Who was an "underage" gamer? and the disconnect between us and the past decades

[crepesack]

It appears to me that there is a lot (okay a little bit) of "holier than thou attitude" amongst us gamers to reprimand bad parenting when it comes to gaming - even if said person doesn't even have any personal parenting experience. Whenever a news story comes up of a child spending exorbitantly on an online game it seems to me that we're all too happy to jump on the parent's lack of knowledge or laziness.

I personally think we should really take a step back and consider that those parents probably never grew up around a lot of this technology, have never had to deal with microtransactions, and probably still consider video games to a strictly children's media with little economic motivation. I mean I, a young adult, and by no means sheltered from technology even have trouble keeping up with all the new functions on my phone and on Facebook. Many of my installs and hardware have tons of new EULA of legal babble that is a pain to just skim through. Many parents have no idea what's going on in the gaming world. Most of the time a kid just ends up begging or saving for months for their console and the parent relents and buys it without actually knowing what it is. And personally, I don't think parents should be completely at fault here for their ignorance. Sure they could do more research but when you wanted your first console did YOUR parents look up anything about it? No. Mine didn't at least. My parents had no idea what kind of games the NES played...they had no idea what the N64 did or the PS1 when my brother and I got them.

I also hear about people chastising parents for letting their kids play violent video games under aged! I personally find this the most ridiculous claim. How many of us actually followed those parental guidelines when we were young. I sure as hell didn't. I spent my elementary school days playing GoldenEye on the N64, and logged hours and hours on Call of Duty 2 in middle school! When I was a 13 year old "Cod brat" I wasn't on my mike screaming obscenities or put-downs. I only ever used my mike for team communication and only if we really needed it and if the people in the room seemed friendly.

Now looking back, do I blame my parents for letting me play these video games? No! They really immersed me into the video gaming world. Do I think I was mature enough to be blowing people to a bloody pulp? Probably not but it's not like I'm any worse for wear. All in all I think we shouldn't be too quick in condemning parents for bad parenting. Sometimes you make a mistake and sometimes you end up on the news.

 

[BathorysGraveland]

Well, I used to enjoy playing that old FPS Blood back when I was, I don't know, 7 or 8? Or something like that. I don't consider myself a bad guy by any means, but I'm more or less completely apathetic towards violence of even extreme kinds today, and I can't deny things like video games and films putting that on me. It's not like I'm going to copy those actions in real myself, though. It's just, when I read or hear something on the news, something very morbid and extreme, it doesn't bother me at all. When, deep down, I know it should. Eh.

 

[Rawne1980]

To be fair, as a parent myself, whenever anybody makes a comment about other peoples parenting when they don't have kids themselves I just sigh and ignore them completely.

My parents let me play the games I wanted and watch the films I wanted. If they hadn't then my older brother would have or my sister or a friend. That way they got to keep an eye on me.

Plus, while I may not have been the brightest kid in the world, I could tell reality from fiction. I could watch a film or play a game and not want to murder hordes of people to bring about the birth of the demon lord of crap tasting ice cream.

My wife monitors what our kids can and can't play/watch although the list of what they can't is pretty short.

If it was left to me i'd let them play/watch what the hell they wanted. I'd probably sit down and watch the films with them.

One of my wifes friends didn't agree with letting our kids play games like Fallout or Skyrim due to the horror of murder. I sighed and threw her out my house .... she was whining while I was trying to watch Game of Thrones and people talking while i'm concentrating on something bug me.

I have no interest in other peoples opinions on how I should or shouldn't raise my kids. As long as my kids are happy and not out and about on drugs or burgling houses then i'm happy.

I'd rather they do that in a game than real life.

 

[Phasmal]

Eh, I was allowed to do anything, pretty much.
My mother is massively uninformed about games, so I got away with whatever I wanted- but now it's my little brothers turn (he owns Dante's Inferno. He's 10), I do wish she would at least try to watch what he plays. He also has Amnesia.
Might be hypocritical of me, because I did it too, but I will watch what my kids play should I choose to pop out a sprog.

 

[Keoul]

Personally I think it's the kids being brought up on bad morals, that latest story about a 12 year old going on a spending spree just doesn't seem to make sense, did the kid REALLY not know he was spending real cash? or did he just not give a shit? Either way he "should" know enough about XBL to realize it spent real dollars.
Still, the warnings are there for a reason, if the dad's angry the son blew a tonne of cash on a game he shouldn't even be playing then it is his fault.

 

[Vault101]

hmm..when I was a kid I watched mortal kombat on the N64...like somones face being eaten off (was the reptile that did that?) also golden eye/perfect dark and turock...

those games scared the crap out of me and put me off violent games for a long time...

 

[Zhukov]

One of my wifes friends didn't agree with letting our kids play games like Fallout or Skyrim due to the horror of murder. I sighed and threw her out my house ....

Really? What did the missus think of that?

OT:
My dad was a computer engineer and he played a few games himself. He knew what was up.

So yeah... when I wanted to play something I wasn't supposed to I had to put considerable effort into my childish deceptions.

 

[Ruzinus]

When I was 6 or 7 I played a game called Shining Force 2.

At one point in this game you walk into a town and there are dead bodies everywhere - soldiers slain in violent combat. The game is rated E (or maybe it was K-A, but same thing). Had a scene like that been rendered in the kind of graphics games have now, the game would most likely have been rated Mature.

That game had a big effect on me. The plot was presented in fairly simple terms, but it dealt with some interesting things. At one point in the game you visit the world's god to ask for help with the terrible devils that have shown up all over the place to ruin everyone's day, and he basically tells you that it's humanity's mess and you can go suck it.

Games still happen that deal with similar stuff, right? I'm not really sure if kids should be kept from those stories just because we're getting better at rendering blood.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

To be fair, as a parent myself, whenever anybody makes a comment about other peoples parenting when they don't have kids themselves I just sigh and ignore them completely.

My parents let me play the games I wanted and watch the films I wanted. If they hadn't then my older brother would have or my sister or a friend. That way they got to keep an eye on me.

Plus, while I may not have been the brightest kid in the world, I could tell reality from fiction. I could watch a film or play a game and not want to murder hordes of people to bring about the birth of the demon lord of crap tasting ice cream.

My wife monitors what our kids can and can't play/watch although the list of what they can't is pretty short.

If it was left to me i'd let them play/watch what the hell they wanted. I'd probably sit down and watch the films with them.

One of my wifes friends didn't agree with letting our kids play games like Fallout or Skyrim due to the horror of murder. I sighed and threw her out my house .... she was whining while I was trying to watch Game of Thrones and people talking while i'm concentrating on something bug me.

I have no interest in other peoples opinions on how I should or shouldn't raise my kids. As long as my kids are happy and not out and about on drugs or burgling houses then i'm happy.

I'd rather they do that in a game than real life.

especially those last few lines, very well done post that I agree with (haven't found the right lady friend yet to have kids with myself, but someday soon i'm sure.)

couldn't agree more, especially with the hypocritical opinions most of those people have with letting kids play games that might be considered "mature". Yeah, listening to a 12 year old isn't the sweetest thing to hear on a mic, but there is this fancy thing called a mute button, that alot of old farts seem to have a hard time finding..

I played and watched damn near anything I wanted to, not because my parents necessarily were allowing it, just that I'd be babysat by my grandma or a random babysitter, and I was pretty good about making up excuses to watch/play things, so when my parents would find out i did "such and such", they'd usually just give me that look of slight disappointment, and realize i was no worse for wear, and considered it okay that I absorbed it without turning into some zealot cannibal murderer.

I figure the same thing will most likely happen with my kids, most people don't realize that one way or another, your kids are gonna be exposed to this funny thing called "life", so you can either join them in the journey as they go along and hopefully guide them down a decent path, or try to ignore the fact that they aren't the perfect little pure child that your trying to shelter them into being.

 

[Rawne1980]

One of my wifes friends didn't agree with letting our kids play games like Fallout or Skyrim due to the horror of murder. I sighed and threw her out my house ....

Really? What did the missus think of that?

She wasn't impressed and I had to apologise the next day.

 

[Hazzard]

I think the issue is when 7 year olds are playing 18 rated games, but not many people haven't played games that they aren't "old enough" for.
What my parents have confused me about is that my dad is okay with me playing an old James Bond game when I'm 8, but I can't play Battlefield 3 when I'm 14.
When it comes down to it they are the same thing, the only difference is who does the killing and how new the game is.

 

[optimusjamie]

I have to admit, before I was about 11-12, I only ever played platformers, like Ratchet & Clank and Jak & Daxter. I think the first 15-18 game I ever played was Resident Evil 4 on the Wii.
The thing is, I wasn't (officially) allowed to watch 18 films until I was 13, when I watched Alien for the first time. Now (being 15) and having my own debit card and a beard, the only thing standing between me and an 18-rated game or film is if the guy in the shop actually does his job and asks for ID, which never happens, and anyway I rarely ever buy physical copies these days. Although my parents would probably still object if they found a GTA game on my Steam account.
The thing is, my parents will only care if it's outright porn or something that (they think) is for someone younger and/or female, although this is only based on their reactions to MLP: FIM.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The congressional hearings that formed the ESRB happened while I was still three or four, so my mother was very much caught up in the whole "media violence is bad" thing. She wouldn't even let me watch Power Rangers, for Pete's sake. That said, I found excuses to play violent games anyway, and by the time I was 12 it was pretty easy to get her to approve and M rated game. By the time I was 13 or 14, I don't think she even questioned them. R-rated movies are another story -- I didn't start watching those in earnest until I turned 18, and even then I pretty much only watched them in my bedroom. She's a massive prude, you see.

That said, I've never been one of those "why are you playing an M-rated game? You're too young! RAAAAAAAAAGGGGE!" gamers. I think it depends on the maturity of the individual child as to whether they can handle mature content or not, I see the ESRB ratings as guidelines, not rules, and I think it's the parents business, not ours, as to what they let their kids play. Because seriously, this shit's not hurting anyone. Your average M-rated game would be pretty tame for a PG-13 rated movie anyway.

 

[Rylot]

My cousin and I got our aunt to buy the original Fallout when we were like ten or so. Everything was all fine and dandy until my mother walked in on a character exploding in to a pie of goo. That caused a pretty big up roar in our family but everything died down after a while and I think our parents come to the realization that since we hadn't become mass murdering sociopaths we were probably mature enough to handle violent media.
Thankfully we played the original Medal Gear Solid soon after and our ability to stealthily kill people and dispose of the bodies improved to the point where no one caught on.

 

[Smeggs]

I'm not sure exactly how my mother perceived the games I played. I'm not entirely sure she actually knew how violent they were. The first "M" rated game I'd ever played was Turok: Evolutuion and, though it is hideous and the worst addition to the series depending on who you talk to, I remember one weapon where you shot five small heat-seeking nanobots from a rocket launcher. These nanobots would bore into the body of an enemy (or enemy player if you're in the local mp) and tear their body apart from the inside, shredding off their legs, limbs, and finally blowing up their head, leaving nothing but a twitching torso behind.

I was 13.

But I liked it. It had fucking DINOSAURS! DINOSAURS ARE KEWL! Considering the box art of a horrifying velociraptor with blood all over its claws and fangs, I'm assuming that my father is the one who picked it up. He always was less inclined to care what we were playing/watching as long as it didn't get us/him in trouble.

It depends on the level of maturity of the child. I won't let a kid play Gears or Dead Space, those goresplosions are a bit much for the young people I believe, but maybe about 14. By age 14 they'll know about sex, they'll know about death, they've probably seen a few R-rated movies on TV when I wasn't looking and I'm certain that one of their friends will have played a super violent game with them by that point. 14 is about the time you begin to really transition from being child-minded, or at least that's how it was for most kids I knew, including myself.

 

[ChildishLegacy]

games like Fallout or Skyrim due to the horror of murder. I sighed and threw her out my house .... she was whining while I was trying to watch Game of Thrones and people talking while i'm concentrating on something bug me.

I have no interest in other peoples opinions on how I should or shouldn't raise my kids. As long as my kids are happy and not out and about on drugs or burgling houses then i'm happy.

I'd rather they do that in a game than real life.

I fucking hate people talking while you are trying to watch a show/film, it's like their inane chatter is actually more interesting than what's on the screen to them. They also seem to try save it up right up until the damn thing starts. This is why I only ever play games locally with other people, because there's always at least one person who isn't content with watching something and has to be the star of the show.

Also, I think the reason you're happy to have your kids play games like that might be something to do with the fact that you were raised on games too and actually know what they're about? I could see how due to the media that some parents who have never touched a game would be very wary around them. But if I ever do have kids in the far distant future, I'm going to be advising them what games to buy rather than stay away from.

Still, somebody telling you what your kids should and shouldn't be doing doesn't deserve to be in your house imo, that's just plain rude.

 

[Jamash]

Yup, I loved the responses I got from the "old" gamers.

I asked if any waited until they were 18 until they played DOOM. Both people said "no, but my parents didn't allow it" as if that was somehow better. No, it isn't, you still played the game when you "shouldn't" have.

Doom was only rated 15 by the BBFC, so this old gamer didn't have to wait until he was 18.

I was actually 15 when I first played a Doom game (Doom 2) and the first BBFC 18 game I played was Carmageddon, which I actually bought shortly after my 18th birthday.

Of course, I did play lots of violent (and some mature themed) computer games as I was growing up, but they were all unrated by the BBFC, so technically there wasn't a minimum age for any of the games I played.

I think because games were seldom given a BBFC certificated in the UK in the 80's & 90's, old gamers of my generation are practically exempt from ever being an underage gamer.

 

[Rawne1980]

I fucking hate people talking while you are trying to watch a show/film, it's like their inane chatter is actually more interesting than what's on the screen to them. They also seem to try save it up right up until the damn thing starts. This is why I only ever play games locally with other people, because there's always at least one person who isn't content with watching something and has to be the star of the show.

Also, I think the reason you're happy to have your kids play games like that might be something to do with the fact that you were raised on games too and actually know what they're about? I could see how due to the media that some parents who have never touched a game would be very wary around them. But if I ever do have kids in the far distant future, I'm going to be advising them what games to buy rather than stay away from.

Still, somebody telling you what your kids should and shouldn't be doing doesn't deserve to be in your house imo, that's just plain rude.

Fully agree with both of your comments.

People talking while you are watching something is incredibly irritating.

The worst part of my wifes friend doing it is we have 2 sitting rooms. When her friends come round I purposefully shove myself in the back room to watch my shows so they can talk to their hearts content. She decided that what she had to say was more important than that 2 hour period I get for myself on a weekend.

It just really annoyed me.

And yeah, you are right on the game front.

Growing up since gaming more or less started (yay for being an old fart) i've seen near enough all types of games.

I've also seen that games don't create serial killers, rapists, satan worshippers or the dreaded used care salesman.

If my kids want a game then i'll offer my advice not just as a parent but as a gamer.

They want Grand Theft Auto, fine, I know my kids have the sense to not run out, steal a car and mow down pedestrians 5 minutes after they play it.

My daughter wanted Rage (she's 14) I said no. She asked why, I said it's not a very good game and got her Fallout New Vegas instead ... she enjoyed it.

I just don't see the point in wrapping kids in cotton wool. Sooner or later they are going to fly the nest so to speak and then the world outside will shock them.

I'd rather they do what they want to do (within reason and within the law) and live a little.

Plus I did it when I was a kid so saying it's wrong for my kids is beyond hypocritical.

I guess I really don't want them to feel like they miss out on things. Their friends all talk about the next film they are going to see or that new game they got or episode of that great show and my kids should be able to join in.