[General Discussion] Gaming & Parenting

Since the majority of us are gamers I'm sure we've all seen this situation before from time to time especially during the holiday season.

The situation is that we constantly see parents wanting to purchase a game for their kid, but they have absolutely no idea what to get them especially when the kid is between the ages of 5-10 years old. It boggles my mind sometimes that parents will even pick out games for their games not even knowing or wanting to know the kind of content that a specific game has. Do parents even take into consideration that type of content that they're exposing their kids to.

The reason why I bring this up is that over the Christmas holidays I ran into this similar situation in which a couple was purchasing a game for their 9 year old boy. The 9 year old kid had asked his parents to pick up the game Halo 3. The parents had no idea what kind of game Halo 3 was, but they didn't want to simply buy it unless they knew what the game was about. They were reluctant to buy it because they had noticed the M rating on the game, and despite not getting a straight answer from the clerk at the store of why the game was rated M. I ended up speaking up, I don't know why; probably in my eyes it was the right thing to do. I told them why the game was rated M, but I also told him that even if you don't buy it for him and want to go with a different game because of its content, if his friends already play it more than likely he'll find a way to play it as well no matter how hard you try to restrict these types of games from him.

You know with gaming becoming more and more mainstream with each passing year, there are probably more kids playing games now than what they're have ever been before. We have seen countless studies of how games can influence people at such a young age. It is not about the kind of influence that games can pose in children that I want to pose in this thread.

The question I would like to ask the GFF community is what kind of parent would you be when it comes to your kids and video games. I know a lot of us aren't even parents, but the fact that we grew up on video games for a greater part of our lives it would be interesting to see if we could apply that amount of understand towards gaming as a whole to our offspring.

For me, it is all on a case by case basis. If I feel that my kid is mature enough to handle an m-rated game than I wouldn't have any problems with him/her playing one but I would have to be there to see the type of game they were playing and the gameplay aspects of that game. I sure as hell would want to play some two player action with my kid if they wanted me to. I'm not going to be totally restrictive because I firmly believe that more you restrict someone from doing something, the more likely they're going to do it anyway. I use to watch really violent b-movies as young as 7 years old, but my parents were always there to ask me questions and make me realize that what was going on television was all make believe. I would probably adapt the same philosophy when it comes to me being a parent.

For me the ESRB came out when I was 14 years old, so I would like to think that at that age I was old enough to handle any kind of video game violence. Even now I don't even own very many m-rated games. I think probably as a parent I'd probably push my style of games upon my child, but I'll always be respectful toward what my kid would like to play. My parents never really had an interest in me playing video games, but on occasion my dad would play NHL hockey and Vegas stakes with me on my snes.

To the GFF community what kind of parent would you be when it comes to your kids and video games in general.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I can't say what I would or wouldn't let my children play--I'd have to do it on a case-by-case basis depending on how intelligent they are and how they seem to be reacting to the stimuli. And, I'd be a hell of a lot more worried about them turning into a mic-spamming asshole than I would about them seeing gore or boobs.

Anyone that has access to the internet has no excuse for not knowing what sort of content is in a game. It was easy to pull a fast one over parents in the print era, but now we're talking like five minutes on Google or Youtube.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

A major issue comes when multiple kids are really at different stages of maturity. Even though an 18 year old guy may be fine with playing something like Halo of GTA, if he's playing it, there's not a lot that a parent can do to stop his 12 year old brother from walking into the room and watching him or trying the game himself. And yet it's not really fair to the older brother to have the games he can play limited by something out of his control. I sort of had this issue myself, but since I was never big into the really violent games anyway, it wasn't a big deal. But I could see how it could affect people and how it could be an issue for parents.

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

Well, if my kids are anything like me, there's a good chance they'll be more interested in JRPGs and less into shooters and that stuff. So i'll have to give them the whole sexism and objectifying of women aspect, but violence might not be such an issue. Eventually they'll develop an interested in survival horror, and when that happens i'll be right in there playing with him/her.

My parent's were, and are, not interested in video games in the slightest. They took a vague notice of the game's ESRB rating, but never really took it all that seriously. I've been pretty responsible over the years and they never really had to censor my gaming. I would be much more involved with my kids' gaming when/if i ever have kids, so i will most likely be there to proof everything for them.

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

There shall be none of this "videogaming" in the House of Bandit. Specifically none for the tots until they have reached the ripe maturity of 26 years of age. Then they can sign a waiver that I'm not to do with their lot with the devil. Until then it's strictly Yahtzee and dominoes. And none of that demonic brick layering blasphemy either. Miniature figurines! It's witchcraft I tell ya!

I was speaking idiomatically.

Acer's kids will be all be legally blind from mandatory Virtual Boy sessions.

"ADMIT IT'S GOOD OR YOU CAN'T LEAVE THE CORNER"

Why lie.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I keep it tucked away underneath the stairwell. One day. Yes. One day.

FELIPE NO

Keep your kid under there, too. Builds character.

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