Parent's reaction to video games

[saucecode]

Interesting subject.
My parents don't mind me playing genrally any video game, regardless of its restriction, and it hasn't had any effect on me. Why? Well it's not like im going to play something like GTA where you can shoot innocent civillians, then run outside looking for prostitutes and heroine, getting into gangs and all that rubbish. If i think a game is extremely obscene, wrong, or inappropriate, in my OWN opinion, then i'll stop playing for those reasons. I guess some parents dont see that gamers, such as myself, are choosing to play these games, and not forced into it. And I guess some parents think that children buy games solely to mass-murder everything. Don't get me wrong, mass-mudering can be great fun, but thats not why you buy the game, is it?!

Parents, even adults in particular have a very off view of video games, and their influence on the youth.

 

[Soxafloppin]

My dad sort of got me into gaming back in the day, We had a Sega: Saturn, Then a PS1.

He still talks about how he used to love playing Exummed, Road Rash, Mortal Kombat etc, but doesnt really bother buying games anymore.

My will ocasionaly walk into the room and casually ask what im playing, but doesnt really seem to listen when i explain!

 

[Astoria]

My dad isn't really fussed on whether I do or don't play them and my mum just rolls her eyes and smiles when I bring them up. A lot of my friends play games so they think it's great that I play them too

 

[ruben6f]

My parents every time I am mad they attack video games (when video games are the only thing that help me relax), and they think that anyone that plays games is stupid and they don't allow me to play any violent games while they are in the room with them.

They also think it's stupid to be scared by games, it's not my fault X18 is filled with snorks, zombies and a pseudo giant those guys are creepy!

 

[Da Orky Man]

My mom doesn't really understand games, but she doesn't have a problem with me playing them. Not much to say about her

My dad...well it's hard to explain. His opinion seems to change from game to game. He works with computers a lot (though more hardware than software) and is generally involved with a lot of tech stuff, so he gets pretty impressed with some of the games I play (mostly Rockstar games). He also plays a lot of fighting games with me, specifically Soul Calibur. I can actually remember most of the things he's said about the games I've played while he's around:

Red Dead Redemption: "Wow, the visuals actually really do look nice. Though steering on the horses looks kinda fake" (During the scene where John shoots the Mexicans when he first goes to Mexico) "Yeah, that guy reminds me a lot of Clint Eastwood"

LA Noire: "The facial animation is really impressive. It still looks like animation, but wow"
"Hey, you gonna play that detective game again? It's actually kind of fun to watch"

Grand Theft Auto 4: "Yeah right, that's not how it would happen. If you just walked into a hospital and started shooting it up, there'd be police blocking all the exits!"

Modern Warfare 2: "There's missiles being fired from a plane that you control with a laptop? That...doesn't exist"

Fallout New Vegas (opening cinematic): "Kinda funny, the Stratosphere's actually gonna be taken down soon, so it wouldn't exist in the future like that" (I then told him it took place in an alternate timeline)

I do intelligence in the Air Force and your dad is wrong about that Modern Warfare thing, plus that game is in the future. You can somewhat control rockets you fire out of a rocket launcher with a little keypad on the launcher now too actually.

Since I'm not an expert with military weaponry, I wasn't really sure if I wanted to argue with him. Though I did tell him it took place 6 years in the future, and so he replied "Oh, nevermind"

Also, I forgot a game:

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2: "Man they go really in depth with this. It's like they're secretly training people for war" (which is interesting, because there is a game that openly admits that it's meant for recruitment or something)

That would be America's Army. It was commisioned by the US Armed Forces, and you actully use realistic everything.
It's free, and it's not too bad. An they csn't recruit me because I live in the UK

 

[unicron44]

They don't care one way or the other. They know I'm not an idiot and I can tell what's real and what's not. Plus I mostly play sports sims, so they don't have to worry about a lot of violent games.

 

[Zyntoxic]

My mom had one of these "Game and Watch" hand held donkey kong games that she loved and barely let us touch and later she was the one who bought our sega megadrive, that and considering that my dad put me infront of a computer-game before I could even speak I'd say my parents are pretty big on games.
my dad even tried to teach me and mold me into a "pro-gamer"; other kids played soccer after school, I played Unreal Tournament, my dad being my coach.

my friends are mainly the usual "gamer bunch", so yeah, they kind of like games.

my collegues are.. splitted... well some of the old ladies* here consideres my gaming habits as somthing of a more childish behaviour and thinks I should probably grow up, on the other hand other collegues of all ages enjoy games and share my interest for gaming, for example my boss and I during what was supposed to be an evaluation of my work ended up in discussing red dead redemption and the history of rockstar games =P

actually, those that I've found to be the least supportive about games are my sisters supposedly hip and cool friends, they claim they don't like any games upon which I laugh and try to accept the challange and say I bet I could find a game for each and every one of them.
that's the funny thing about games, as it is growing there really is somthing for every one, but the common belief all of these people I have met share is that they think games are silly toys for children or big man/woman-children who refuses to grow up.

*I don't say old ladies out of disrespect for either the elderly or women, I just happen to work at the swedish tax agency, and in sweden that kind of job is dominated by middle aged women.

 

[Dastardly]

Oddly enough, it makes a lot of sense (in their minds). The smarter, more educated, and more independent a person is (or believes themselves to be), the more inclined they are to believe there is a clear reason for everything.

...

Yep. Smarter and more educated people are very often more likely to react that way, and to do so more strongly.

I wouldn't go that far. I know a lot more stupid people who are ready to jump to conclusions than intelligent people, because stupid people don't tend to think about what they are about to say. In the defense of my pops, he saw me melting my enemies into puddles of goo right after he saw a news report saying the Columbine kids made a shooter mod of Doom that mirrored the layout of their school.

When I try to explain video games and their benefits to dumb people, I either get a blank stare or they tell me they like FIFA. When I do so with a college professor, their response is more nuanced. Hell, the professors who still don't like games after I make my points leave me satisfied because they are able to respond in a way that makes me think they aren't making a judgement out of ignorance.

Stupid people are definitely more likely to draw conclusions, but they're also easily led around. If you get an emotional hook in them, you can change their opinions pretty quickly (which is why FOX News employs so much demagoguery).

But smart people, to a certain point, are better able to defend and/or justify their opinions, even if they're just as emotionally based. So while it's true that stupid people don't know that they're stupid, and this can make them dangerous, the truth is that smart people don't know that they've still got some "stupid," too.

 

[Unorthodoxx]

In my home games are known as nerd activities...Quite similar to when I play magic with my brothers at the kitchen table. My father will often sit down with me and play Super Mario, and to his credit he is actually really good at the game. Other than that I get passing glances followed by the usual comment of how I'm not doing to well on a certain part of the game. Its a different world to them and they have accepted that, then again fox news is considered poison here so that generally helps.

 

[Shockolate]

My mother doesn't mind that I play video games. She does mind that it's all I seem to do, though.

My father (who's long passed away) was actually gaming before I was born so I assume he was cool with it.

 

[Jakub324]

Mine sigh and roll their eyes. Often, the won't actually ask me for the TV, they'll just say : "Can you grab me a banana?" and by the time I've got back, one of them is watching it. It doesn't happen much, but my family is like that. We dodge the issue and avoid confrontation.
EDIT: They don't mind which games I play, for instance they're fine with the brutality of Gears of War 2, but if I played GTA or something, they would come down harder and faster.

 

[Possibly]

When I tried to teach my mom how to play Halo, she stared at the ceiling and threw grenades at herself.
When I tried Portal 2 co-op with my grandma, it took her 15-20 mins to walk inside the teleporter to get to the 1st level.
So yeah, my family doesn't play games, but they're usually fine with my little brother and I playing whatever we want.

 

[Freddyqaqualung]

My Dad doesn't care too much; he played games when he was a kid and still plays casual games on his iPhone. My Mom pretty much thinks games are a waste of time and that I should do something better with my time. Kind of a basic situation.

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

This is why I'm very selective about my friends.

My mother doesn't loike it when I play violent stuff in the room


Thank god the are I live in has a very low amount of ignorant idiots (I don't mean to imply that your family or friends are though).

 

[Mosstromo]

My mom likes them. She actually plays with me some times if the game is co-op somehow.
Maybe because my little brother actually works for a video game company and helps in the development of such medium that my mother sees them as more than just games.
But even if that was not the case, she likes playing some. Quite a lot.

Your dad could find Extra Credits interesting (if he is half-willing), just to get different input on this potential art form.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

@ OP: Daaaman, that sucks...My sympathies.

It's been an up and down roller coaster for me. At first, my parents thought they were kinda pointless and expensive and not worth it (besides they wanted me to play outside). Then I went to a nice old lady's place when I was young (who was actually a psychologist, and I didn't know until much later), and she could tell I lived my life mostly in my imagination, so she told mom that if I got a game system, I would probably withdraw into it forever. This, plus the fact I was diagnosed with ADD made my mom decide not to let any more game systems into the house (I still had my oldschool Game boy from when I was 5, and I could still get games for it, but no new system). She didn't raise a fuss about me playing at my best friend's house, though, so we could play to our heart's content together.

Then, My aunt got me an SNES for Christmas, and my mom would have felt too terrible for returning it, so I got to keep it. .....And then I made a big mistake. My younger brother (he was like...5) liked to watch me play, but started getting nightmares of Donkey Kong in the rainy levels, so mom told me not to play around him. Then, when playing my cousin's genesis at his place, he came down and watched. My mom got upset and began to lecture me. And then the intro for the game came on, and I turned to look since I had never seen it. ...Bad move. At first she wanted to ban me from gaming for life, but I managed to talk her down to 5 years (no mean feat for a 10-ish year old kid VS an angry mom). Fortunately, the ban only lasted about a year and a half. Still, pretty damn scary moment. And I learned from it. From that point on, I always put down the game if anyone needed my attention for anything.

For a good long while, she continued to harbor those feelings of "games are useless and a waste". And then I introduced her to DDR and Professor layton and brain age. And then she slooooowly opened up. It was only when I finished my first college program and was on an internship that she finally took a step back and stopped nagging me about gaming. I could finally play games during the week without a eye roll or a lecture. And now, she actually takes a small interest in what I do. Not much of one, but she does ask what my girlfriend and I play together, or what I play with my brother sometimes. And she's cool with the idea of me wanting to program games as a career.

My dad? I hate to say it, but he's got no imagination. The words "suspension of disbelief" mean nothing to him (well, actually they do. And he find the whole concept stupid. >__<

My friends? They're ALL gamers. Well...one of them, who used ot be SUPER competitive is slowly moving away from solo gaming so he can have more time to work on his engineering stuff. But we all still play games together. Like we always have.

[/my life story]

 

[Vuliev]

My parents seem to have accepted it for the most part, but they have a tendency to go off on me about my computer habits when they're under stress. For them, it's not really video games, it's my admittedly heavy computer use. Games are naturally a large part of that, but the couple of times they've tried to argue the "games are bad" thing, I shot them down with relative ease.

Oh, and more or less all of my friends are gamers.

 

[Kanlic]

Stupid people are definitely more likely to draw conclusions, but they're also easily led around. If you get an emotional hook in them, you can change their opinions pretty quickly (which is why FOX News employs so much demagoguery).

But smart people, to a certain point, are better able to defend and/or justify their opinions, even if they're just as emotionally based. So while it's true that stupid people don't know that they're stupid, and this can make them dangerous, the truth is that smart people don't know that they've still got some "stupid," too.

That can be even more frustrating I guess, but I prefer it. A smart person may come up with an answer that is hard to argue, but when you do come up with an adequate response, your argument becomes that much stronger.

That may be. I suppose the people who one would normally think of as being too bull-headed to accept the artistic merits of video games (the right-wing nut jobs, the dumb jocks, the yuppies and socialites, etc.) are all also people I try to cut out of my life to avoid their poisonous influence, and would never even consider worth trying to explain my views on the subject to them, while the people I respect enough to socialize with on a regular basis would naturally be more willing to accept what I have to say. The "luck" to me is really in the shear number of people both in and outside of my family that I've met who are intelligent and open-minded enough to listen to what I have to say and respect my views. Maybe it's just that I'm articulate and intelligent enough to be a magnet for these kinds of people, and I've never been ashamed of my gaming, but I'd always pegged myself as kind of a shy person, so it just seems odd to me.

Also, I'm a girl, not a guy. No harm done, but I'm just letting you know.

Sorry about that. I hear my voice whenever I read a forum post, so to me, 98% of the internet is made up of dudes.

Anyways, even though you are shy, you don't seem to have some kind of anger towards the people around you. That kind of attitude is enough to draw people to you.

Cant really see the logic of buying your kid a console if you think theyre evil. Im interested to know though, have you brought the breaking games situation up at any point? and does he still stand by his actions?

He buys me consoles because he knows it makes me happy, but he still stands by his actions because he thinks games are a direct cause for violent behavior. Which is weird because the only fight I've been in was in the 6th grade. When I bring that up, he just says its only a matter of time before I have my own Virginia Tech massacre.

snip

Sounds pretty familiar, at least with the mom aspect. The kind of hysteria that woman has over anything she deems a time waster is unparalleled