You Played Violent Games - Why Can't Your Kids?

An anonymous reader writes: "On the Wired site, Clive Thompson has up an article that points out a sobering truth: gamers are getting older. Folks who grew up playing videogames like Doom and Quake are now facing parental decisions with their own kids regarding appropriate content. Thompson cites well known gamer dads like Kotaku's Brian Crecente, discussing some of the approaches folks educated in gaming take with their own offspring: '"Everybody knows, as an adult, that the world is not always a nice place," Crecente told me. "But I don't want him to know that yet. I want him to have a childhood." So he disallows games with "realistic" combat, like World War II titles, or Resistance: Fall of Man, but permits highly cartoony shooting, like Starfox on the Nintendo DS -- since he regards it as essentially as abstract as playing cops and robbers with your fingers as guns.' Where do you think gamer parents should draw the line? If you have kids, what approach are you taking to introducing them to gaming? How old is 'old enough' to start fragging?"

You Played Violent Games - Why Can't Your Kids?

[Chaffar]

...because they'll probably whup my ass.

Seriously, I've been taunted by too many 10-year-old's in LAN cafés, I don't want to have one in my friggin' house 24/7.

Hmm...

[Dogtanian]

"Gamers are getting older"? That's not news, time runs forwards. It'd be more surprising if gamers were getting younger, and I'm damned if I want to go through puberty again.... backwards.

Re: You Played Violent Games - Why Can't Your Kids

[Marsala]

Maybe.

But it could also be your one shot to get onto the roster for an eleet clan.

"Put daddy in the match, or else you're going to time-out. One. TWO...."

Re:My vision on things

[sherms]

Pleading innocent here. Pong was it for me :)

Re:There is no right age

[Paulrothrock]

Lego Star Wars is also a spouse-friendly game. My wife loves it because, after I beat the levels, she can go around and collect every goddamn stud in the level. I wouldn't mind except she insists we play together, and waiting for someone to check every single place for studs is crazy-making.

Re:There is no right age

[Datamonstar]

Scared by Peter and The Wolf, hu? Must have been that damned Wolf leitmotif. French Horns are evil. ;P

Re:My vision on things

[BakaHoushi]

You're forgetting, though, the most important part of being a parent:

Banning your kids from doing anything you thought was fun as a child.

Listen, I was living on high with a pad of my own, 100k surplus to spend on whatever I wanted, and then I got tied down with those little shits... why should *I* be the only one to suffer for it?!

(ED: BakaHoushi is a 20 year old jobless college student. Any resemblance to actual fact in the above post is unintentional and completely coincidental.)

Re:There is no right age

[BakaHoushi]

So, what you're saying, if I understand this right, is... that every child is different. That some kids mature slower, some faster, and some kids can handle what some can't. That there is no "magic number," no age where they magically learn to tell wrong from right, and to separate fantasy from reality. That some kids might even be more inherently drawn to violence than others, and that parents need to know their children and be able to identify what they know and what they can handle...

Sorry. I don't buy it. I demand you give me a list of ages and what's appropriate, universally. Also, if you have any pills that will make kids sit down and shut up and get smarter, I'd appreciate it.

Re:Mistakes Jr

[Tony]

Usually it's something like doing drugs or premarital sex.

Believe me, I've learned from my mistakes for both drugs and premarital sex.

I should've done a lot more of both.

Eh. You live and you learn.

Re:My vision on things

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.

(Oblig. monty python)

Re:My vision on things

[Fordiman]

Modern day:
Well, of course wenl had it tough. We used to have to dial into the internet and download at 1200 baud. Then we'd have to unzip our warez at the command line and build a boot disk just so we'd have enough conventional RAM to play Zone 66. After that, we'd call our friends while still chained to a wall by a telephone cord and have them come over and play 8-bit video games on our NES's.

Re:Hmm

[Terminal Saint]

Child rearing advice from the same people who brought us Battle Royale? Where do I sign up?!

Re:No, I think graphics /do/ matter

[shmlco]

"The more realistic the simulation, the more concerned we should be about the impact on the impressionable."

So today's youth are going to be desensitized towards killing cross-dimensional alien monsters or the walking dead? And this is a bad thing?