Does any community member actually think video games turn kids crazy and cause them to commit violent acts? I, for one, do not.
My perspective is that if a child is crazy enough to see something in a video game and just go out and attempt it, then they were crazy from the start. Parents should really stop complaining to video game companies and if they do not want their children playing violent video games (which I can see it safe to say that just about all video games are violent) they should stop them and leave it at that.
I consider it ridiculus to raise the legal purchase age on games like "Dead to Rights" to 17 just because at one level you are inside a strip club, and a lady wearing a 'sleasy outfit' is dancing. I mean, if you do anything as simple as going to a beach you will see females, and in some cases males, wearing these types of things. GTA: Vice City is another story though, because it contains way more than 'sleasy dressing' and I can understand that. If anyone is still a fan of wrestling, they are trying to raise the age to purchase WWE games, which makes about as much sense as selling your car for gas money.
I don't know, maybe I am wrong, and just a bit one-sided because I am a fellow video gamer. Does anyone else have anything to say about this? (Please tell me your age when you post so I can relate to it a bit more, i'm 16)
Mysterious Voice: Hey Ray, go jump on that man's head untill a gold coin pops outta his butt!
Me: Satan! Is that you!?
Mysterious Voice: No, its me..Mario!
$~Ray~$
ID:190157
 Mar 5 2003, 1:22 pm
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Mar 5 2003, 1:26 pm
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Kunark
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On the thing with the sleasy dressing and stuff with GTA, I hate it when people say they need to stop because it clearly states on the box that is rated MATURE which is age 17+, so their kids had no business having it anyways, thus making the parents at fault for letting them have it in the first place.
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Couldnt agree with you more. Although I do own mature rated games, I'm also quite mature for my age. I know several people, that are even older than I am, whom I would be scared to give anything sharp(or anything that explodes, lites on fire, ect...)for fear of my wellbeing. It is a maturity level issue, maturity of the parents as well as the children.
Dont give children hand guns is just as valid an arguement as saying dont give them violent video games. The problem is that if a parent doesnt care enough to limit what their children play, video game wise, then they probably arent responsible enough to keep weapons out of reach either. I think I'm done ranting now. | |
My thought on it is, if your child is mature enough to determine the difference between reality and fiction, and realize alot of these things are not fun in reality, AND never take the game as an example of what to become or what to do, I think you should be able to play the mature games.
Sadly enough, alot of the 17+ year olds that have grabbed mature games should have been restricted from buying it more than alot of slightly younger teens, because they arn't mentally mature enough to realize those things. However, I think NO ONE age 13 and under should be able to play a mature game because at age 13 is when you START really maturing mentally. Alot of 14 year-olds I think understand alot better. At least where I live thats the case. I say this because me, or anyone I knew at age 13 (friends or non-friends), were not mentally mature to realize that, really. We would say we were, but our minds thought differently, like the "I would like to do that some day! That would be so cool!" kind of stuff. | |
I think that, while a violent video game can certainly help crystallize the thoughts in the mind of a disturbed person, video games in themselves are no more or less influential than books or movies or television shows. Granted, the cumulative effect of all these sources of information can end up being quite significant -- but at the very least, violent video games (or TV shows or whatever) are not a valid excuse for violent behavior.
Stephen King was dealing with this topic in Danse Macabre -- "do your horror stories plant destructive ideas in the minds of impressionable youth?" -- back when the VIC-20 was the state of the art in video gaming. And before him there was the Comics Code applied to the EC horror comics of the 1950's, and before that there were H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, and so on. The problem is not with art. The problem is parents and educators who are too timid, vapid, or stupid to provide kids with even the most rudimentary education in simple moral precepts. It's nothing that couldn't be cured by a read-through of Aesop's Fables and a good spanking. | |
Jotdaniel wrote:
On the 13 year old point I agree. 13 year olds arent mature enough to play those types of games. Very true there, i have to agree too (well sorta, since im 13 and im mature) But any ways i do agree with this, most 13 year olds are very...stupid in that way | |
Actually, everyone starts maturing at their own time. Maturity doesn't just deal with how you percieve stuff, it also deals with how you handle your feelings. I believe that maturity is gained through learning stuff first hand. My family is large into gun collecting and my brother and I have both been handling hand guns and rifles since we were very young, he started when he was 10 and I started when I was 11. We have never had any incidnet of joking about guns either, and take gun safety very importantly. The only time we ever have a hand gun with us is if we are hunting and have just shot a deer, and while we go out to get the corpse we carry one with us just incase some wild boar or mountain lions are lurking nearby(Unfortunately, this has happened on 2 occasions.). Though, just because we take weapons seriously, does not mean we were mature at the time.
We handled deadly weapons in a mature fashion, but I can tell you I'v done some pretty rude and immature things in my life in the past 3 years, so this brings me to the conclusion that maturity comes in different forms, and is not based around age, only by experience, of course someone young usually does not have much experience in the field of life(That is unless they have been put through deep emotional experiences and are living under unusual circumstances.). <<>>Kusanagi<<>> | |
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Mysterious Voice: Hey Ray, go jump on that man's head untill a gold coin pops outta his butt! I have seen that stand-up act also. As the game violence goes, the more the marrier, I find VG violence a good substitute for real-world violence in my opinion. Grant you some FPS games are good hand-eye practice, there will still always be some people with murderous intentions. -=Ken=- | |
I've been handling guns since I was 5(I lived in Texas), starting with bbguns(which I was taught to treat as a real gun), moved on to several .22 rifles. Maturity is a big issue, whenever my brother and I went somewhere with our parents we always got comments on how well we acted, and I see little kids now that just act terrible. It scares me to think how mature most of the people handling guns are.
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It's not maturity in general that handles the gun is what my point was trying to be. I live in Texas too, but I don't consider a BB gun an actual gun(Since it's very hard to kill somebody with, even though it is dangerous in some cases, IE: losing an eye, and uhh losing the other eye.), I have had a pellot gun since around the age of 5 - 7. From my experience, maturity comes in different forms, lets call handling guns "Gun Maturity". People might be very careful and show maturity in handling a gun, but they still hold another type of maturity, such as socially, like you can be the most mature person when handling a gun, but if your a teenager your still probably going to through some name calling out at someone, and name calling in my book is not mature.
<<>>Kusanagi<<>> | |