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Education Entertainment Games

Parents Not Informed About Gaming? 81

Posted by simoniker from the game-of-life-skewed dept.
Thanks to GamerDad for their opinion piece advancing the claim that parents don't pay enough attention to the videogames their children play. The article argues: "While the mainstream press has reported on the push for games to become adult entertainment, and games makers have tried to create so-called 'mature' games to fill this apparent void, the reality is that many of these M-rated games are being played by children under the age of seventeen." It goes on to put forward the theory: "Parents simply are not informed about gaming... [and] probably believe that even games like Grand Theft Auto III are video games, and therefore they are for kids."
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Parents Not Informed About Gaming? More

Parents Not Informed About Gaming?

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  • Why should this be any different than... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by samdu ( 114873 ) <samdu@@@ronintech...com> on Monday September 22, 2003 @07:06AM (#7023326) Homepage
    ...animation? A vast majority of adults still see animation and think - "Must be for kids." I saw a 40s-ish guy in the South Park movie with six or seven kids ranging in age from 8 to 12. Comics, animation, and gmaes have grown up. It'll merely take a while for society to catch up.

  • Who's to blame? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phlyingpenguin ( 466669 ) <phlyingpenguin.phlyingpenguin@net> on Monday September 22, 2003 @07:06AM (#7023327) Homepage
    I hate to say it but there is some weight to such an article. Many parents May absent mindedly allow whatever little Johnny likes to play right into their households. But there also begs the question on what types of households these are. Many culturally rich households include many other sorts of activities which can sometimes also be looked down upon.

    How many kids go without toy guns anymore? While Mom may need to watch what her kids do, I'd hate to focus on video games as the key aspect of school shoot outs. Possibly the fact that many households include guns for a child to marvel at and toys for a child to hold could be a severe indicator on how to take gaming fantasies into all too realistic realities.

    While all of that can be true for certain households, there are also many times many households where everything the child does is monitored by their growth instructional unit (parent). Many of these households have parents who act as a constant positive force in the child's life and keep those negative things out of their reach. I can't say that's the end all and be all, but I can say that the most evil game of the year GTA3 (by some people's standards aparently) won't make it into those houses.

    Is GTA3 really going to become the next scapegoat replacing Doom? I think that most of the naming of names for games is in quite poor taste as there are plenty of games which follow the same blood/gore/illegal activities that GTA3 partakes in. I for one welcome our new game killing parental overlords.

    • Re:Who's to blame? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ConceptJunkie ( 24823 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @09:22AM (#7024367) Homepage Journal
      I for one welcome our new game killing parental overlords.

      That's just what we need on a case-by-case basis (i.e., each parent is an overlord for his or her kids). In my house, with children from 3 to 10, I evaluate everything they play. Some things are obviously appropriate for all ages, like "Thomas the Tank Engine"... others are a judgement call... like the T-rated games "Skies of Arcadia", "Total Annihilation", or "Descent", just to name a couple... that I think are despite their ratings. Fortunately, there are very few games that I play that I would not consider appropriate for the kids, which makes my life easier because I don't have to "hide" what I'm doing. Notable examples are the excellent "System Shock 2", which was rated M, or "Baldur's Gate", which was T, that I played. The kids understand and respect that these games are too violent and scary (especially 'scary' for SS2) for them, and they (usually) don't mind that they might not get a chance to see those really cool games because I make a point to find games that are really cool that they can play.

      I don't consider myself some kind of parenting expert (quite the opposite really), I just care, and make a point to act like I care.

      Also, raising children in a solid moral context is important too. For instance, we enjoyed "Need for Speed III", which involves eluding the police, but the kids understand that this is just for fun and we would never do anything like this in real life. The kids also see the respect I show for authority figures and it has rubbed off on them, so even though we have fun eluding the dumb cops on the computer (or spray-painting the city in Jet Grind Radio, or banging up vehicles and buldings in Super Runabout, or whacking the crap out of opponents in Road Rash, or relentlessly nuking your adversaries in Worms), they have a solid grounding in reality to distinguish between that and real life.

      • Kudos, that puts you one up against the statistics. I was not sarcastic welcoming parental control :)

        I would agree that many of the game ratings are quite off, though it can sometimes be hard to tell which ones are serious and which ones aren't. It helps to have a parent in the know of video games which is a benefit that you seem to have over many parents. This may sound cynical but I wonder why the games are evil activists haven't started an awareness campaign on these games outside of the ERSB railings.
      • Hey, I find SS2 scary, too.
        • Me, too. That was one of the reasons why it (and System Shock) was so good, because the atmosphere was created so well.

          That, the RPG elements, and the story were what turned what otherwise would have been another dull Doom clone (System Shock) into a really gripping game. SS2 kept the formula and it worked again.

      • I must say that I'm normally against the seemingly unending parade of methods to restrict children's access to anything that could, eventually, in some way, conceivably distort their perception of the world. Just this past weekend, I was at Blockbuster looking at PS2 games when a child about 10 years old picked one up, handed it to his mother, who replied "I'd prefer it wasn't a First-person shooter game." At the time, that really irritated me because I assumed she is/was the stereotypical soccer mom who li
        • Though I'm not the person in question, and I still believe strongly in each parent really making informed decisions on these things, I felt a need to address something here.

          My only question for you is whether you'll let your children play more scary and/or violent games when they get older. For instance, right now, your oldest child is 10... in 5 years, you'd think they could handle Baldur's Gate (I doubt a 10-year-old could understand it anyway), so will you let them play it then?

          Given that in some wa
          • Given the trend in the news, it would appear that you, I, and the original post are exceptions. Apparently, we're just either more intelligent than the other children, or had parents that were more understanding, or grew up with people that watched us to make sure we didn't do something stupid... or something. I don't know if you could narrow down to 1 or 2 differences that exist between people like you and I and the kids in Columbine.

            Back in 1997 (or 98, whenever) when Columbine happened, and there were
            • Personally, although it was a horrible thing to have happen, I really wish there had been something recent along those lines that people could have looked at when I was in government class in high school. Too much of it was too abstract, and although our teacher was also young (25), and offered a fairly different view from what we were used to seeing in school, he couldn't find much that would polarize the class except in general viewpoints. The best he could do, most of the time, was show that even the vie
        • That Mom might have been simpy meant "I'd prefer it wasn't a violent first-person shooter game with so-and-so elements in it." She may have simply been not bothering to spell out her thought in detail. Of course, I definitely wouldn't let my 9-year-old play South Park, but for different reasons.

          My only question for you is whether you'll let your children play more scary and/or violent games when they get older.

          It depends on the game and the child. I would gladly let my 9-year-old watch "The Lord of t

  • Not just games.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by darkmayo ( 251580 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @07:10AM (#7023346)
    Parent today don't keep an active role in the majority of what there child views.. I saw this the most back when I was working at Blockbuster.

    More than a few times some unwitting parent would grab a movie from the anime section at there kids request and bring it up to rent.. there are some that I would rent out without hesitation and others.. (Ninja Scroll for example) I would let the parent know that this probably wouldn't be the best for there 7 year old kid.

    I had left before GTA3 came out so I know from talking to my old co-workers that not much has changed. They will still try to rent whatever there kid asks without hesitation.. until you actually let them know about that game..

    and even then they may or may not care.

  • First of all, (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Omkar ( 618823 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @07:11AM (#7023348) Homepage Journal
    The article makes a good point - parents should be looking out for kids, not developers. But read this:

    but then the game isn?t to blame if the kid is under seventeen and their parent bought the game for them knowing it wasn?t considered age appropriate.

    Fine, that seems nice enough. But this really implies that a game can sometimes be responsible for someone's actions. Or, as the article considers some time later, another form of entertainment. But this is nonsense - people are people, responsible for their actions. Sentient. Once we start taking that responsiblity from them, they aren't really human anymore, are they?

    • Re:First of all, (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sinistar2k ( 225578 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @08:11AM (#7023737)
      I guess so, sure. But people have to tie sentience with social mores, and this happens through the consumption of sensory input.

      Over time, we learn, we grow, we determine what society deems acceptable and we begin to pattern our behavior to it (or not, in which case society tries to correct it).

      However, I don't know if we should necessarily expect a seven year old to have the same understanding of that system. That's why parents are so great, because they are the ones who are there to provide context for their children. If no context is provided, then children are free to interpret as they will.

      This is not to say that this excuses children from shooting at passing vehicles because, they claim, they got the idea from a videogame (children at that age are also smart enough to transfer blame), but some parental reinforcement of what is okay to do in a virtual environment and what is okay to do in reality would be handy.

      Unfortunately, that means parents need to take at least a passing interest in videogames. Most parents can handle teaching kids that film and TV are "make believe" because they, themselves, have an interest in film and TV. But if there is no interest in videogames, they are likely purchasing games for their children in order to pacify them or keep them busy while the parents engage themselves in an activity that *does* interest them.

      We are, however, on the cusp of a change over to parents who were raised on games, or, at least, with games as a regular presence. From Pong to Breakout to Dungeons & Dragons to Donkey Kong to Impossible Mission to Shadow of the Beast to Wolfenstein 3D to Quake, I have built a history of videogame context with which I can guide my child as he gets to gaming age. Even now, when he's under two years old (and, in the case of my child, developmentally disabled), he enjoys watching me play Q3A. It will be my job to make sure he understands that videogames are "make believe" and should no more be re-enacted in the real world than jumping off a building to pretend one is Superman.
      • Frankly, I don't think parents need to take much of a leap to go from teaching their children that TV and Film are make-believe to video games. My parents were aware of video games (they bought the Atari 2600 for themselves as much as for us, since they both played Pac-Man and Centipede quite a bit in arcades), but they certainly weren't prepared for them to go from Pac-Man to Doom to Quake 3 (though my dad probably was much more prepared, as he was well aware of the progress of technology). Still, they mad
    • But this really implies that a game can sometimes be responsible for someone's actions.

      That doesn't seem to be what the author is advocating. To sum the article in a single sentence: "be a better parent and stop blaming your child's misbehavior on anything other than your lack of attention."

      The author make mention that children might use specific scenarios in game as a template for misbehavior (ala the kids recently shooting at trucks on the freeway), but that simply illustrates that the child is lacki

    • Fine, that seems nice enough. But this really implies that a game can sometimes be responsible for someone's actions.

      I think, perhaps, that he's just trying to avoid getting too many flames. You can imagine, he writes an article saying parents are to blame and then hundreds write back "But we didn't know!" and bash him for days. I'd be trying to avoid that too.

      Although, I take the standpoint that if you didn't know the game was violent, then you're guilty of ignorance. Ignorance is unforgivable when

  • quite a few... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by deemah ( 644363 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @07:11AM (#7023351) Homepage Journal
    Myself and plenty of my cow-orkers play these M-rated games alongside other, more childish, games regularly. Now as much as my Significant Other tells me i'm just a big kid, i consider myself an adult.

    Further i will continue to play games for years to come.

    Games are -not- solely for kids: Games are a form of entertainment just as much as movies and just as a parent should be informed about the ratings on movies their kids are watching, they should be informed of ratings on games their kids are playing.

  • BS: My Peers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GeckoX ( 259575 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @07:12AM (#7023353)
    This is BS. It's my peers that have and are having kids these days. We're the generation that grew up on video games first. You can't tell me that we don't know about video games, pure BS all the way.

    It's laziness, plain and simple. Take some responsibility parents, I know I do.
    • This is BS. It's my peers that have and are having kids these days. We're the generation that grew up on video games first. You can't tell me that we don't know about video games, pure BS all the way.

      You and your peers (which includes me) were among the first to play video games. I totally agree. But in our generation, we were among the happy few who actually used computers. Even 10 years ago, there were more households without a computer than households with one.
      Still, ignorance is no excuse. If propl
      • I'd just like to add, though, that very few of the people that grew up playing video games are into their 30s, yet, which means (hopefully) their kids are still fairly young.

        While there are many things younger kids can get into trouble doing, it's far more often that kids in their teens (even late teens, such as Columbine) are the ones in the news with parents (and everyone else) blaming video games. While I realize that parents become less involved in their teens' lives as they get older (and teens like i
    • "This is BS. It's my peers that have and are having kids these days. We're the generation that grew up on video games first. You can't tell me that we don't know about video games, pure BS all the way."

      Makes you wonder if this'll be a problem in 10-15 years when the generation raised on games like these becomes parents.
    • I'm 22, and most peers of mine seems to think of games as toys for children. When I was 16 or so half of my friends stoped playing games, and the reason was again - it is for kids. Even then most people don't play games, and half of those that did were fed off NES in the 80s and early 90s and are now getting kids -- no wonder they consider most games no more then toys, be it Lola, SoF or GTA.

  • One missed point. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by illuminata ( 668963 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @07:27AM (#7023419) Journal
    Some kids can handle more adult-themed games (and other media for that matter), some cannot. Neglect is often a factor in a child's problems, but people should be careful in automatically assuming that all youth cannot handle games like Grand Theft Auto 3. From what I've seen, most M rated games are equivalent to a PG-13 rated movie, the M rating mostly being because of blood and gore.

    I don't believe that parents should put too much weight into the ESRB ratings, they're alright for determining what realms the subject matter fall under, but not the severity. Try looking at the back cover of the game and reading what it's about and ask a store clerk if you're unsure about something. Rent the game first and watch it play out for a bit and play it first yourself if you can. Most importantly, explain what's real and not real and why you cannot do certain things in society. If you teach them right from wrong, you won't need to shelter them as much.
    • Something else I'd like to note in regards to the ratings is that often the blood is the only difference between an M rated game and a T rated game. For some parents this means their kids should be fine with both types of games, while for others this may mean they should watch the T rated titles a little more closely. Total Annihilation, for example, features mostly robots and vehicles, so there is no blood, yet there is still massive destruction. The T rating is firmly in place because of the lack of blood
      • >> Total Annihilation, for example, features mostly robots and vehicles, so there is no blood, yet
        >> there is still massive destruction. The T rating is firmly in place because of the lack of blood,
        >> yet still fairly violent content. On the other hand, many other RTS games often receive M ratings
        >> because they depict human units, and bloodshed when they are killed.

        I am not aware of any RTS games that have M ratings. Name one, please. Warcraft/Starcraft have human units and blood

  • Generation Gap (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @07:34AM (#7023460) Homepage Journal
    Here's the thing. Back in my great grandparents day, there was no tv. Even in my grandparents earlier years there was no tv. So my parents had tv and my grandparents didn't get it. My parents likewise to me, knew all about tv. So, as a result they regulated tv. No TV, and such, because they knew. Video games however, they did not know.

    When I have kids I'm going to be like "you're not getting a playstation 5 unless you beat Zelda 1 for me first." So when my generation becomes parents then kids will get video games the right way. But then something else will come out, like vr or some crap that I wont understand.
    • Good point. I cannot wait until my son is old enough to want videogames, as I then can add the ones that I want to his Xmas list. I have tried, but since he is 12mos old; when I say the lad wants an Xbox, it doesnt convince the wife and/or relatives.
    • So when my generation becomes parents then kids will get video games the right way. But then something else will come out, like vr or some crap that I wont understand.

      We really are running out of modes of experience. VR, if it's ever useful, will probably be perceived as just further glorified video games and won't really shock us that much.

      And if you think I'm letting my 10-year-old son get a direct neural interconnect, you've got another think coming.

      Seriously, we're running out of surprises. "Video G

  • Scary... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Jhonny ( 705236 )
    It is quite scary when you see some of the games kids are playing... When 8 year olds can have a decent length conversasion about playing GTA3 sunday morning at church... Quite scary...

  • Not the real issue. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Thedalek ( 473015 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @08:33AM (#7023904)
    "Parents not parenting," now that would cut to the heart of the issue.
  • Can we just all say, "Duh!" and move on?
    • We could just say "Duh?!" but apparently the media and lots of folks in politics aren't going to say that. If no one is willing to put this viewpoint out there for public consumption like I tried to do in the column, then the message is completely lost and you'll watch as games get a long, arduous trial in court instead of the parents and the kids.

  • Its sadder than this. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Unknown Poltroon ( 31628 ) * <unknown_poltroon1sp@myahoo.com> on Monday September 22, 2003 @09:11AM (#7024267)
    I play a lot of half life, which if you havnt played it, you run around and shoot people, graphic, blood, the whole 9 yards. On several occasions, i have run into kids on htere who tell us not to swear in the type/chat, because their mom will pull them off the game.

    Let me get this straight, your letting your kid machinegun and beat people with a crowbar, but the LANGUAGE is the problem? How fucked up can a parent be?
    • um..please don't swear or else my mommy will ban me from going to slashdot. k, thx, buhbye
    • Why? It's pretty easy to understand. I'm pretty sure that most kids at the age of 10 and their parents can understand pretty well that HalfLife is nothing more but a glorified shooter, not that different from those old games ambiented in the west where you controlled the cursor and had to hit only the bad guys.

      Swearing of course is much more realistic and somewhat more likely to have RL effects than pointing at 3D graphics and clicking
  • when "Leisure Suit Larry" was new and a game for adults, it was very difficult for me, a child, to play it. The game would begin by asking quiz questions that only an adult would know the answer to. Sometimes it took me hours to crack the quiz questions to be able to play. That was when programmers placed that extra step.

  • How to fix the problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PD ( 9577 ) * <slashdotlinux@pdrap.org> on Monday September 22, 2003 @09:48AM (#7024578) Homepage Journal
    As I posted before, the solution to the problem, like the solution to most problems, involves a pair of naked breasts.

    All that is required is a small photo on the front and the back of the box of a set of naked breasts. In the US, parents don't care about violence. We see it on TV, we read it in the newspapers, nobody cares. But, show one little nipple somewhere and all the parents in the US are rushing to cover their little ones' eyes.

    The most effective warning label doesn't involve the letter 'M' for mature anywhere, it involves a pair of breasts, proudly displayed. The parents will understand, as breasts are the universal symbol for 'adults only'.

  • One Size Fits All (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DarkZero ( 516460 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @09:52AM (#7024630)
    I think the main problem with this article is that it has a "one size fits all" idea of parenting: violent games are wrong for absolutely everyone under the age of 17 and so are violent movies. That's ridiculous. My mother always paid attention to what I was doing and talked to me about everything in my day. My friends' parents were obviously doing the same, because they were constantly having the same conversations when I was in their homes. We all played Doom some time around fourth or fifth grade, we all played every Mortal Kombat game since MK2 daily, we all watched all three Highlander movies way too many times, and we saw R-rated movies almost as often as any other movie.

    These movies and video games were not visual heroin. We did not become violent psychopaths obsessed with video games and pipe bomb construction because we played Doom, Mortal Kombat, Metal Gear Solid, or any other violent game before the age of 17, nor because we saw Connor MacLeod cut some guy's head off or The Crow beat the crap out of someone. Our parents talking to us, being informed about what we were doing, and making sure that we could distinguish between fantasy and reality was what ALLOWED us to watch and play these things, not what barred us from it. At the age of fourteen or fifteen, we would've been part of the 70% of kids under 17 that had played Grand Theft Auto III, but we would've been part of it because our parents were paying attention to us and judged our maturity realistically, not because we were neglected, troubled teens that were sawing off shotgun barrels inbetween rounds of Mortal Kombat 2. They knew what the ESRB was as soon as it came out, they held off on Mortal Kombat when we were too young before there even WAS an ESRB, and when we were mature enough, they let us play what they felt was alright for us.

    There are parents out there that don't believe that their children magically mature from mentally unstable toddlers to reasonable adults as soon as they hit the "magic age" of 17 or 18. Some would call them bad parents. I would call them sane. I don't understand how people have acquired this idea that what video game or movie companies think is okay or not okay for their children is perfectly accurate, as if the ESRB and its "M" rating knew your child better than you do. Every child matures at a different speed depending on their own intelligence and how well their parents have taught them, not by whether or not they play certain video games, but by actually TALKING to them. That is what good parenting is, not just taking the label on a DVD as some sort of sacred law that you cannot violate. Video games are not something to be put in the same category as drugs, sex, or criminal neglect as Things That Will Definitely Fuck Up Your Kid. You're not a bad parent simply because you violate the Sacred Corporate Law and let your fourteen year old play GTA.

  • News? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by lightspawn ( 155347 )
    I really don't understand this trend of reporting "news" than end with a question mark.

    In other news:

    President Bush addicted to crack?

  • Looney Toons (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jgacad ( 705298 )
    As a children growing up in the 70's my brother and I were allowed to watch Looney Toons. As everyone knows, characters regularly got shot, blown up, etc. [Wile E. Coyote making weapons of mass destruction...yipes!]. Our parents let us watch the show with no problems. My brother and I turned out ok later in life (we're now both software engineers - maybe I use the term 'ok' loosley here ;-) ) I was just wondering what everone thinks about the differences between growing up in the 70's and growing up now?
    • Yeah, the cartoons back then destroyed kids' sense of reality, too. That's why there were thousands of reports of kids falling off cliffs with signs that said "Yikes!". ;)

  • Well Duh! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WapoStyle ( 639758 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @01:08PM (#7026332)
    "Well duh!" -Thats the first thing I thought when reading the headline.

    The article did have an interesting point I had not thought of before. The media cannot put blame on the parents because it's those same parents that are watching the news and keeping the advertisers happy. Any news station would risk losing a large percentage of it's viewers if it openly blamed those same viewers for the news it was reporting.

    Perhaps this has been painfully obvious to most that this is why the media doesn't place blame on parents, but I had never really thought if it before.

    We are at a transition point right now. A large majority of parents have never and have no interest in playing video games because they are "for kids". However you see a very large percentage of people in their early 20s and 30s...and everything inbetween, playing a lot of games now. These are the people who will be the parents of the next generation and they will be much more informed about games and which ones are approiate to children.

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