Am I overreacting?

[BlackJimmy]

Post your sister a video of the torure mission while explaining that it's not a cutscene. Perhaps give her some context to the scene as well, such as Mr K is just a guy off the street.

EDIT: No, you aren't overreacting.

 

[Padwolf]

I don't think you are overreacting, I think you are just concerned and really you do have a valid reason to be concerned. However kids react to things differently. I remember playing GTA, Resident Evil, Silent Hill 1, Nightmare Creatures (Shut up, it was scary!) when I was under the age of 10. I turned out just fine. My brother, who was only 3 years older, also turned out just fine. We knew what we were seeing and doing were things that were not ok in real life, and we were constantly reminded by our parents that is was wrong and we should never imitate it. The only good thing about it was, because we had those games, we didn't constantly want violence or action. Hell, many more good days were passed on games like Hercules on the PS1, or driving games since my brother had this really awesome steering wheel. But, those were the days of PS1, where we weren't playing a torture scene. Nowadays me and my brother play other games, he is more into strategy games, I'm just into anything and everything. We turned out fine, if anything it just made us all the more disgusted with the bad people in the world.

However, telling kids they can't have these things when they see their friends having it, can bring out the "Because I can't have it, I want it" in them. But it depends on the kid, my boyfriend's 11 year old nephew isn't allowed to play GTA 5 but his friends do. He accepts why he can't play it, and understands why and never questions his mother about it and he's quite a mature kid, but he does want violent games and films because he isn't allowed them. They all react differently. If anything, show your sister the really bad parts of GTA5, just to make sure she understands.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

...you are overreacting!

Let me put this as simply as i can...it's fiction. If you haven't taught your child the difference between fiction and reality then you are not a good parent. That isn't a statement about you but a statement to everyone who has children. Blaming real life violence on fictional violence is just an attempt to pass the blame of poor parenting onto someone else. Hiding children from fictional violence just makes real life violence far more traumatic...and let's face it, everyone ends up with real life violence at some point. If you haven't prepared your children for the real world then you are a fucking failure of a parent and should start pointing the finger at yourself rather than trying to blame everyone and everything else.

Hope that leaves no room for misinterpretation

If fiction is your barometer for allowing an 11-year old to see content that is clearly inappropriate, at what point do you think it's OK to let your kids watch porn?

"Oh, hey son, just watching a little fiction I see. Dinner is at 5."

I'm not saying that GTAV is comparable to porn, but it is clearly not age appropriate for an 11 year-old. I think there are varying degrees of what an M rated game means and who it's appropriate for. My oldest is 9 and I'd never let them play something like GTA V until they're at least 14, but there are probably certain games like zombie killing games that I might be more lax on. As a parent, I see a big difference between bloodying up the screen with zombies versus having my kid go into a virtual strip club, making it rain and/or performing fictionalized torture on someone.

Not all M rated games are inappropriate for tweens, but GTA V probably is. I think once your kids hit high school (age 14), if you think they're responsible, you can take the reins off a bit.

Porn isn't fiction, it's sensationalised reality (unless you've had porn-like encounters).

You choose to ignore the brutally violent zombie mashing of some games over minor sexual encounters in another game...i find that strange. Is smashing someone in the head with a brick and then dismembering their bodies for kicks somehow less worrying than the normal activity of sex required for our survival as a species? One being a crime in all situations...the other is what literally billions of people do fairly regularly...

I would also point your attention to books. I've read books with no age warnings, no language warnings, no warnings at all that have graphic sex, rape, torture and mutilation. Do you think that blindly acting out some actions on a screen by pressing a few buttons is more damaging than allowing a young mind to ponder the actions of say a serial killer necrophilliac with a penchant for torture?

 

[BakedSardine]

Porn isn't fiction, it's sensationalised reality (unless you've had porn-like encounters).

You choose to ignore the brutally violent zombie mashing of some games over minor sexual encounters in another game...i find that strange. Is smashing someone in the head with a brick and then dismembering their bodies for kicks somehow less worrying than the normal activity of sex required for our survival as a species? One being a crime in all situations...the other is what literally billions of people do fairly regularly...

When killing zombies is a crime, let me know. It's a clear line between reality and fantasy. If you consider porn sensationalized reality, then consider my argument video game characters having explicit sex or some hentai.

I would also point your attention to books. I've read books with no age warnings, no language warnings, no warnings at all that have graphic sex, rape, torture and mutilation. Do you think that blindly acting out some actions on a screen by pressing a few buttons is more damaging than allowing a young mind to ponder the actions of say a serial killer necrophilliac with a penchant for torture?

I wound't let my kids read a book with a serial killer necrophiliac until it was age appropriate, so it's not an issue for me. I believe "it's fiction so it shouldn't matter how old they are" was your argument.

 

[jamail77]

snip

snip

I was kidding.

I know I didn't add a '', but I thought it would speak for itself.

Actually, that's kind of obvious in retrospect. I also use "..." and the kind of phrasing you did to make jokes online. Those kind of jokes are more easily picked up on in text. See, I don't buy the lame excuse that humor is hard to detect on the Internet especially through text. It can be conveyed through text if you inject the right phrasing and emphasis and trigger words. Sometimes it is hard to tell of course in certain situations and understanding varies among person to person, but I think some people just overuse the excuse when they need a scapegoat for not realizing obvious humor. Anyway, to get off the rant I might have entered, I just wasn't paying attention. It did speak for itself. Whoops.

Yeah, people on this forum just don't get humour. I try it all the time and it literally never works out.

People tend to hide behind the "text based medium is difficult to understand tone", but I genuinely just think some people are wilfully ignorant on this forum (as well as the wider internet - just look at any joke picture on Facebook, it's like a mega-line up of fucking morons with sense of humour failures.

S'pose what I'm trying to say is: I feel for you getting an obvious joke misunderstood. Happens a lot on this forum.

-_-

I am making this same point in my response to Casual Shinji and yet this refers to me. Oh, the irony. I also have had obvious jokes misunderstood, but unlike you I'm not a jerk about people not getting it (when you say stuff like "morons" and "humor failure", you're just being really disrespectful). I actually don't let it get to me and/or understand context of the people not getting it especially if I'm chatting online with friends I know in real life. You see, it's because I have also misunderstood obvious jokes (See this very thread) that I get why so many other people can do it from time to time.

In this case, I was very sleep deprived and sleep loss affects me FAR worse than other people. I have been told I am a completely different person to the point of appearing to have psychological issues and just a severe decrease in emotional endurance and logical understanding. It's very obvious now that I'm well rested. This probably sounds like complicated BS rambling to get out of admitting to my failure, but I assure you sleep really affects me weirdly. Trust me, I don't want to go too far into my sleep problems, not just because they're personal but also because they're complicated. Just making a point about the context here.

What I'm trying to say is don't just assume and insult a whole ton of people like that. I also used to complain about people hiding behind the "text based medium is difficult to understand tone" thing and I still do, but I don't assume it's because they're less intelligent like the old, far more disrespectful me would have. Part of that has to do with me making fun of a friend who didn't pick up on it who called me out on it. He proceeded to cite an example of me missing one of his obvious jokes and then a time before that when he got an obvious joke when others didn't. It was an "everyone can do it" sort of point. The other part just has to do with me maturing and learning and thinking more about context and interaction.

I'm going to stop now because I'm turning this too much into a anthropological/psychological/sociological/maturing discussion and it was just a simple thing about missing obvious jokes. I have a tendency to turn small things into bigger discussions.

 

[Tom_green_day]

I'd think it was ok if they were 16/17 maybe but 11? Hell no, that's crappy parenting.
Every time I go to GAME I see parents buying their 10YO kids games like GTA, CoD, Battlefield and other games which they really shouldn't be playing at such a young age. It annoys me.

 

[jamail77]

Can I ask why COD is different? I know it doesn't have the crime aspect, but it's pretty violent (well it is warfare). Isn't the patriotism ratchet-o-meter and indiference to killing enemy combatants still troubling?
Nevermind the kids on voice chat giving grief... shudder.

I figured someone would ask that. I suppose it goes to how I perceive the world and the way I grew up:

Playing 'soldiers' is, as far as I'm concerned, a normal part of childhood, and in the modern age of technology that extends to Call of Duty - all you're doing is playing 'soldiers', really. The violence is pretty cartoonish and over-the-top, there's nothing particularly gritty or grim about the way it's presented (despite what some people think).

I had to stop at that point to ponder this. I've heard this point before and it doesn't seem well founded...like, at all. Yes, I understand it's perspective and opinion, but still. I agree the violence gets a little over the top and they do and say things that definitely wouldn't be done in a similar military situation (or as close as you can get to what happens in COD games). But, cartoonish? I played COD 4 on the Wii (I wanted a PS3, but my sister thought we should all pool our money together and get the cheapest one at the time because we don't have much disposable income) and still remember that nuke scene, in which I think your character died. That was not cartoonish at all. I've played snippets of the first 3 CODs as well.

I mean, unless you mean cartoonish in where they decide to stab or how unbelievable/cartoonish their screams of pain sound or reactionary phrases to attacks and defenses are or just in the fact that, as you say, there are far grittier and grimmer environments (physical game world and psychological influence), I'm not sure I get ya'. Again, that nuke scene is still remembered pretty vividly by gamers, COD fans or not, isn't it? It wasn't that grim or gritty, but it was a serious depiction and I really felt it, it's the only time any CODs I've played actually made me feel something. I started out the way I did in this paragraph to avoid my earlier mistake of missing on that The Last of Us sarcasm from Casual Shinji, which not to belabor a point was mostly because I was dead tired and have far less thinking capability when dead tired.

Anyway, when I think cartoonish violence I think art style, actions, phrases, and charm of games like Team Fortress 2, Borderlands, stuff like that. I can only assume you mean a different type of cartoonish or that you have far lower standards than me on what constitutes cartoonish violence. If this is relative to other violent games, that's not a good argument for cartoonish: That's just relatively relaxed in its violence. Obviously, GTA is far worse in its depiction, blood is far more likely to show from smaller attacks, you can drive incredibly fast and kill hundreds of people (or at least seriously injure them) instantly giving both the adrenaline rush from speeding and the high body count and chaos GTA is known for without even needing to drive already, and THEN comes the messed up stuff, the kind even the game will admit is messed up in a weak, "eh" sort of way. While GTA doesn't take itself seriously, I do agree the violence depiction is pretty serious, context or not. COD, while being less violent overall, DOES take itself seriously. I've never seen a COD that didn't take itself seriously. GTA is worse, but COD isn't better just because it's less violent. It makes up for it by being more serious.

 

[Aramis Night]

It seems that people forget what the whole point of parenting is. The whole point is to prepare them for adulthood. You aren't going to do that by trying to hide the kid in some fluffy cloud somewhere. Too often I have seen the results of parents who kept their kids in a cage and then opened the door at 18 and had the nerve to blame the kid for not being able to function on their own in the world. People put way too much stock into the whole idea of turning 18 in the first place. The things that you don't let kids do don't suddenly become different at 18. Porn doesn't suddenly become any less dirty, cigarettes don't suddenly smell great, sex doesn't suddenly become any less motivating, and drinking doesn't suddenly not make you drunk when you turn 18. If they aren't responsible enough for those things at 17, they probably wont be ready to handle them by 18. Responsibility should have been taught before they became teenagers.

By 11 you should start being exposed to things to prepare you for adulthood. If GTA can teach you how to negotiate with a prostitute, all the better. That is valuable life knowledge that will serve him well later in life.