How did you get that M-rated game?

[Mr Fixit]

I've almost always got my games used or from friends or older brothers & when I bought them used it was from places other than Gamestop & the people never even thought to check ages, so yeah I always worked around it.

I've played violent games from the start & it's never affected me, hell I've never even got so much as a speeding ticket... I live so dangerously...

As far as kids are concerned it'd be on a game to game basis & would really depend on if I thought my kids could handle it fine & i'd probably play the game with them...

 

[lacktheknack]

I got Mass Effect when I was 16 because Dad saw footage and it wasn't particularly bloody.

That's it. All other M-rated games I got when I was old enough.

 

[joshuaayt]

Ehn, yeah, I played some grody shooters and such when I was younger than the box told me I should be- Never really thought much of it. Age restrictions were just a thing I occasionally had to use my older sister to get around.

Now, though, at the dignified age of 20, I can see the errors of my childish haha nah just kidding I wouldn't have had it any other way.

If I have kids, I won't stop them playing games based on ratings, because odds are I'll know more about it than the ratings board does- I'll be buying games with them, and I'll make individual judgement calls.

Not that it's something I'll have to worry about for a while- I already have their first 50 or so games lined up, sorted by age appropriateness, and this list is only growing with time.

 

[Scarim Coral]

1- I grew up (I was 18 when Killer 7 came out)

2- Yes since the game was awful (horrid liner controls and dull gameplay)

3- If I do become a father, I will be stict with my child games as in following the age certificate (it's there for a reason) just like my uncle and aunt did to my cousin (he was never allow to played Metal Gear Solid). Sure the OP state adult rated games did nothing on him but none the less I won't become like those neglect parent who don't supervise their child activity (I won't spy on him/ her but I will check on what he/ she see or play).

 

[Black Reaper]

My mother's always been pretty open minded, so she's never given me any restrictions of that sort that i can remember(my favorite movie as a kid was Kill Bill), she thinks digital violence doesn't do any harm as long as you can distinguish it from real violence

Im 17, so technically im not old enough to play most of my games, but when i think of an m rating, Ninja Gaiden 2 is the first thing that comes to mind

1:it wasn't difficult getting ahold of it, i bought a gaming magazine that had a demo of it on a disc, i really liked it, so we went to a blockbuster and grabbed a used copy of it

2:no, it was fucking awesome, if there was a negative impression it was when i tried the mentor difficulty and i couldn't get past the first stage and it was really frustrating

3:If i ever become a parent, I'm gonna share m-rated games with my kids, as long as they are good games

Most M-rated games aren't really mature, most are just really juvenile(like Team Ninja games)

 

[optimusjamie]

The first game that I remember not being old enough to play was Medal of Honor: Rising Sun.

1. How did you get that game?
Dad bought it for himself, Mum let me play it.
2. Did that game leave any negative impressions on you?
Not that I can think of.
3. When, and if, you become the parent how will you handle the situation?
I will use my best judgement.

 

[ultrabiome]

1. I think the first 'M' rated games I played were MK or Doom for SNES, as I was a teenager when the ESRB was started, but they were the first to qualify as 'M' in my mind. I borrowed them from a friend, but my parents were always aware. Before graduating high school, I had also played the first Quake and Diablo on PC.
2. No. I had been playing games before I could remember, and watch rated 'R' movies when I was really young (although my parents also explained that they weren't real, even going so far as to rent documentaries on movie special effects to prove the point), and my dad is a sci-fi fan and my mom a horror fan, so I got a lot of exposure. I also played a lot of different games from different genres, and still do. Violence actually might turn me off now compared to back then when it was still more novel, but I care about the 'fun' of a game more than the violence. I can enjoy God of War or No More Heroes or MK as much as Mario or Zelda or Soul Calibur.
3. I will take a similar approach with my children, exposing them slowly but with supervision. I probably won't allow them to play online for a long time though, as I think the behavior from Call of Duty players is probably worse than any violence they might encounter in the game. I'll probably keep the truly violent games from them until they are teenagers, but then as long as they aren't copying the behaviors then I don't see a problem. I've played enough to know the ratings are guidelines and how they can misrepresent a game. I doubt they will be playing anything I haven't played until they are too old for it to matter anyway.

 

[Hydrium]

By the time ratings on game became a thing everyone cared about I was already old enough to buy them myself.

But I also had parents who were there to put the games I played into context and explained the difference between murder, theft and other crime in a game and crime in the real world so hey. Go parenting.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

It's real easy when you have a brother who also plays video games and is 7 years older than you. Honestly, this was so common that I can't remember what game it was. I think it was GTA 2. Considering the violence is kind of tame compared to the later games, I don't think I was that damaged. My penchant for destruction came more from a formula one racing game where the cars would explode into parts in a crash. I used to drive the wrong way on the track to try to create the most spectacular crash possible.

 

[Raikas]

I'm 34, so there weren't ratings on games before I turned 18.

That said, there was a "contains mature content" warning on the box for "Rise of the Dragon" - but I only had that because it came boxed together with a flight simulator game (Red Barron, I think) that my father had bought for himself.

 

[mike1921]

I've have become increasingly aggravated at the fact that we keep pointing the blame the video game instead of the parent.

Does it go without saying that you need to blame someone? I don't see why. The only problem comes in when the parent has an issue with it. If a kid plays assassin's creed the problem comes in....where?

Especially when the rating system is fucking garbage so someone playing an "M Rated" game means nothing. DragonBallZ games get a T rating, I dare anyone to find an 8 year old, someone 5 years under the mandatory age to play the game, who would be traumatized by the events of Budokai? I dare anyone to find a 13 year old who would be traumatized by Halo2. The ratings are all 5 years oversensitive. They're worthless.

The only problem I see is when the parent is both unaware and doesn't want their kids partaking in that kind of material: In which case: yea of course they're at fault. I don't see why that's just an assumption though. Not every parent is some nimrod that sees manhunt and thinks it's like Mario bros.

 

[Mersadeon]

1. How did you get that game?
2. Did that game leave any negative impressions on you?
3. When, and if, you become the parent how will you handle the situation?

1.: I had LOADS of games not suitable for my age back then. I guess the first would have been Halo: Combat Evolved for the PC - it's essentially what got me into FPS. I got it by asking. You see, we had some holiday on a camping ground, and they had a community room full of Xbox consoles - with most of them having Halo in them. I was enamoured, so I asked my father if I could have it. I told him exactly how much violence is in it (there's blood when you shoot things, you can punch stuff, and that's pretty much it) and he was ok with it. He knew I was the kind of kid that wasn't influenced by this kind of stuff, and I've always been pretty reasonable and calm about this kind of stuff, so when I came to him, asking for a videogame, he knew I really wanted it. Also, he let me stay up sometimes when my mum wasn't home to watch him play Legacy of Kain, which my mother had forbidden.
2.: Nope. Sure, there are some creepy and intense scenes, but I never had anything bad associated with it. Actually, the most "negative impressions" you could say I have are from Rocko's Modern Life. That show shaped how I visualised some stuff for the longest time.
3.: Pretty much the same as my father. Now, I am a bit more game-savvy than he was (he was a gamer, but more of a Playstation guy) so I will look into games my kid wants a bit further, but unless he/she wants Spec-Ops: The Line or something, I am okay with it. It's all about judging if your kid can handle it. If my child has nightmares from it and tells me it's too creepy, then I know it's time to take it away.

 

[Weaver]

I was probably around 10 years old playing Duke Nukem 3D. I got it from my parents (or, my Dad might have got it for himself).

 

[Chemical Alia]

My mom gave me the shareware version of Wolfenstein 3d and I played the hell out of it at the age of 12 next to an open bar. The carnage in that game was profound, but nobody cared.

 

[Aesir23]

Restrictions on M-Rated games weren't that tight when I was younger, although I do remember when people started to get really up in arms over violent video games. I don't really recall asking my mother for any but at the same time, I don't think GTA2 was really her type of game and I really don't remember if it was M-Rated.

That said, I have been steadfastly playing M-Rated games since I was roughly thirteen years old.

I'm twenty-five years old now, so I obviously don't have an issue with buying M-Rated games at this moment in time.

 

[Jamash]

By the time the first BBFC rating was applied to a video games, I was already old enough to buy it.

On the other hand, I did manage to buy an 18 rated VHS copy of Jason Goes To Hell, from a branch of a well know high street shop when I was about 14 or 15, however there was no real deception on my part as I was still wearing my school uniform when I bought it.

I suppose I was a little bit dishonest in attempting to buy a film that I knew I wasn't old enough to buy, but I didn't actually lie about my age or attempt to disguise my school uniform, it's just that the subject of my age in relation to the film's certificate never came up during the transaction.

I have to admit, I did get a bit of a rush during the transaction and felt like I'd just pulled off the biggest confidence trick in the history of everything as I walked out of the shop, whereas in reality my minor act of law flaunting probably only succeeded because the person serving me was a bit dozy.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

I can't fully remember my first M rated game actually. I remember convincing my mom to let me get Super Smash Bros Melee when I was 10 even though the game was rated "T". I think my first M rated game was Twin Snakes for the Gamecube. I had a friend with all the cool M rated games and I loved watching him play the Metal Gear franchise. He got it for me on my birthday so I circumvented my parents but I doubt they would have cared if they knew

The problem is that the ratings system isn't used properly. Simply put it's become easier for a company to simply slap an "M" rating on a game that at best deserves a "T" rating to avoid having to fight for it's release. When a company wants to release a "T" rated game they often try to sanitize if of everything remotely offensive and produces something like an "E" rating.

I'm under the impression that you're comparing ESRB to the rating system for movies and I see what you're getting at, a game like Halo is rated M even though it contains the same amount of content as a pg13 movie. The thing is, within the last few decades, movies for older audiences have been increasingly marketed to younger audiences. The kind of content shown in pg13 movies now is becoming more like the content that would have been shown in R rated movies years ago. ESRB is using the system correctly, its Hollywood that's misusing the rating system for movies.

Personally I like this. It means have M rated games that can snippets of mature content without going balls to the walls with it. I don't care if a kid can't play Mass Effect because it has a side boob in it. I'd rather it be that than a space fucking simulator with Dead Space levels of gore

The result is that this leads a lot of parents buying games for their kids to not respect the ratings, since they don't expect anything really bad to be in an "M" rated title. Thus when a game that really deserves that rating comes along they get upset. The same can to a lesser extent be applied to "T" rated titles which people tend to look at a lot less

I don't see how that's the rating's fault. It says in a quick blurb on the back of box exactly what content is in the game. You can look at the back of a Halo game and see that it contains blood and violence and know there won't be any sexual themes or drug references then see that GTA 5 does contain that. Why defend people who are too lazy to get educated?

 

[Zombie Sodomy]

My parents weren't the sheltering type. The Shining is the only thing that ever left an impression, and I got over that years and years ago. Unless my children end up being incredibly stupid, I'm just going to assume they can separate fantasy from reality and let them play/watch whatever they want. Well, not whatever; I'm not made of money.

 

[SKBPinkie]

My first M rated game was the first Half Life.

It didn't really affect me all that much. Although to be honest, I did get freaked out by the Zombie scientists a little bit. More disturbed thinking about what they went through than actually scared of them.

If I was a parent who saw my kid playing that, I'd just talk to him/her about it and see how they were affected by it. Most importantly, if they could clearly differentiate between fiction and reality, I'd let them go for it.