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."

Comments

Who's to blame?

[phlyingpenguin]

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.

Re:Who's to blame?

[ConceptJunkie]

I for one welcome our new game killing parental overlords.

That's just what we need on a case-by-case basis (i.e., each parent is an overlord for his or her kids). In my house, with children from 3 to 10, I evaluate everything they play. Some things are obviously appropriate for all ages, like "Thomas the Tank Engine"... others are a judgement call... like the T-rated games "Skies of Arcadia", "Total Annihilation", or "Descent", just to name a couple... that I think are despite their ratings. Fortunately, there are very few games that I play that I would not consider appropriate for the kids, which makes my life easier because I don't have to "hide" what I'm doing. Notable examples are the excellent "System Shock 2", which was rated M, or "Baldur's Gate", which was T, that I played. The kids understand and respect that these games are too violent and scary (especially 'scary' for SS2) for them, and they (usually) don't mind that they might not get a chance to see those really cool games because I make a point to find games that are really cool that they can play.

I don't consider myself some kind of parenting expert (quite the opposite really), I just care, and make a point to act like I care.

Also, raising children in a solid moral context is important too. For instance, we enjoyed "Need for Speed III", which involves eluding the police, but the kids understand that this is just for fun and we would never do anything like this in real life. The kids also see the respect I show for authority figures and it has rubbed off on them, so even though we have fun eluding the dumb cops on the computer (or spray-painting the city in Jet Grind Radio, or banging up vehicles and buldings in Super Runabout, or whacking the crap out of opponents in Road Rash, or relentlessly nuking your adversaries in Worms), they have a solid grounding in reality to distinguish between that and real life.

BS: My Peers

[GeckoX]

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.

How to fix the problem

[PD]

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'.