they are for kids."
...animation? A vast majority of adults still see animation and think - "Must be for kids." I saw a 40s-ish guy in the South Park movie with six or seven kids ranging in age from 8 to 12. Comics, animation, and gmaes have grown up. It'll merely take a while for society to catch up.
I hate to say it but there is some weight to such an article. Many parents May absent mindedly allow whatever little Johnny likes to play right into their households. But there also begs the question on what types of households these are. Many culturally rich households include many other sorts of activities which can sometimes also be looked down upon.
How many kids go without toy guns anymore? While Mom may need to watch what her kids do, I'd hate to focus on video games as the key aspect of school shoot outs. Possibly the fact that many households include guns for a child to marvel at and toys for a child to hold could be a severe indicator on how to take gaming fantasies into all too realistic realities.
While all of that can be true for certain households, there are also many times many households where everything the child does is monitored by their growth instructional unit (parent). Many of these households have parents who act as a constant positive force in the child's life and keep those negative things out of their reach. I can't say that's the end all and be all, but I can say that the most evil game of the year GTA3 (by some people's standards aparently) won't make it into those houses.
Is GTA3 really going to become the next scapegoat replacing Doom? I think that most of the naming of names for games is in quite poor taste as there are plenty of games which follow the same blood/gore/illegal activities that GTA3 partakes in. I for one welcome our new game killing parental overlords.
Yes this is the wrong crowd to ask. I can attest to GTA3 getting more than it's fair share of adult game play. While I don't mean 40 year olds, I do mean people out of school who do not hold any weight in the issue of Mommy watching what Johnny plays.
Parent today don't keep an active role in the majority of what there child views.. I saw this the most back when I was working at Blockbuster.
More than a few times some unwitting parent would grab a movie from the anime section at there kids request and bring it up to rent.. there are some that I would rent out without hesitation and others.. (Ninja Scroll for example) I would let the parent know that this probably wouldn't be the best for there 7 year old kid.
I had left before GTA3 came out so I know from talking to my old co-workers that not much has changed. They will still try to rent whatever there kid asks without hesitation.. until you actually let them know about that game..
and even then they may or may not care.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
The article makes a good point - parents should be looking out for kids, not developers. But read this:
but then the game isn?t to blame if the kid is under seventeen and their parent bought the game for them knowing it wasn?t considered age appropriate.
Fine, that seems nice enough. But this really implies that a game can sometimes be responsible for someone's actions. Or, as the article considers some time later, another form of entertainment. But this is nonsense - people are people, responsible for their actions. Sentient. Once we start taking that responsiblity from them, they aren't really human anymore, are they?
Myself and plenty of my cow-orkers play these M-rated games alongside other, more childish, games regularly. Now as much as my Significant Other tells me i'm just a big kid, i consider myself an adult.
Further i will continue to play games for years to come.
Games are -not- solely for kids: Games are a form of entertainment just as much as movies and just as a parent should be informed about the ratings on movies their kids are watching, they should be informed of ratings on games their kids are playing.
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This is BS. It's my peers that have and are having kids these days. We're the generation that grew up on video games first. You can't tell me that we don't know about video games, pure BS all the way.
It's laziness, plain and simple. Take some responsibility parents, I know I do.
No Comment.
Some kids can handle more adult-themed games (and other media for that matter), some cannot. Neglect is often a factor in a child's problems, but people should be careful in automatically assuming that all youth cannot handle games like Grand Theft Auto 3. From what I've seen, most M rated games are equivalent to a PG-13 rated movie, the M rating mostly being because of blood and gore.
I don't believe that parents should put too much weight into the ESRB ratings, they're alright for determining what realms the subject matter fall under, but not the severity. Try looking at the back cover of the game and reading what it's about and ask a store clerk if you're unsure about something. Rent the game first and watch it play out for a bit and play it first yourself if you can. Most importantly, explain what's real and not real and why you cannot do certain things in society. If you teach them right from wrong, you won't need to shelter them as much.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
Here's the thing. Back in my great grandparents day, there was no tv. Even in my grandparents earlier years there was no tv. So my parents had tv and my grandparents didn't get it. My parents likewise to me, knew all about tv. So, as a result they regulated tv. No TV, and such, because they knew. Video games however, they did not know.
When I have kids I'm going to be like "you're not getting a playstation 5 unless you beat Zelda 1 for me first." So when my generation becomes parents then kids will get video games the right way. But then something else will come out, like vr or some crap that I wont understand.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
My city is relatively small, so we know all the cops in the area. Most of my friends work at the Gamestop.
About half of our police force (which is something like 14 people) reserved Vice City at the local Gamestop.
--Moo.
It is quite scary when you see some of the games kids are playing... When 8 year olds can have a decent length conversasion about playing GTA3 sunday morning at church... Quite scary...
DUKEY!
hardly a kid, more Gamers are Adults nowadays then kids asshole
"Parents not parenting," now that would cut to the heart of the issue.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Can we just all say, "Duh!" and move on?
http://www.gamerdad.com/print.php?sid=133
notice that the poll was done by the ESA? formerly the ESRB
I play a lot of half life, which if you havnt played it, you run around and shoot people, graphic, blood, the whole 9 yards. On several occasions, i have run into kids on htere who tell us not to swear in the type/chat, because their mom will pull them off the game.
Let me get this straight, your letting your kid machinegun and beat people with a crowbar, but the LANGUAGE is the problem? How fucked up can a parent be?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
It's on the internet, so it must be true!
why don't you email them with the link to this info and ask if its true? won't you be suprised when you find out it is
when "Leisure Suit Larry" was new and a game for adults, it was very difficult for me, a child, to play it. The game would begin by asking quiz questions that only an adult would know the answer to. Sometimes it took me hours to crack the quiz questions to be able to play. That was when programmers placed that extra step.
pretzel_logic
As I posted before, the solution to the problem, like the solution to most problems, involves a pair of naked breasts.
All that is required is a small photo on the front and the back of the box of a set of naked breasts. In the US, parents don't care about violence. We see it on TV, we read it in the newspapers, nobody cares. But, show one little nipple somewhere and all the parents in the US are rushing to cover their little ones' eyes.
The most effective warning label doesn't involve the letter 'M' for mature anywhere, it involves a pair of breasts, proudly displayed. The parents will understand, as breasts are the universal symbol for 'adults only'.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I think the main problem with this article is that it has a "one size fits all" idea of parenting: violent games are wrong for absolutely everyone under the age of 17 and so are violent movies. That's ridiculous. My mother always paid attention to what I was doing and talked to me about everything in my day. My friends' parents were obviously doing the same, because they were constantly having the same conversations when I was in their homes. We all played Doom some time around fourth or fifth grade, we all played every Mortal Kombat game since MK2 daily, we all watched all three Highlander movies way too many times, and we saw R-rated movies almost as often as any other movie.
These movies and video games were not visual heroin. We did not become violent psychopaths obsessed with video games and pipe bomb construction because we played Doom, Mortal Kombat, Metal Gear Solid, or any other violent game before the age of 17, nor because we saw Connor MacLeod cut some guy's head off or The Crow beat the crap out of someone. Our parents talking to us, being informed about what we were doing, and making sure that we could distinguish between fantasy and reality was what ALLOWED us to watch and play these things, not what barred us from it. At the age of fourteen or fifteen, we would've been part of the 70% of kids under 17 that had played Grand Theft Auto III, but we would've been part of it because our parents were paying attention to us and judged our maturity realistically, not because we were neglected, troubled teens that were sawing off shotgun barrels inbetween rounds of Mortal Kombat 2. They knew what the ESRB was as soon as it came out, they held off on Mortal Kombat when we were too young before there even WAS an ESRB, and when we were mature enough, they let us play what they felt was alright for us.
There are parents out there that don't believe that their children magically mature from mentally unstable toddlers to reasonable adults as soon as they hit the "magic age" of 17 or 18. Some would call them bad parents. I would call them sane. I don't understand how people have acquired this idea that what video game or movie companies think is okay or not okay for their children is perfectly accurate, as if the ESRB and its "M" rating knew your child better than you do. Every child matures at a different speed depending on their own intelligence and how well their parents have taught them, not by whether or not they play certain video games, but by actually TALKING to them. That is what good parenting is, not just taking the label on a DVD as some sort of sacred law that you cannot violate. Video games are not something to be put in the same category as drugs, sex, or criminal neglect as Things That Will Definitely Fuck Up Your Kid. You're not a bad parent simply because you violate the Sacred Corporate Law and let your fourteen year old play GTA.
So when my generation becomes parents then kids will get video games the right way. But then something else will come out, like vr or some crap that I wont understand.
We really are running out of modes of experience. VR, if it's ever useful, will probably be perceived as just further glorified video games and won't really shock us that much.
And if you think I'm letting my 10-year-old son get a direct neural interconnect, you've got another think coming.
Seriously, we're running out of surprises. "Video Games" are already pretty generic.
(You might say "How can you know we're running out of surprises? Did our grandparents see video games coming?" Perhaps not, but there IS a limit to human experience: We have five senses and only so much input to them even theoretically possible. Video games will continue with the realism until they totally tap out "audio" and "visual", leaving pretty much only "virtual sex" as the only really "useful" tactile input mode. The only thing possible after that is the aforementioned "direct neural interconnect", either as a hardware device or an even-more-ambition uploading of the brain into a computer. Then, that's it; you can't get any more into the brain then that. So yes, I'm justified in this statement, because no matter what sci-fi scenario you spin, that's the top of the experience you can get.)
I really don't understand this trend of reporting "news" than end with a question mark.
In other news:
President Bush addicted to crack?
Bear Shits in Woods, Pope Catholic, Sky Blue, Water Wet
i'm not gonna post again, but i figure you should know that gamers aern't the uneducated slobs you think we are
And most of them probably enjoy the random gunfight that you could start with a carnage run to trigger every cop in vice city to show up. Honestly, how many cops ARE there in that city?, after 40 or 50 I have to wonder if the city is actually just all cops.
As a children growing up in the 70's my brother and I were allowed to watch Looney Toons. As everyone knows, characters regularly got shot, blown up, etc. [Wile E. Coyote making weapons of mass destruction...yipes!]. Our parents let us watch the show with no problems. My brother and I turned out ok later in life (we're now both software engineers - maybe I use the term 'ok' loosley here ;-) )
I was just wondering what everone thinks about
the differences between growing up in the 70's and growing up now?
...the right of the people to keep and arm bears shall not be infringed.
and the answers, they are all right here.
Most of them are easy, though I can see why a young kid wouldn't know them. Some of them I still don't know, just because I don't have the right chronological frame of reference.
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The article did have an interesting point I had not thought of before. The media cannot put blame on the parents because it's those same parents that are watching the news and keeping the advertisers happy. Any news station would risk losing a large percentage of it's viewers if it openly blamed those same viewers for the news it was reporting.
Perhaps this has been painfully obvious to most that this is why the media doesn't place blame on parents, but I had never really thought if it before.
We are at a transition point right now. A large majority of parents have never and have no interest in playing video games because they are "for kids". However you see a very large percentage of people in their early 20s and 30s...and everything inbetween, playing a lot of games now. These are the people who will be the parents of the next generation and they will be much more informed about games and which ones are approiate to children.
Isn't that what the all-beef patties are made of in Warcraft?
1. Picture books are for kids.
2. Madonna's "Sex" is a picture book.
3. Therefore Madonna's "Sex" is for kids.
One of the earliest, and most controversial games (pre-Pac Man) to be released was Death Race 5000...a sweet little game based on the movie of the same name where you racked up points by killing pedestrians with your car. People love to complain about how the morals are getting worse in this country and the youth are wild in the streets. When two kids watching a violent show, listening to an angry song, or playing a particularly bloody video game, decide to act out these activities in the real world, you have to question whether the problem is with a form of entertainment with millions of fans who can exist in society without being a liability to the people around them, or the handful of kids who need an excuse to harm others.
Have you ever seen M rated games put in a seperate section of a game store? I have not, I'm not talking about putting them in a locked case in a back room with a red door. But how about on the upper shelf with a label on it that says, "These games are rated M for Mature." Or maybe just a little sign explaining the gaming section of a software store? How about a little mini flyer that can be left at the register free for parents to take one?
Did I mention that I know networking and security on basically all unices from atheos to xenix? and learning all that I still had the time to major in biotechnology in a foreign college, and learn a shitload of other useful things, such as: latin, english, german, russian, kong fu, wilderness survival skills, etc, and during all that time i read 2 books per week.
Kong Fu, die Kunst Donkey Kong zu spielen?