Poll: MW2 and little kids

[RUINER ACTUAL]

possible spoilers, but im not saying anything explictly. i wont ruin anything for you the way IGN ruined it for me.

today i was at mcdonalds and i heard a kid say "modern warfare 2." i went up and asked him, "are you getting MW2?" he said yes, he preordered it, than corrected himself saying his father preordered it. this worried me a bit. knowing how violent and explicit this game will be, just from seeing the trailers, i think this is not the game for children, or anyone under 18 really. these kids were not older than 14, and thats pushing it. my first thought was "why did this kids dad preorder this game?" and my second thought was "why the fuck arent these kids in school? its 12:30 on a tuesday!" but i digress. what im getting at here is:

Do you think parents address game ratings enough?
Should the "AO" rating be thrown around more to wake people up?
Do you dislike kids online as much as i do?

 

[Tyburn Cross]

I don't think most parents are fully aware of problems concerning games like this. And a lot of parents are gamers with the thought of "I played games when I was a kid, why should I try to censor my child?"

Could be his father got it for himself, but the kid automatically thinks it is his. I have met many kids that are in exactly that situation.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Playing certain games at an age when kids are still developing thier sense of morality and ethics is probably best avoided.

Participatory violence against innocents, such as the scene in MW2, is something kids probably should not be allowed to play until they are at least well into thier teens and have an understanding of the difference between real and fake violence.

Hell, I'm 29 and that scene disturbs me.

 

[Discon]

Okay, I'm fifteen, and I don't think that you're a "kid" when you're fourteen, your mind is growing and you can have other oppinions than "I made a doo doo" or whatever.

I think most NORMAL children can handle these kinds of games. There are obviously kids with certain mental diseases that easily get influenced by what they read/watch/play, and they shouldn't play these kinds of games. (I know first-hand, as my step-sister has asperger, she's 17 and she still only allowed stuff like sonic games, and no manga/anime)

If anything a game like this will prepare the "kids" for real-life incidents that may happen, and prevent post-traumatic stress (or whatever you call it).

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

Point, Discon, but at the same time, the sheer brutal violence of the scene and possible reactions is more than you think. i can already see your 15yo short-sightedness in your post. when you see or experience something like that, more happens in your brain than you consciously know. your brain relates things and applies them to that kind of situation or feeling. if you think its disturbing or scary, ok. but if you think its fun and entertaining and correlate those actions to those feelings, thats when its bad. when you start becoming desensitized to that kind of violence, its bad. and thats the difference between adults and kids knowing whats going on and why.

In this day and age, terrorism is a real possibility, but slaughtering people in an airpost is something i would not quite consider a "real-life" incident. yes, it could happen, but not everyone is going to experience it.

And when it comes to PTSD, your going to have that in a multitude of situations, wheather it be a car crash, natural disaster, or terrorist attack. And if you dont, than you have something deeper wrong in your head, and you should not be using a video game to numb yourself like that.

 

[JeanLuc761]

I agree with Discon. While it's unfortunate that we have to deal with some of the younger kids online, I cannot personally see the harm, at least not to the point where kids should be PREVENTED from experiencing a scene such as this. If the parent can capably explain to his child that what he's doing has complications in the real world, past ethical complications, then there should be nothing wrong. I grew up on violent video games: Doom II when I was 4, Half-Life when I was 7. Yes, the graphics weren't exactly what you'd call realistic, but A) I knew it was a game, and B) The games still sucked me in. Yet, I'm not a very confrontational person, much less a violent person, and I feel like I have very solid morals.

In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the behavior of many of these younger kids on Xbox Live and whatnot have morals that are perfectly fine, and are in fact very normal and balanced kids in real life. As far as the constant swearing and such goes...It's very annoying, I'll grant that...but I don't think this shows moral deficiency. I think it's taking advantage of the fact that when you're online, you're anonymous. Another possible factor is that, from the age of about 11-15ish, swearing every other word is deemed "cool," by most people.

My two cents anyway.

 

[phar]

Its easy to say that parents shouldnt get this for their kid but seriously what else is there. Super Mario Bros Wii and..... yep thats it.

Back when us older guys were growing up in the Sega vs Nintendo age there were loads of family friendly games..

Just so its clear im talking about desirable and playable games. I wouldnt want to punish a kid by giving him one of th newer crash bandicoot games to play.

 

[Frank_Sinatra_]

Participatory violence against innocents, such as the scene in MW2, is something kids probably should not be allowed to play until they are at least well into thier teens and have an understanding of the difference between real and fake violence.

I believe that people who are mentally under the age of 20 shouldn't be playing this game period.

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

JeanLuc, that made sense.

i guess what im trying to get at here is, in a couple years, if theres another school shooting from some kid that was 10-15yo when MW2 came out, and people knew they played the game, the game will be the first to be blamed. not depression, or home life, etc. i just hate seeing that and hearing about it, and i think we all do.

this will be a controversial game(it already is), and it will be on the news, etc. maybe parents will see it on tv and realize what it is, and maybe pay more attention to the ESRB in the future beause of it.

 

[Dark Knifer]

There are plenty of fun games that don't involve an execisve amount of gore, but I think people with a developing brain should have a limit on video games all together. Kids do need to have a life outside of the house after all.

 

[Mr.Black]

Most parents don't care enough, which is a shame.

 

[Fasckira]

Its a hard one because different kids mature at different rates. I think the obligation is on the parents to review the games as much as possible before letting their kids play it, as they after all should know just how developed their children and are and be able to gauge whether they could handle it.
The sad part of that is a lot of the parents these days (in the UK at any rate) tend to still be 15/16 themselves - they arent even fit to be parents in the first place, let alone play MW2.

 

[StarStruckStrumpets]

You need to base this on maturity, not age. I'm a lot more mature than the kids you are describing, and I'm only 14. The scenes I've watched don't alarm me for a moment. Know why? Because it's only a game. I'm not going to spend my time worrying about something that isn't real. I've played plenty worse.

 

[Kurokami]

possible spoilers, but im not saying anything explictly. i wont ruin anything for you the way IGN ruined it for me.

today i was at mcdonalds and i heard a kid say "modern warfare 2." i went up and asked him, "are you getting MW2?" he said yes, he preordered it, than corrected himself saying his father preordered it. this worried me a bit. knowing how violent and explicit this game will be, just from seeing the trailers, i think this is not the game for children, or anyone under 18 really. these kids were not older than 14, and thats pushing it. my first thought was "why did this kids dad preorder this game?" and my second thought was "why the fuck arent these kids in school? its 12:30 on a tuesday!" but i digress. what im getting at here is:

Do you think parents address game ratings enough?
Should the "AO" rating be thrown around more to wake people up?
Do you dislike kids online as much as i do?

I know 13 year old kids who get to watch anything they want, in my sisters school they often brag about watching true blood or anything that's got explicitly adult content. I honestly hate the type of parents that let their kids do this, its become so rare to find a parent that can say 'no' to their child, its really not that hard and its embarrassing to know that such irresponsible parents simply don't care what they're children are into. What bothers me most is that these are the parents who often turn around to say its videogames' fault.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Participatory violence against innocents, such as the scene in MW2, is something kids probably should not be allowed to play until they are at least well into thier teens and have an understanding of the difference between real and fake violence.

I believe that people who are mentally under the age of 20 shouldn't be playing this game period.[/quote

I got flamed for expressing a similar opinion a few days ago.

What people don't get is that IW are not doing gamers any favours by causing this kind of controversy.

Games already get a lot of flak and blame for stupid shit, and this will only aggravate it.

 

[Erazor521]

The big question is "Would you let your kid play this?". For me, that's a definite "NO".

While the responsibilty is the parent's and their's alone, it'd be nice if the folks at game retailers informed the parents. When I wasn't old enough to buy my own M-rated games the guys at the stores - all of them - never once mentioned to my parents why the game in question had an M rating.

The only time the clerk spoke up was when I wanted to purchase one of the Dead or Alive games. He told my dad the game had partial nudity and whatnot and my dad was okay with that. He knew we had sex ed classes in the 5th grade and I was about 15 at the time.

As I said before, it's the parent's responsibility and their's alone, but it wouldn't hurt if the retailers were more informative for the sake of the more negligent parents.

 

[ParkourMcGhee]

No
Sure sounds like a good idea, unless the government decide to ban them or stop people under 24 playing them. They like to do those kinds of things ¬.¬
God yes.

 

[jamesworkshop]

Nah its good for them playing duke nukem 3D when i was about ten gave me balls of steel

Most parents can't say no because modern parents want to be their spawns friend rather than being a parent.

 

[jacobschndr]

To answer the first question, not really. Some parents will spoil their kids in some way whether it be with video games, movies, TV, etc. Then again, some parents (like mine were) are strict sometimes and dont let their kids play these kinda games. Which personally I say good for them. As for the ESRB very few people pay attention to ratings anyway. Maybe they should make the label bigger.

"AO" ratings are rare. and buisness' won't want to sell them because it puts a bad image on them as being family friendly oriented, usually the game has to have more than language, violence, gore, nudity, drug use (which is a lot) it has to have the same thing as what turns a PG-13 movie into an "R" rated movie...strong sexual content, which wold probably be interactive for games.

and yeah I hate kids playing online with me. Especially ones that TELL me not to cuss. Fuck that, little shit.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

I say no, they aren't.
Parents these days don't relate to their children closely enough to be able to tell whether their child is emotionally or mentally ready to see hear play or otherwise experience anything that may or may not cause minor glitches in the brain due to subsurface mental trauma...

but it's not like they're ever gonna start paying attention to ratings any time soon...