Amnestic said:
IckleMissMayhem said:
Looking at the group's site, one of their main aims is to get parents to take an active interest in what their kids do, and, you know, actually parenting. I'm 99% expecting to get flamed for saying this, but I know I've been shocked by seeing parents buying games like Condemned, GTA and Saints Row for kids as young as 8-10 years old. There's a ratings system for a reason. Some games just aren't appropriate for some age ranges, yet when I pointed this out to one parent in a shop, who was marching towards the counter with a bratty 10 year old and a copy of GTAIV, they didn't seem to have a clue, or care that much. Go figure.
Hold up a second. Every child is different. While some parents may be purchasing games for their underage child because they "haven't got a clue" it is just as likely that the parent does understand what is what and recognises that their child is emotionally capable of handling the themes depicted in the game they want. I've played 18s as a wee child, what few of them were out there that appealed to me. Grand Theft Auto, for example was one of my favourite games and we bought GTA: London and GTA2 way back when. My parents watched me play, they saw what was going on and they didn't stop me because they saw that I wasn't unhinged with reality and I can tell the difference.
Point is, when a parent is buying a game for their kid and it's got a high rating: Don't instantly dismiss them as a terrible parent who doesn't care what their kids are doing, but rather because they know their child to such an extent that they can make an informed decision of what is and is not suitable for the child to play. In the particular case you brought up, yes, it seems the parent didn't have a clue. You shouldn't hold that as truth for every case however.
I don't have a problem with parents who
know what their kids are exposed to, it only makes me angry in cases like the one I mentioned where the 'responsible adult' didn't have a clue, and had caved to their kid's whining/demands.
I wonder if the parent would have let that same child watch Pulp Fiction, given that it's a film sharing many of the same themes, and the same classification rating as GTA IV.
Maybe I'm just too old-fashioned, or was brought up differently to you (as an example, my parents, and many of the parents of my friends at primary school wouldn't allow their kids to see Jurassic Park when it first came out in '93... we were 8-9 at the time) - maybe that's why I do have strong feelings on the subject, and believe that young children should be shielded from certain things, like violence, drugs etc, until their old enough to cope with the truth about the subjects.
Aaaaaanyhow, to drag this wall of text back on-topic, raising publicity about the content of certain videogames isn't a bad thing, if it makes parents think about what they should be letting young children play.
But blaming the content of games for violent acts in real life isn't sensible. After all, people were murdering each other a loooooooong time before games were invented.
