If you have/had children. Would you let them play M rated games?

[marvelvscapcom2]

Hello everyone


Today I bring up a very fabled and old debate in gaming culture since when I was a little kid during the "mothers against gaming" movement. For those out of touch, In the early to late 90s with the spawnings of the GTA franchise, Mortal Kombat and a few other main targets it was basically a militia set out to blame gaming for most modern massacres and child misbehavior.  They went to multiple judicial levels to attempt to get M rated video games banned from store shelves but the judges ruled in favor or making them accessible at a certain age requirement similar to DVD and Movie media.   It kinda led to ESRB if i'm not mistaken.  But I could be wrong    So now I just call them the mothers against gaming movement as a blanket term.

 The extremely fine line of parenting that many people especially in the younger parents 16-24 demographic seem to be very torn on still exists today though. And I wanted to see what all you folks would do if your child wanted to play a Mortal Kombat, a grand theft auto or a Call of Duty.  (Popular forms of entertainment amongst kids more so then adults even) and see differing ideas on the topic from parents or people who want kids down the road.  It's important talk. 


Their seems to be two main types of parents from what I seen in general in regards to music, games movies, TV and all of the above. They tackle the topic two extremely different ways.  I know many parents on both sides. 


The hiding parent





The hiding parent are very common and pretty easy to explain. They just don't allow their child to play M rated games, watch R rated movies or listen to something like Eminem.   They usually put child restrictions on media accounts, locking pins on TVs and supervise what their children do extremely critically and may even disbar teen rated games.  But of course this opens the door for those who say "He'll find a way to do it when you aren't looking, So you are better of explaining it to him and educating.  To me that's correct.  Which leads us to further discussions later.  And of course with being overly aggresive with censorship this can leak into things like creativity, freedom and happiness overall which again will be saved for later too . 


Educate not Eliminate parents





Educate not Eliminate parents for the most part with some exceptions of course (nudity) will allow their child to watch a R rated move like the dark knight or whatever or play M rated games after first sitting down with them and explaining thoroughly why it is bad and why they can't do it in real life.   Breaking down the rules of playing it and what they can expect to see and why it's there.  The purpose of the media and then afterwards giving them free reign to explore it after first being taught.     


As a whole I'm impartial to the parents who explain but allow.  Mostly because it's 2018 and Kids will just play what they want at their friends house on steam and are most likely well versed in disarming parental locks when nobody is looking except then you won't be there to sit with them and explain it because you were too busy pretending the kid's arent elusive enough to play it behind your back in the digital age.  Imo then is when the child will be corrupted. Alone with his friends, seeing crazy explicitive things while listening to Eminem on the school bus while you pretend like little Jimmy will never hear the word F***.  We all were a kid once so we can kinda attest to that to some extent I imagine.  Whatever was taboo at home was certainly popular at recess lol.  The cool kid always had the Marylyn Manson or Eminem playing or the GTA.  Or the most taboo of all......   The Nokia N gage  .     So it's almost better to make sure they learn from their parent vs their friend.  Same with drugs and sexual education.   And especially the Nokia N Gage.

As a whole my parents had extremely lax policies on what I could or couldn't play. They took great efforts to explain and monitor it but not all out say no.  If my grades were good, I was respectful to them and wasn't in trouble.  They rewarded me with fun.  It made for a happier childhood as a whole and I had fonder memories.   Another big reason I say kids will find a way is because when I was a kid I wasn't allowed to play grand theft auto san andreas.  It was the only game I wasn't allowed to play lol.

Except I did play it at my cousins house accross the street every day for the good portion of 6 months using a Tomb Raider case if anyone asked what we were playing because my mom didn't know one game from another lol.   

But It didn't corrupt me because my parents thought me about violence in the video games at age 5 with Jet Force Gemeni killing the alien bugs.  So it really did set the foundation blocks of knowing what was the digital world or the real world.    Although I was bad for sneaking to play it and really shouldn't have.  I do regret it very much.  But It's just part of being a kid wanting to see what's cool I guess.


It's a very debatable and divicive topic with much to unpack.  Which side do you think you take or are you somewhere in the grey area in the middle balancing both? 




What are your thoughts on the topic?  Thanks for sharing.

[seether]

I would hand them Manhunt and GTA while they were still in the womb.

[98dgreen]

Kids are going to be exposed no matter what.  It is best to be there to explain.

[hoshichiri]

I have let kids play M-rated games. I used to babysit a 6 year old who I let play my copy of Zone of the Enders all the time. I did so knowing the 'bad' stuff (the blood, the kid screaming that he didn't want any part of this, and all that) was confined to cutscenes he never watched. So I didn't care if he played it, becuase all he would ever see is robots fighting other robots. Plus, I was in the house, so if he ever did let a cutscene run, we could talk about it.

I think there is a burden on the parent to understand the media their kids are using, AND how their devices work. There's no excuse for the former these days, in the era of YouTube and video reviews and Let's Plays. Learning the devices is one that's going to take more effort, but pay off in the end- not only in helping to eliminate access to unwanted content, but to enforce punishment bans. Going back to the 6 year old- his mom would often ban him from games when he misbehaved, and hide the game discs. He got in the habit of stashing a couple, becuase mom didn't know what he had & he could sneak out and play those. Then I came along... he got banned from games for a week, I said "ok, I got it". She went to work a bit later, he came out of his room to sneak in a game while I tended to his 2 year old brother... only to discover I'd taken his controllers away. It helped that I was a good foot taller than his mom, so there were shelves in that house only I could reach. If I set up a ban, it STUCK.


I think, most importantly, if you do decide to completely ban some piece of media from your home, you need to be honest with your kids about why. My mom banned Marylin Manson from the house when I was in middle school, telling my siblings her specific reasoning (concerns over Satanism) & said if they handed over their tapes, she'd pay for them, otherwise they'd be taken. They did so... and then re-bought and hid them, telling her it was 'the radio' if they ever heard it. But at least that way, she'd gotten her say in. Honestly, I think sneaking around a bit is important- it teaches kids that rules are not inherently sacrosanct & they can question them if they seem unfair. In a way, it's like training for dealing with politics as an adult. Which is why it's so important to talk about banned media- when they inevitably encounter it, they can do so with some of your guidance and point of view in mind, instead of replying totally on whoever's around to give them context.

[pizzasafari]

First game I ever played when I was 2 or 3 years old was an action horror Doom clone, one of the first games I owned was Mortal Kombat 3, spent a while as a kid watching my brother play Dino Crisis, played a demo of Silent Hill around that time, and I was playing Grand Theft Auto from around age 6-ish, among many other things, and I'm perfectly fine. Absolutely nothing happened to me, I'm not violent, if anything I'm a pacifist. The idea that kids should be shielded away from mature things is rubbish, unless there's something wrong with that kid specifically, it just desensitises you to things that would otherwise be upsetting and makes you good at handling disturbing material. It really, really annoys me I see parents tearing a kid away from something because it's "too violent" or "too scary". Let them be scared, let that film ruin their entire week, then the next scary thing they see will be less disturbing to them. Then so will the next thing. Let them experience these things for themselves so they can learn, they can grow from it. I'm not telling the parents here what to do, it's just... damn man, it frustrates me.

Kids are going to be exposed no matter what.  It is best to be there to explain.

Also this. Very much this.

[turf]

I’ve got a 9 year old. No, I won’t let him play M rated games.
I pay attention to what he plays. He can handle shooting folks but not with realistic blood and guts. I’m all for laser guns and shit, but when it looks real, it might be too much for him. I hold him back on language too.
I just monitor what he plays.

[burningdoom]

Have a kid, but she's pretty much a scaredy-cat anyways, so she won't go near stuff that's too scary or gory on her own. And she's not really into video games.

But if she wasn't a scaredy-cat, I'd let her. I grew up on horror movies and such, and I'm fine. Long as it's not pornographic.

[wartoy]

No my son who is now 24 still gives me a hard time for not letting him play conker`s bad fur day lol.

[soera]

I dont believe in censorship. The more you try to hide something from kids, the more interested in it they become.

As someone above said, just be there for the moments. And if you dont hide things from them, chances are higher they may actually bring the issue to you in the first place.

[oldgamerz]

I dont believe in censorship. The more you try to hide something from kids, the more interested in it they become.

As someone above said, just be there for the moments. And if you dont hide things from them, chances are higher they may actually bring the issue to you in the first place.

 answer not realistic violence
My parents never censored  anything from me. I never was a violent person but with introduction to violence as a young child has actually made me a braver adult, not more violent. I don't panic at the sight of blood or street violence in today's society, I learned not to be afraid of death from playing Call Of Duty because the fact that this world today is full of war and violence and death at random in real life.

(don't mean to get religious on anybody but) I don't believe your life is over when your body dies either. I always believed that our body is only like a temporary machine, driven, by our true self in which I believe lives forever on a different world/worlds as a Christian believer, and teacher

I dislike nudity censorship and never understood why basic nudity should be censored, I personally think it is stupid to censor basic nudity


but I don't like real life violence or realistic violence at all. If you look at real life war you will soon find out the real thing it is a lot worse then any Call Of Duty video game or most any video game today or ever created

[betelgeuse]

M rated games didn’t exist when I was in elementary school. The closest thing was Wolfenstein or Doom in Jr high and Mortal Kombat came around in High School years.

My mom use to take me to rated R movies when I was in the 1st/2nd grade. The rating system was a little different back then though. You had to have a lot of violence or have a sex scene to get the R rating. Movies like “Stand by Me” were always PG even though they cuss through out. I was more into the slasher movies and sci-fi/action flicks.

I had to hide my rap music growing up and stand up comedy was also frowned upon. I don’t think it was because of the language, it was what was being said.

Kids will always find a way to do what you tell them not to. Probably not the best idea to let them make the rules though. My coworkers kids have laptops and cell phones that aren’t allowed in their bedrooms. They complain about the parental controls on the devices, but get the option of parental controls or no devices.

I bypassed the xtree gold security on our 386 and reset the password to lock my mom out when I was in the 7th grade. She begin to hide the key that locked the keyboard, so I bought a spare from the local computer shop. She would also hide my NES controllers, so I always made sure I had an extra one hidden or borrow one from a friend.

[bikingjahuty]

As someone who was able to play and watch just about anything growing up, I certainly would. I feel like many kids who are barred from playing violent games or watching movies with nudity in them develop a repressed mindset where something that they've been restricted from gets distorted due to their lack of exposure to it. So when they do finally get exposed to it they can often have a very unhealthy response to it. Just letting kids experience violent games, boobs, and crazy action movies on their terms and having a responsible adult to conceptualize them if necessary is I much healthier route imo.

[baileykun]

I'm pro M rated games for children, some supervision and talking should come with that territory though, and that's okay. I'm actually far more concerned by cartoon violence. I think it paints a very unrealistic view of the consequences of violence to young children. Blood comes out of wounds and they need to know that.

[kypherion]

Depending on the game. If it was something gory like Mortal Kombat, no. If it was something like Serious Sam: The Second Encounter or Halo: Combat Evolved yes once they were in middle school.

[lordsofskulls]

yes i would let him play M Rated games once he is 10+.   But i wouldnt let him play certain games, that mentally mess with you... manhunt = too realistic.  I would say he cant play that till he is 16... so if its M Rated.  I have to either be in the room when he plays it or give me the name so i can research it before he buys it.

I never had restriction what i played while i was growing up, and my life was with single mother.  My mom trusted me enough, but their was defiantly some stuff that i shouldnt had played.