A Plea To Game Makers To Act Responsibly?

Thanks to AVault for its editorial discussing the responsibility videogame makers have to use their powers for 'good'. The author expresses concern about games' influence on the young: "My love of digital maiming is tempered by the fact that, at this stage of my life, I can tell right from wrong. I have a fully developed set of ethics. I wouldn't say my nine-year-old nephew has quite had the time to develop these tools." The article ends with the exhortation: "Developers and publishers, hear my plea: start injecting a strong sense of right and wrong into your stories. I don't want you to pull back on the gibs, I don't want anything more than a stronger sense of ethics and perhaps a small dose of moral fiber. Take into account the fact that kids are playing, no matter that they shouldn't be."

It's always going to be there...

[IshanCaspian]

There's always going to be violent video games. The problem is not that there aren't video games that have morality...look at the Ultima games...or the Star Wars ones. The problem is that kids are naturally curious about the games that are BAD. It doesn't matter how many good video games there are out there....kids are always going to find the one game that's evil. Really, there are only three solutions:

1) Forbid all video games that do not impose "correct" morality
2) Raise your children in an isolated bubble, never exposing them to anything that espouses "bad" morality
3) Let your children experience what they want, within limits, so long as you teach them what is right and wrong

You can let a kid play all the violent video games he wants; so long as he has a caring mother and father, he'll turn out OK....and if he doesn't have caring parents, if it's not GTA teaching him how to be a criminal, it'll just be something else. In short, bad parenting creates bad kids who have independent, unrelated desires to play "bad" video games and do "bad" things. Good parenting creates "good" kids who have the same desire to play "bad" video games but less chance of a desire to do "bad" things.

To all of the parents who are always whining "the video games are controlling my childen" I say: you have a thousand times more influence than any video game ever will...if your kids are turning out poorly it's because you're a shitty parent....stop trying to blame everyone else.

I don't understand why the author's article is so upset at this kid playing GTA. If his mom is raising him correctly, he should be able to cap grandmas all day long and still be a well-adjusted kid. If she's not, well, then he's got bigger things to worry about than a video game. Everyone just wants to bitch about the video game to show that they are MORALLY OFFENDED! You know what offends my morals? Watching a mother just dump her kid off in day care for the first 6 years of his life so she can drive a nicer car. I'd rather raise my kid on GTA than put him through that.

This crap again?

[potus98]

"Take into account the fact that kids are playing, no matter that they shouldn't be."

Take into account the fact that kids are playing, since their parents are not interested in parenting.

here's my plea

[Ender Ryan]

Here's my plea. It goes out to all the parents, older siblings, guardians of any kind in America, and et cetera. Here it is:

If you are responsible for raising a child, please teach them that they will one day be entirely responsible for their actions and no one will be there to help them when they screw up. Also, let them know that, currently, you are responsible for their actions, and if their actions should cause you harm, they will be punished, punished so that they will wish they hadn't engaged in said actions. Ie. if they do something really stupid like kill or maim someone, they will regret it for the rest of their life.

Here's a couple more items to instill in their young minds:

• Gangs aren't cool. People in gangs wind up dead or in jail.
• Being intelligent is something to be proud of, not looked down upon.
• Just because the other kids are doing it doesn't mean it's good. On the contrary, most people are absolutely fucking idiotic, be different, be yourself, and you will undoubtably be better for it.
• TV isn't representative of reality, and neither are video-games, porn, comic books, et cetera.
• If you are kind, sharing, helpful, people will love you. If you are considered "cool," you will one day find that you have no real friends to depend on when you need them.
• Carrying a firearm around tucked in your pants doesn't make you tough or cool, on the contrary, you may shoot off your genitals.
• Threatening younger / smaller people doesn't make you tough, standing up for younger / smaller people does.

That's a start. American youth have many more common mental/social deficiencies that need correcting, but those are some of the major ones off the top of my head.

Re:Article: -1 Redundant/Flamebait

[CokoBWare]

It's amazing how people think that just because someone has a position that is "encourage people to consider additional ways to tell stories that are good for kids" that it means that people are advocating changing exisitng games to make them less violent. Come on, let's actually read what people write here, and not just jump to conclusions. I'm not advocating us changing what the industry produces now, I'm advocating looking underneath that penny and realizing there's another market. Let's keep the GTAs, the Dooms and the Postals... at the same time, game publishers may consider new opportunities for parents and children to enjoy in videogame storytelling. Everyone wins! Kapish?

Re:Article: -1 Redundant/Flamebait

[Pxtl]

My problem is more the shortage of educational puzzle games. Remember Lemmings? The Incredible Machine? Humans? That one with the bouncing lasers? Those games are gone now. Now puzzle games are twitch games like Tetris and Chu Chu rocket, which, while teaching the kids new tricks, teach them subconsiously and don't actually teach true problem-solving.

When I was a kid, educational puzzle games were mainstream products. Everybody played Lemmings. Now they're kids games, and rare ones at that.

Instead, many kids games have become evercrack-style treadmill masturbation games like Pokemon. Nintendo's kids games are fun and exciting party games and I love them to death, but they have damn little educational value to a kid.

Bring back _real_ educational games. I want my Sim Earth back.

Asimov on "villans"

[Samrobb]

personally, I'd hope there to be more character in the characters in games and not always be so black and white, THE WORLD ISN'T JUST GOOD VS. BAD. most of the time the 'BAD' guys have solid motives for their actions as well as the good guys can and have 'bad' motives

I was rereading the Hugo Winners Vol II last night, and in the introduction to "Gonna Roll Dem Bones", Isaac Asimov related a coversation he had with Fritz Lieber... in short, Lieber pointed out to Asimov that his stories had people who opposed the hero, but that he never had any villans. Asimov reasoned that it was because he tended to write a more cerebral sort of stoy, more about the conflict of ideas than anything else; and in that case, the a good story demanded reasonable, intelligent villans who did not see themselves as bad/evil, and were capable of explaining themselves and their motives clearly. While they opposed the heros of the story, they had (at least, by their own thoughts) good reasons for doing so.

This reminded me a lot of the role that Magneto eventually grew into in the X-Men comic books - an intelligent opponent who had what he thought were very good reasons for his actions. IMHO, this leads to a much deeper, more satisfying type of story than things like Star Wars, where the villans are villans because... well, just because, you know, they're evil. You never get any background on why they're acting the way they are.

If Asimov had written the Star Wars scripts, he'd probably have set up a situation where Palpatine saw the existance of the Jedi leading to the eventual development of a hereditary ruling class, the destruction of the Trade Federation, and an interminable galaxy-wide dark age of stagnation. A few scenes, a little bit of exposition, and voila! - Palpatine goes from being evil to being a tragic figure, someone who initially desires good, but who finds himself seduced into thinking that the only way to save the Trade Federation from the Jedi is to forge an Empire strong enough to resist them if they were ever to rise again...

I don't think he wants censorship...

[the_skywise]

Have you looked around at the game market recently? The problem isn't just as simple as "Well, don't let your kid play violent video games". The problem is that there's little ALTERNATIVE CHOICE. There are lots more violent games than non-violent ones and if you want your child to play video games you're limited to girl games (Barbie gets dressed up) or educational ones (Putt-putt goes to the moon).

So it sorta makes it hard to find something for your kid to play.

Alternatively, he could just read a book or go outside and play. But do we really want to push this poor kid into sports? :)