Violent video games, your parents, and you

I was recently thinking about when I was younger and how I was not allowed to play games such as Mortal Kombat or any other excessively violent or bloody video game. During a time when pretty much every male classmate of mine would rant about how great the latest Mortal Kombat game was, or how great Killer Instinct was, etc., I was never allowed by my parents to play these games and these rules continued even as games had ESRB ratings and parents came to be informed of them. I remember at the age of sixteen my parents confiscated a copy of Resident Evil 2 that I had borrowed from a friend. It continued like this even when I was past 18, where my parents exercised their complete control over the house by saying I wasn't allowed to play rated M games while living there.

Needless to say their choice over my exposure to violence was inconsistent. My father was the type to let me watch the movie Alien at the age of seven, which was at that time the most violent movie I had ever seen and pretty much desensitize me to it from the start. But I wasn't permitted to play Mortal Kombat, and always felt like an outsider for my parents' strict rules.

They were a bit overprotective; I thought that then and I still think so now. They were incredibly strict and even some things that were targeted toward children, for example those previously popular Goosebumps books, were pretty much banned from our household.

I'm wondering how lax your parents were/weren't/are/aren't regarding violent video games, their ratings, and your age.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Luckily my parents weren't too tight on the rating of the game. Me and my younger bro played Mortal Kombat while we were 6-7 years old!

"As long as you don't copy it then it's fine", says my dad.

And as for Goosebumps, my parents allowed it cause it had me actually reading stuff (which I hardly do anymore these days)!

There's nowhere I can't reach.

My parents never really cared too much about ratings on games, let alone the violence in them. As long as it wasn't anything violent in a sick, inappropriate way, it was fine. After all, they really didn't expect me to run around beating people up anyways. Actually, it might have also been because I was utterly incapable of doing do. The same holds true for today. My parents are more concerned over cleavage and whatnot, even though they know I'm not going to be as skimpily clad as some the characters are.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by a_gerontophile

I was recently thinking about when I was younger and how I was not allowed to play games such as Mortal Kombat or any other excessively violent or bloody video game. During a time when pretty much every male classmate of mine would rant about how great the latest Mortal Kombat game was, or how great Killer Instinct was, etc., I was never allowed by my parents to play these games and these rules continued even as games had ESRB ratings and parents came to be informed of them. I remember at the age of sixteen my parents confiscated a copy of Resident Evil 2 that I had borrowed from a friend. It continued like this even when I was past 18, where my parents exercised their complete control over the house by saying I wasn't allowed to play rated M games while living there.

Wow, way to live in a cage, dude. Tried explaining? Killer Instinct didn't even have blood.

My parents never cared, as I've been gaming since I was 4 and they know I can seperate reality from fantasy. That, however, isn't entirely true. Games will play on your subconscious no matter who you are. Music games, you'll see notes when you close your eyes, or you'll dream about it. RPS games, FPS and horror games also apply. This has happened with countless games over the past 16 years of gaming.

Unlike some, I have restraint. I won't play Fatal Frame simply because I'll start seeing shit in real life. Aside from that though, I'm pretty content when it comes to games. Most of the games I play aren't violent, and if they are (I've clocked in over 300 hours in Vice City) it really isn't a big deal. If I'm going to hurt somebody in real life, there'd be a very valid reason. Of course I'd end up regretting doing so, but I haven't encountered violence in real life so far.

I usually find that most violent games have little replay value or just flat out suck. Mortal Kombat is a great example of this. How much of a gimmick were the fatalities? The only really graphic game I've discovered is Resident Evil 4, and there isn't going to be many games like that in the future.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

My parents doesn't really care... unless it has nudity or something sexual. But other then that, they let me play what ever I want to. Err... if it has any curse in it, it is also no-no...

I was speaking idiomatically.

My parents didn't really care about violent material so much as sexual, so they didn't really care about the games I played since there really weren't any games with sexually explicit material anyway.

I suppose that's a strangely American viewpoint, the "sex is worse than violence" crap. I'll never really understand it.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I was lucky that my parents largely didn't care what I played. Then again, I wasn't into fighting games too much, preferring RPG's and action-adventure games like Final Fantasy and Zelda (which had violence in it no doubt, but it was fantasy cartoonish violence). Even when I played games like Mortal Kombat, I didn't really even get disgusted by the violence or anything, and neither did the majority of my friends at school.

I was also mature enough to recognize reality from fantasy, so it's not like I'd be running around with a sub-machine gun mowing down everything in my path (something everyone who doesn't understand video games seems to assume we do when we play those types of games lol).

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Elixir

Killer Instinct didn't even have blood.

I recall Killer Instinct having optional gore.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by a_gerontophile

I recall Killer Instinct having optional gore.

There's no optional gore settings in the original KI.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Quote:

ESRB Rating:
"Killer Instinct" is rated Teen, for Animated Gore, Animated Violence, Animated Blood

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/g/supe...t/overview.php

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yes, and? That isn't optional gore. Mortal Kombat had the same rating, and in different versions, there was optional gore.

I have Killer Instinct. I just played it. There's no options to change the gore, and having a "Teen" rating doesn't make it "optional" gore.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Okay, please explain where in the game this Animated Blood appears, because clearly it's been evaluated to have some somewhere or another.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

It's quite simple. There's a version of Killer Instinct (the original SNES version) which doesn't have blood, and there's another version which does. The blood is barely visible so I can only assume your parents have been anal over this whole situation the entire time.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Okay you're right. The gore isn't optional, but it's there, which contradicts your original statement. I just downloaded the ROM and saw it with my own one eye, so please stop being retarded and derailing my thread, thanks.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Well my parents are against censorship pretty much so i've been allowed to play any type of game from a young age. Their reasoning being 'You're going to see it sooner or later, i'd rather it be sooner' which is fair in my opinion. When my friend leant Vice City to our other friend, his Mum found out and hid the game from him for about a year or two (we were about 14). I couldn't understand that because my parents were so relaxed about it. My Dad plays more gory games than me so they can't say i can't play them in that respect.

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Quote:

Okay you're right. The gore isn't optional, but it's there, which contradicts your original statement. I just downloaded the ROM and saw it with my own one eye, so please stop being retarded and derailing my thread, thanks.

I'm not derailing your thread. The original version was released on the 2nd of Feb, 1995, according to gamepro. Then the second version which contained blood was released on the 21st of August, 1995.

The six month difference means that the majority of cartridges available would of been the ones with blood, as Rare would of distributed more as their game was in demand. My cartridge is the rarer version without blood, hence my stating that it didn't have it. So why didn't you tell your parents that there was a version without blood? If they're that protective of you, try explaining to them. Like I said. Jesus.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

The strange thing is that I know people who have experienced real violence and thus avoid violent video games, movies, etc. We on the other hand are desensitized toward violence in general. I hardly flinch when I turn an enemy's head into red goop in Resident Evil 4. Furthermore, thanks to the internet, I've seen my share of real gore, and to some extent feel that it often doesn't match up to cinematic gore, which is surprising.

I do wonder what my response to extreme violence in real life would be. Would I be more prepared than others because of my exposure to virtual violence, or would my exposure to virtual violence be shattered by real violence?

Originally Posted by Elixir

I'm not derailing your thread. The original version was released on the 2nd of Feb, 1995, according to gamepro. Then the second version which contained blood was released on the 21st of August, 1995.

The six month difference means that the majority of cartridges available would of been the ones with blood, as Rare would of distributed more as their game was in demand. My cartridge is the rarer version without blood, hence my stating that it didn't have it. So why didn't you tell your parents that there was a version without blood? If they're that protective of you, try explaining to them. Like I said. Jesus.

Maybe because I was perhaps ten and had no idea that two versions were released. Obviously if I see a version with blood initially, I'm not going to assume that there is a bloodless version, as there would be no reason to even imagine that unless it was told to me. It never came to be that I could tell them there was a bloodless version. Besides that, the event is so far past it is in itself pretty trivial. I'm not regretting not playing Killer Instinct ten years ago.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

funny enough, i wasn't allowed to watch anything that even had PG until i was about 13. But i started playing killer instinct and mortal combat at just 4!
man those games rock during those days.....

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My parents didnt care that much, i remember my mom watching me when i was playing Resident Evil 2 and she said "my god nice blowing heads" and when my dad was still alive he bought me mortal kombat 3 and we played together and i did a brutality on him and he said "wow yer good, try doing some other more" my dad was actually excited to see those.

How ya doing, buddy?

My parents didn't care what games I was playing/watching my brothers play. I don't play fighting games a lot, but I enjoyed watching my brothers pull off fatalities on the opponents in Mortal Combat II. I was about 5 back then.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

The Simple Explaination for all of the fear is that most Parents are from the Baby Boom Generation.

The Generation that wasn't Technology heavy. Most Parents don't even know that much about the internet and Video Games. They just know about the news.

It's simple really. They are just scared of what they don't know. They watch the news and see kids killing others who just happened to be playing Resident Evil right before the killing.

That's why most parents are more comfortable about you watching an R rated movie, because they know more about that. While they don't have a clue about Video Game gore.

If they had Video Games back in their day, a lot more kids would be playing more "Gorey" games today.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I remember when Half-Life first came out and my brother and I bought it for ourselves. I was playing through the beginning of the game, and I remember very distinctly when I came across that scientist lying in the hallway with a headcrab sucking on his brain. As I was bashing the headcrab with a crowbar, my mother walked by and happened to see what I was playing. Commence motherly freak-out about "OMG VIOLENCE!!" (never mind that I'd been playing things like Doom and Wolfenstein for years...), how I'm a horrible person for playing a game like that, and how "no game like that is ever coming into this house again." None of which she ever cared enough to bitch about again, let alone try to enforce.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

My parents were anal when it came to video games... I remember when me and my bro were getting our very first Game Boy (the HUGE ass ones), my mom asked us which game we wanted. I pointed out to Street Fighter, and she refused to let me have it because it had violence in it. So we ended up getting Kirby's Dream Land 2, which for me, was better in the long run since I never did collect all those Rainbow Drops.

Over the years, they're grown a little less anal about what I purchase, but they still do mind what I play a little. I think they're just hoping I don't pull off the crap they do in video games.

FELIPE NO

My parents don't care about the ratings at all. In fact, I don't think they even know about ratings. As long as the cover doesn't have nudity, it's fine. My brother has been playing violent videogames since he was 9 and they totally support him as long as he keeps his grades up.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I played Metal Gear Solid 2 in front of my mother during some of the more violent portions in the game, and she never tried to limit anything. She only commented on how violent it seemed to be, but didn't feel like it was necessary to warn me about violent games.

Jam it back in, in the dark.