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You Played Violent Games - Why Can't Your Kids?
An anonymous reader writes: "On the Wired site, Clive Thompson has up an article that points out a sobering truth: gamers are getting older. Folks who grew up playing videogames like Doom and Quake are now facing parental decisions with their own kids regarding appropriate content. Thompson cites well known gamer dads like Kotaku's Brian Crecente, discussing some of the approaches folks educated in gaming take with their own offspring: '"Everybody knows, as an adult, that the world is not always a nice place," Crecente told me. "But I don't want him to know that yet. I want him to have a childhood." So he disallows games with "realistic" combat, like World War II titles, or Resistance: Fall of Man, but permits highly cartoony shooting, like Starfox on the Nintendo DS -- since he regards it as essentially as abstract as playing cops and robbers with your fingers as guns.' Where do you think gamer parents should draw the line? If you have kids, what approach are you taking to introducing them to gaming? How old is 'old enough' to start fragging?"
I don't know what I'd do, but I do know what my parents did... both non-gamers, but my dad was (and is) quite proficient with computers. Our advantage was that the computer came "late in the game", so I was about 12, my brother 14 and my little sister was 8.
Computers were expensive and we had to share one computer. My dad or mother didn't say "one hour", no, they said it had to be fairly distributed. The system introduced was simple and self-regulating: write down what you were playing and at what hour you started and stopped. Your siblings could come in at any time and say "hey, you already played an hour... it's my turn". That meant, finish level and/or save and let your sibling have a go. Whining brought you nowhere, because mom or dad would invariably take the side of the person that had played least.
No things regulated "playing time" quite fairly and the net result was that we played each about 1 hour to 1.5 hours a day. Pretty much what the article stated.
Now as for violence and/or sex in videogames. My parents never forbade any games. We had the full programme Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, etc... Blood and gore were not a problem. (Heck, later we loved to play a game called "Blood"... Good times!) In the early days we mostly played Sierra games (a dying breed... alas...) and it helped us (okay, perhaps just me) learn English. I sat there for hours with my dutch-english dictionary. Fun times... We also had stuff like Strip poker and our good old Leisure Suit Larry.
The only thing I remember is that my dad forbade Syndicate... Or better said, we had to play it with headphones. He abhorred the sound of the people burning when using the flamethrower.
The main problem is not the nature of the game. Wolfenstein let us kill humans after all. Except, they didn't look much like humans then, did they? A current game with current graphics is way closer to reality than whatever we had.
On the other hand, I think kids tend to be self-regulating in what they want to do. Younger kids simply won't be interested in shooting people/aliens. They will probably go for the more colourful games. I see this when my fathers in laws kids from his second wife are here. They never ask to put stuff like GTA3, even if I let them choose from my PlayStation2 library. It's always stuff like Kya, eyeToy Groove or Sonic Heroes.
Teenagers will probably love stuff like GTA3, Halo, whatever... but there all bets are off. You cannot control them. They already watch violent movies, they play the games you don't want them to play at friends. In the teenage years, parents have to let loose slowly but surely. Something I also learnt from my parents. (Note that when we got a computer, we were pretty much teenagers)
I know you can tell by now that I think my parents did a great job.... I plan to inspire me as much as possible from what I learnt from then.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
FWIW, Crecente seems to have some pretty reasonable rules here.
To quote my Japanese friend on the subject of Anime censorship:
"Why censor children's [media]; kids have violent! Honestly, a child will see more blood spilled than most people in their adult years outside of war and medicine. Children are naturally violent creatures."
Note: not exact quote.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
You get to be an innocent child ONCE!
Unfortunately too many adults take this opportunity away from their children by exposing them to the violence and stupidities of humanity WAY TOO EARLY. Yes the violence and stupidity of humanity is real, and out there in the world, and it always has been...
What's the damn rush to expose children to it?
(And I'm still pissed off at the idiot parents who brought their toddler to the Planet of the Apes remake at 10:00 pm.)
I've been a gamer since the days of the original Wolfenstein 3D, and when I had a son, I decided to use the video games in my collection to teach him a few things: like the consequences of your actions, thinking through problems, and *not* killing civilians indiscriminately. I chose games that had a definite right and wrong about them (and yeah, I'm of that generation that believes World War Two was about right and wrong, so a few of those titles were in there), or about thinking (the original Deus Ex, for example).
Unfortunately, my son quickly learned that there were cheat codes out there, so a lot of my hopes at a learning experience went out the window.
There are some games I keep away from him, such as the Carmageddon and Grand Theft series, along with the ever-popular Postal series.
Every step of the way, I know what he's playing, and we talk about it. We don't play against each other because the one time we did he kicked my butt. But otherwise, we're on the same wavelength. We generally play the same games, and talk the same language about them, even though he's 40 years younger than I am.
Games are no more violent than television, and in one way, they're less violent, because when playing a game, the kid is at least in some control. The parent just has to pick the games, and stay involved with the kids. Neither computers nor televisions are baby sitters, and parents who use them as such get the ba****ds they deserve.
But I'm still not gonna let him play Postal -- not until he reaches 65. There have to be *some* limits, you know!
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
This article is interesting because it highlights a new scenario: Now there are parents almost solely bred up on video games. Now is their turn to reverse the roles.
Problem is, if you think your parents stink as a kid, how would you like having video-game junkies as parents?
(Note there are always exceptions to any rule or hypothesis, every human is unique and no labels should be applied. Just think of this as an enlightening exercise in how you would really like to live your life.)
...that just because you abhor violence, sex, etc., in your media that 'Sin City', 'Doom' et al. are not good. It simply means they are uninteresting to you. It has nothing to do with class, and everything to do with age-appropriateness. Sin City and Doom are bad movies/games to be showing a kindergartener. Beyond that, you are just being snobby. (P.S. I'm pretty sure the arcade became a ghost town not because of violence, but because kids all of a sudden had access to games of similar quality right at their house or their friends' houses, with video game consoles and serious video-capable PCs).
There are, and always have been fun, interesting games that had no element of violence in them. Pinball is a good example (interestingly, Centipede is not, unless we don't care so long as it's violence against things not human, in which case you shouldn't care about Doom either). So was Myst (a personal fav). But there is no magical exclusionary rule that says if there are elements of violence, sex, and profanity a game is automatically bad and/or boring. The Longest Journey was a great game, but was full of profanity and had a good bit of the other two. Half-life and its sequel were both groundbreaking and engaging story-wise, but chock full of violence. Sin City was a fantastic movie, if for nothing else the artistic direction that was taken, but also the stories are quite gripping (and also inherently moral in dramatistic ways; you know, the same way Shakespeare's plays were morally tinged even though they were chock full of violence, sex, and profanity...).
Besides, all the good ol' games you seem bent on being nostalgic about are available in Flash or Java on the net somewhere or other. So, it's not like these options are forever lost to a parent trying to entertain a child age-appropriately.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
I particularly liked the "Lego Rule." ... Also, I have "this friend" who's about to turn 50, has never played a video game in his life, and has three young children who are soon to graduate from noggin.com to the real thing. I'm not, I mean he's not, going to be one of those anything-goes guys. Any advice for this type?
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That's not a troll, really. The most obvious and ageless example is sex. We did as much as we could as soon as we could get away with it. Now, as hypocrytical, older parents, we can't stand the concept of our precious little darlings doing the nasty at ... well ... whatever age it was that we first wanted to. (Actual age citation omitted so that I don't draw too much negative response. God knows that the ages of kids getting naked and freaky on their webcams is sufficiently low that it may never be mentioned in polite company; adults just don't want to hear about that stuff.)
It's the same for alcohol. We got drunk on our ass at 16, most of us got away with it, and we think we were *special* and could handle it. Our kids? Those morons couldn't handle a sip of ceremonial wine before they turn 21.
Video games. Driving fast. Ditching school. Going out in the woods with some dynamite and blowing shit up. (OK, that last one was pretty personal, I guess.) No matter the subject, we simply don't think our kids can do the things we did. We're hypocrites. All parents are and always have been.
Adults have no respect for children so we treat them differently than we still think we should have been treated when we were their age.
Hypocrisy and lack of respect from parents towards children? This is news? Is this surprising to anyone?
Not really a cop-out answer, but I can't wait for my son to learn enough to be able to play Civ with me.
As for FPS, I'd let him play Halo as soon as he can (on a PC though)- I don't want my kids to be console addicts- they'll be able to play ANY game they want so long as they know how to install the game AND it involves a keyboard. It was a pretty proud moment when my 5yr old figured out how to install LEGO Star Wars. Heh- the first words he learned how to read were Load and Save.
As another poster suggested, I also use games to teach the "Good vs Evil" thing- Halo is especially good for that actually. I totally draw the line at GTA though- and honestly would never play the game myself.
I am about as anti-statist as one gets and you know...I really have trouble blaming the state for that one. I think technology like games has evolved to attract us and fill up our leisure time.
Its like cheese cake. Its not the nutritional value of it that makes your mouth water. Its the fact that it was made with all the triggers that make it feel good in your mouth and just yummy as hell, its really hacking you rbrain to send you the "hungry eat that" signals, even though really... the body doesn't need it.
I think video games do similar things to other parts of the brain. Get the adreanalin pumping, that sort of thing.
I have touble blaming the state for people making poor time management decisions or feeling they have "lost purpose" (which supposedly existed int he past, at least, thats what all the books and movies tell us).
I think this is far more a case of selective memory and poor decision making faculties than really the fault of the state. That said... smash the state!
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Half the problem is this insane idea that being an adult at 13 is an "early grownup". For a 100,000 years, humans have reached adulthood at ~13. They have raised children, fought wars and ran nations. Somehow over the last 3 or 4 generations, the entire human populations seems to have become retarded. It seems that it now take 50% longer for a human to reach maturity. It looks like we need more studies on just what kind of damage DDT did on our population, because if it takes 18-21 years for current humans to reach adulthood, SOMETHING went seriously wrong.
I don't know about the rest of society, but my genetic code has not degraded to that point. While I have certainly learned many things since I was 13, the only thing that prevented me from living as an adult at 13 was the artificial legal system that criminalized my age. I'm not saying that it wasn't great living for 6 years as an adult who had no responsibilities. I'm just saying that at 13 I was an adult, irrelevant to what the law said.
I have 3 kids, aged 15/12/10. The oldest isn't really into Video games, but the 2 youngest are, I let them play every game that I play (CS, Diablo2, GTA3, Quake3/4, warcraft, etc) and i always have.
Some things I have noticed:
They know the difference between games and real life, the routinely gib people in Quake, headshot people in CS, wipe out creeps in WC3 (when we all play together), but in school they get good grades and their teachers love them (no behavior problems), I know this because my wife works in the same school they attend and is privy to all of the lunch room commentary by their teachers.
When they play these games their mindsets and preferences are mirrored in the game, not the other way around. This is the biggest point I can make.. games are a way for them to express themselves, I don't see any "conditioning" that should be prevalent if you are to believe video game alarmists (E.G. Jack Thompson)
E.G. My second youngest (girl) likes to drive around GTA3 in a firetruck or ambulence doing the side missions helping people.. she doesn't gun people down/kill hookers/ etc.. in fact she berates me for not obeying the speed limit when I play.
When playing CS she likes the surf maps (where you glide around a map in a race type setting) and barely (if at all) tries to shoot anyone or fight in general. Same for Warcraft, she likes the maps where you build towns or can generate unlimited creeps and walk them around the map (no objective). In real life she loves animals, being social, and helping people...
With my son he likes to play games (CS/quake) with other people and make friendships in game, leaves if the competition is too tough and avoids conflict, and tries to help people who don't know how to do X in a game. He is the same way when playing with kids on the play ground at school.
I have never seen an increase in violent tendencies in their interactions with each other or other kids (like the neighbors, at school etc...) as a result of playing these games.
So there ya go.. btw, I have been playing video games since Doom first came out, so they have been around these games for ALL of their lives, if there was some kind of influence you would expect it to be manifested in some visable way?
I might be biased so I offer this as well, my wife doesn't play any games at all but shes their behavior constantly every day, she doesn't have any problems with them playing these games nor has she seen any changes in their behavior due to their playing them more often.
I did allow one exception for the cartoony "Destroy All Humans" game, where invading aliens zap laser beams from their UFO's at crowds of fleeing people, making them disappear in a puff of smoke. But we have successfully held out against the 007 types of games as well as Grand Theft Auto and other obviously anti-social or gory titles.
I don't buy them any realistic toy guns either. We have real guns stored under lock and key, and the children are well versed in how to handle and shoot them safely. We don't want the two confused. They have some neon colored water soakers for the pool and that's about it.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.