Unreleased game? Let's protest!

[Cactus Drags]

parents are ignorant..thats a simple fact. 

[oldskool]

The lesson to be learned?

Keep your gaming consoles away from the parental walkway, and you'll be fine.

[Quom]

parents are ignorant..thats a simple fact. 

Don't over-generalise here. My parents got it right. They got me a Megadrive for Chirstmas when I was a kid, but I only got games through them (e.g. they'd be present when renting or buying) and kept an eye on it. The problem is that there are some parents who just treat consoles as electronic babysitters and don't give two shits what their kids do until they happen to catch something they don't like, and instead of blaming themselves for not giving a fuck, they try and pass the buck onto the developers.

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[Guest checkin]

I don't know. Violent video games should be given to the younguns... Hell, the most violent game I owned before I was 14 was a WWF game. And look at me now, I kill random people as well as eat their bowels...

[apsham]

No you don't.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

parents are ignorant..thats a simple fact. 

Don't over-generalise here. My parents got it right. They got me a Megadrive for Chirstmas when I was a kid, but I only got games through them (e.g. they'd be present when renting or buying) and kept an eye on it. The problem is that there are some parents who just treat consoles as electronic babysitters and don't give two shits what their kids do until they happen to catch something they don't like, and instead of blaming themselves for not giving a fuck, they try and pass the buck onto the developers.

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Agreed.

This big furore hasn't taken off a big in the UK, though we've had Richard and Judy on TV, probably Good Morning (another TV show) and the Daily Mail newspaper (champions of middle England) complaining about it.

Basically we're in a world where film censorship has become a joke, with "m****er f****r" now allowed in 15 certificate films, boobies in 12 certificates along with "f**k" and mild sexual content. Hell, even the word "c**t" was in Shaun Of The Dead (a 15) numerous times.

People don't seem to moan about that, but put stuff in games which parents should be paying more attention to anyway, then frankly parents don't have a leg to stand on.

Your kid 12?! Then GTA:SA isn't suitable for them. Nor is Metal Gear Solid 3, State Of Emergency (but that's poor anyway), Manhunt, The Getaway and thousands of other games.

Like it or not, consoles such as the X Box and PS2 are now for adults, not kids. People like me who at 24 has grown up in the age of ataris, spectrums, amigas, megadrives, mastersystems, nes, snes, playstations and are carrying on our enjoyment into our adulthood.

We have the money, so games makers target us.

There's plenty of great games for 12 years olds, including Pokemon, sports games, Jax etc.

Get some backbone and common sense parents and leave our consoles alone.

Edited August 6, 2005 by ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster

[Skummy]

I'd go even further. I don't think any serious correlation can be made between violence in video games and violent episodes involving real people. I grew up playing Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat etc. I've never attacked anyone because of it. If anything wrestling was more of an influence as far as fights and shit went.

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I think it's more than possible to draw correlation between the two, but it's been sorely misintrepeted. The correlation is that a person who is violently inclined is more likely to play a violent video game than a non-violent one, not that someone who plays violent video games is more likely to be violent.

[Cactus Drags]

I've never seen games consoles as a kid thing, more for teeneagers to young adults. Yes, even the 16 bit ones.

[Guest KidDiamond]

You know, I was always behind on the video game bandwagon (took 3 years before Mom and Dad would get me an NES), but even after that there were several ground rules before I was ever allowed to get a new game.

1. First I would have to beat the last game that had been gotten for me. Which means I never owned many games, cause I was generally uninterested in games after an hour. They had to see me beat it, so that made it doubly difficult at times.

2. We had to rent the game I wanted (so they could see what it was all about, and I could see if I really wanted it). That's why I never got the first Mortal Kombat, not because it was too violent, I just didn't like it.

3. They had to buy it for me, so they knew I didn't get something they didn't know about I guess.

That changed when I turned 18, but to this day I don't buy another game without 'beating' my last game first.

Sometimes I hated my parents for things they said I had to do, but looking at the way things work now they did it right. Maybe to a slightly unhealthy extreme, but I learned the value of 'earning' every game.