*cough* Very few people in this discussion seem willing to admit that children
can be influenced by the violence in the media they witness. There have been dozens of posts by people saying "I played violent games and I turned out OK" and almost all of them seem to treat the debate like some kind of joke (joking about torturing people while they're talking) but the simple truth is excessive violence DOES desensitize children to real violence. Now I'm not saying this can happen to all children, but it does happen to some and the effects can sometimes be dire. My mother is a primary school teacher and during an argument with her about video game censorship she told me that it's the same little shits who get their parents to buy them GTA4 and the like that go around beating up other kids in the schoolyard. Now maybe they're just violent little fucks raised by parents with no sense of discipline anyway, but denying that playing violent games would have any affect on them is sticking your head in the sand.
I'm not in favour of video game censorship. The "think of the children!" lobby is a blight on the Australian gaming landscape which is already afflicted with far too many blights. If you've heard Yahtzee mention a clown by the name of Michael fucking Atkinson, he's the Attourney General of South Australia and is SINGLE-HANDEDLY responsible for the fact that games have no R-rating in Australia. His attitude is "there will be no R-rating for games because I say so, so there, nyah nyah nyah". He is not open to debate on the issue and when challenged with the fact that Australia is the only developed country WITHOUT an R-rating or equivalent has actually gone on record as describing the rest of the Western industrialised world as "Gaderene swine going over a cliff". Yes, he thinks he and he alone knows better than everyone else in the entire world. When a discussion paper on the topic was arranged, he
refused to allow the release of the paper. So no, I'm not in favour of censorship, even though I'm not a big fan of excessively violent games anyway, because the censorship lobby is an out-of-control juggernaught without the slightest understanding of us or the games we play.
Obviously, the real answer is better parenting. Unfortunately, this is impossible. WAY too many parents are horribly unqualified to raise their offspring and should never have been allowed to become parents in the first place. Sometimes I think there should be a proper exam people have to pass before being allowed to become parents (other than the practical I mean). Partly this is because some people are so stupid that they insist on seeing the world their way and refuse to be questioned on anything (like the horrible and oblivious mother mentioned above) and partly because they're just genuinely unconcerned with the minutiae of their child's welfare. Of course they'll freak out if their child gets so much as a scratch and start looking around for someone to sue (unless they're part of the abominable group who don't care about their children at all and abuse them) but they don't care about their child's behavior or mental state as long as they keep out of the way of their career. There is, unfortunately, NOTHING we can do about this. If we instituted laws making it a criminal offence to expose children to mature content then people would probably sit up and take notice, but that's totalitarian and fascistic in the extreme (although I still think it's a good idea) and no-one would stand for it. See, people are so concerned with their so-called "rights", such as "the right to show my child as much gratuitous violence as I see fit", that they don't even listen to the bullshit coming out of their own mouth. They're demanding that they be allowed to raise their child the way they want when they're striving to raise their child to be a violent, antisocial little shit. I'm one of those people who think the criteria for removing children from lousy parents should be loosened a lot, cold though it may seem.
ZAch055 said:
Any child at any age should be able to play any game. There's way too much censorship in the world today, and I think if a kid wants to see something they should be able to see it. "Kids rights"
Dude, kids don't get "rights". They get the right to be protected, to grow up safe and healthy, free from exploitation and to get an eductation; or at least they should. They do not get the right to drink, smoke, have sex, buy porn, view violent films or play violent games and that's because it's
for their own good, and that's not talking out of my arse, it's a fact. "Absolute freedom for all, irrespective of the consequences" is the cry of the anarchists, specifically the stupid ones.
