Violence in Video Games: Opinions

This is something that I have been thinking about for some time now. Growing up, I would hear adults talking about how dreadful video games were, such as Borderlands and the Call of Duty games. For one thing, I grew up going to church, and the people I usually was around went to church, so that would be why I would hear about how violent games were.
To add to this, I would see children play M rated games like that, and hear them excitedly talking about it. Anyone out there have any opinions on this subject? Would you let kids, such as your own, play M rated games?

 

Wow talk about making me feel old when I read "COD and Borderlands"I was like wait a minute these aren't the violent games they were talking about back in the gold old days.

Growing up for me it was games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighters, Quake, Doom Original and Castle Wolfeisten.......

anyways that's beside the point.... Obviously Graphics and Graphic content in Video games has evolved but it also has evolved in the movie industry.

I don't get the point where they say Violence in video game cause children to become numb it wouldn't the same thing apply in movies?

The problem now a days is Parents don't have time to raise their Kids so they buy them a PS4 or a XBOX one and then what ever game they want as long as it keeps them occupied...... Jesus There's this couple I know who bought their 6 year old kid COD and let him play online. I mean common who is at fault for that really the video game or the parents... Kids that age should not be playing games like that they are not developed enough to understand reality with virtual (keep in mind this is a generalization some kids might be ok).

I think its a non issue as long as the Rating procedure is followed for who plays it like the above example.....

 

Heh. Sorry for making you feel old.

Before I got an XBOX 360, I had heard about all the violence in games and I was against it. Seeing an enemy soldier in Black Ops get his hand pinned to a table via knife was awful to see. However, I was only being sanctimonious in my position on violence. When I was little, I played Unreal Tournament. This allowed me to blast my victims into bloody gibs, and I enjoyed watching those gibs bounce against the walls. I know it was not graphically intense like today's games, but it is the thought that counts.
Personally, I do not mind violence. Rather, I like it. It is not really a selling factor for me, since I prefer gameplay over graphical detail.
Anyway, I do not like it when children play those bloody, gorey games. My cousins,which are about or almost 10, plays gears of war. If you have seen the game, you will know the chainsaw bayonet and its attack.


Then you have kids playing GTA. And it is not only the violence I dislike in that game.
The game HATRED has the player, a psychopath, running around NYC and killing absolutely everyone (children not included). It contains a lot of bad ideas not for children.


And to know that with all this violence in games, when a kid is asked about it, you end up getting the answer,"They [the parent] don't care."
I am not the sort to hate violent games, but I consider it a good thing to keep a child's mind pure as long as possible.

I will say though, that violent games do not warp children into killers. I grew up on violence (at least early on) and I do not harm people. I guess it is the select few that the news sensationalizes that catches everyone's attention.

 

I won't lie, as I get older these violent and provocative games of poor taste are starting to turn me off in a major way. GTA no longer appeals to me and Saints Row sounds like an exercise in juvenile humor (something I grew out of a very long time ago).

I take back everything I ever said about those stick in the mud adults who don't allow their kids to play those "violent video games".

I'm turning into one

If I ever have children I would probably be pretty weary about such things.

 

California is a good example of the worst possible state to decide the future of video gaming regulations and what can and can't be sold. This is how terrible California is as a state when it comes to making laws. Retailers would be fined $1000 per violent game they sold to minors. It was proposed by a foreign-born national (Arnold Schwarzenegger) as the then governor of California, blocked by federal appeals court, and a second look at the law in 2011 by the Supreme Court and where I was so proud of the Judicial branch's decision for once. To this day, this is the best quote I've heard about any court case:

The full article about it here: Court Strikes Down Violent Game Law - IGN News

Truer words could not be spoken. Parents these days are too damn lazy, then you have the government stepping in and trying to coddle the parents while at the same time, stripping freedom away from everyone else.

So my opinion is this: I don't care if kids play violent video games, so long as the lazy ass parents don't penalize everyone else for the sad excuse of intelligence those parents have, and actually take responsibility for it. Also, it's not the games, the movies, or (in general) the media that creates bad kids (or monsters in some extremes). It's bad parents when they don't take the time to raise their own kids (let alone bother to try), often pawning them off on schools, babysitters, or other family members to raise the kids for them. Then, they complain about how their kids are being raised. Those bad parents need to be slapped, as many times as it takes, for the lesson to sink in.

 

I don't think I could give a solid "yes or no" answer on whether or not I'd let my theoretical kids play mature games or not. There's a lot of different factors to take into consideration. How old are they, how mature are they and how "mature" is the content in a rating system where GTA, a game where you can commit mass murder against human beings, has the same rating as a game like Halo where you shoot evil purple-blooded aliens. I also think it's important to differentiate between mindless violence and, you know, games that are actually mature because they're trying to tell a story or they're tackling some big, important themes that wouldn't be suitable for the kiddies.

In other words, I might let a teenager play something like Persona or Elder Scrolls but if they want to play Hatred, they're going to their room.

We don't need to shelter kids from every last thing in the world that may or may not be "mature" but I do firmly believe that it should be given in careful moderation. Let 'em play the big boy games once in a while. Give them something that might expand their horizons a little. I think if you do it right, letting them play a mature game sometimes might actually do them some good. You just have to think-- and I mean really think-- about the toys you're giving them to play with, so to speak. It's almost like parenting takes actual time and effort or something, go figure.

Ladies and gentlemen, that just goes to show you how different churches can be.

Not only are most people in my church okay with video games, I've actually played Call of Duty with three of the pastors and the worship leader. A lot. Until the wee hours of the morning, sometimes. As a matter of fact, our youth pastor just got a PS Vita for Christmas and another pastor of ours finally joined the PS4 club.

Our worship leader went Xbox One. Sometimes I wonder if deep down in his soul, he secretly regrets that decision.

 

The church I went to when I was younger (to be honest, pushed into it) had a PS2 in the youth group's worship center. It was really more of a general purpose room in the basement used mostly by high schoolers, but it was definitely for the youth department. They had some dinner booths where you could sit down and eat, a bar-like counter where soda and water could be served (from tap I might add! The hose and liquid selection and everything!) and all of this was one giant room with some offices on one side of the basement and classrooms on the other side. Nursery and toddlers were on the ground floor, kids (5 - 11) were on the second floor I think. It was an entirely new section added to the existing part (which overall, the church last time I went about 9 years ago, had undergone 2 additions from the initial building of the new church to accommodate the growing congregation). So the babies, kids, and teens all had their own part of the church and each floor had their own set of age groups. Anyways, one of the games they had was Ace Combat, but I never really saw what else they had. I would walk from school and hang out with the youth director, who was also in charge of networking and computer maintenance. I did get to have their unlimited licensed version of Windows 2000 Professional though since they were upgrading to Windows XP. I even got to help run networking cable. I stopped going though because I was hearing the same lessons every year from the main services and nothing different from other parts of the Bible. It became stagnant, I grew tired of it and just fell out of that denomination and just followed my own belief. Can't say it's a perfect way to believe, but at least I'm not wasting my life listening to the same exact sermons the preacher used the last year, for the last 3 or 4 years since he started and took over from the last guy. Got a nice building, friendly staff, everything, but it's being wasted by tiresome lessons that's been nothing more than a "wash, rinse, repeat" cycle.

Anyways, I'm going to get back to the topic now.

I'm still on the "I don't really care" mindset. All that really matters is that parents take responsibility and stop trying to blame someone/something else for their child's/children's problems. Honestly, (and personally) it doesn't need to be religious-based to do it. In the end, it's the parents who have to put in the time and effort to at least try to raise their kids to be upstanding citizens and not spoiled monsters.

I'll add this, since I didn't in my first post: I personally don't want kids right. I've babysat before (thankfully, they were old enough to not need as much attention as a baby), I've got a godson that's in elementary already (and it's making me feel old), but I don't think I can stand being around kids 24/7. I gag at the smell of a dirty diaper (yeah, my best friend actually tried to make me change my godson's diaper once). Just from my experience in what little babysitting I've done, I'm burnt out. I can relate to kids fine, play their games, etc. I'd probably make a terrible parent to be honest because at the end of the day, I think I like being able to just sit down and do absolutely nothing productive (and for the most part, be a kid myself). lol

But if I were to theoretically have kids, want to have kids, I'd probably use my brain and read the ESRB rating for the game I'm about to purchase for my child to see what all he/she is demanding to play because "all the cool kids are playing it." I'd probably be that asshole of a father that my kids will hate growing up. The kid can hate me if I say no to buying the game, but at least I won't be one of those parents that just gives in and let's my child become a spoiled brat. I know it's difficult to raise a kid, but damn some of those parents need to stop blaming everyone and everything else, except themselves.

 

Church I went to used to have a huge Dolphin fan and he despised the Patriots so we would pray to God that we would beat them. See that's how you get a church filled in Miami lol.
Hilarious guy, he went to Puerto Rico I think.

To steer this back on course you know what actually kinds of bugs me a little more? It's sex and video games. It's definitely a culture thing but I'm pretty uncomfortable with those sex scenes in games now. Implied stuff is okay, it's the more explicit ones that are jarring.

Still I think it's completely up to the parents to decide. I can give a pass to the old parents like mines since they didn't have this sort of thing growing up (an advantage to be sure )
Although younger parents should be more aware of what games could show nowadays. That's my outsider take anyway.

I really don't like the government stepping on toes here.

 

@Vashnik

The pooop smell does not bother you when it's your onw kid at least that's what I found with mine lol he pooped in the tube last night and it didnt even phase me... but I respect what your saying you know what you want and that is clearly not kids witch is OK in my books!!!

I whole heartedly agree it really comes down. To the parents and the game genre... But that's the thing its easier to shut your kid up and buy him things thenactually parent your child.... Which is wrong...... And that's the whole problem to me its falls to the parents olwho don't want to parents witch is unfortunate....


@Doomguy

Yea back in our days quake half-life doom mortal combat where just games no one knew better but parents today should.....because its been in our culture long enough now....


And sorry if I misspelled anything I was doing this ony phone

 

The church I went to had the standard that we should not be fans of sports, so we did not hear anyone having arguments about which team would win. At least, not from the adults. The junior high and high school students (my church had its own private school, which further isolated the minors in the church, while supposedly protecting them from the sinful exposure of public schools) were the ones who talked about sports, namely basketball, which was the number one sport the men in the church were interested in. Anyway, most of those students would play sports or CoD. Speaking of CoD, it seems like the last few have been relatively clean. The only ones that really caught my attention were the Black Ops series, and I do not know much about Black Ops 3.

There were the younger students that would play Assassin's Creed. Really, the only sex scene was in AC Brotherhood. There was another instance in AC3 in which it was obvious it had been interrupted. And then there were the prostitutes to distract enemies.
Well, enough about what kids in my old church played.

I played and beat Hatred, but all it had were dark thoughts and slaughter. I think the worst game I played was Duke Nukem Forever, at least when it comes to sex. While you did not see any sex action in particular, there were so many naked women in it I could not take it. While I will try to beat a game to find out the story, this is probably the only (or very few) game(s) in my life that I outright gave up on wanting to find out the story because of the content. I gave up after coming across the hive. There are few games I regret playing, and this was the most regrettable.

There are some games with an M rating I do not find that bad in content. Halo would be one (actually, the newest one is T rated), and Diablo is another, I guess I do not find Diablo bad because the enemies are not being torn up in your face. And Unreal Tournament does have setting to reduce blood and gore, if not remove it. However, I am not sure which ones in particular.