Comments on: Gerard Jones on Videogame Violence

By: kadayi

kadayi — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:06:09 +0000

Playing games with your kids is the best approach, either co-op, or them ‘driving’ and you ‘navigating’. You can then have a dialog about what’s going on and what they think about what’s occurring.

By: Steven Hutton

Steven Hutton — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:13:39 +0000

@Well, if they were talking about CoD3 then he really shouldn’t be playing it. Although not because of the violence.

By: Muzman

Muzman — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:06:29 +0000

The issue always seems to get crossed around whether something is disturbing or whether it isn’t and protecting kids. Arguably a mother wondering if her kid is going to start shooting people after playing COD4 isn’t expecting her kid to be scared by the game, but rather enjoy it far too much (to the point that they no longer have any sympathy for other human life). It gets kinda messy.
I’ve never seen many kids who were genuinely horrified by video game violence (not that I’m someone who deals with kids a lot). It’s just not realistic enough. Really nasty movies will get to kids where games won’t (and I would argue, can’t). Adults on the other hand, aren’t so much fooled by the imagery but it’s that the symbolism of the act holds almost equal weight in the emotional response. For one example, I knew a couple of girls about eight or nine and they thought slitting someone’s throat in Hitman 2 was the coolest thing ever. They caught sight of me doing it once and wanted to play the game too. Not sure whether to let them I showed their mothers who screamed when they saw it. There was a lot of damage control there, but I’m pretty confident based on these kids’ reaction to the news and movies and other things in their life that what I’ve always thought was true; they can fundamentally tell the difference and are in some ways more capable of differentiating between media portrayals of violence than adults.
This is a little hard to swallow for some folks because kids are obviously more easily scared and disturbed by the things we’ve laughed off years ago; bad ghost stories, loud noises etc. But I reckon that the processing of destructive violence and spooky things is vastly different and seems entirely separate from one another, each changing a great deal over our lives, despite the reaction to them seeming alike at times.

By: Lamprey

Lamprey — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:52:20 +0000

This was from April 2007, so that 10 year old wasn’t playing COD4. Now that they’re 11, however, they’re playing it.

By: Gorgeras

Gorgeras — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:57:25 +0000

Santa isn’t invisible. The red suit and reindeer make him a bit damn conspicious in fact, especially as we haven’t had a white Christmas in more than a decade now unless you live on a mountain.

Jim is talking about the giant people are who are playing us, using giant pointing cursors(what do you think UFO sightings really are?). As soon as mine discovers WASD, I’ll be kicking out some illest moves along skyscrapers and circle-strafing mofos to death.

By: Mr_Day

Mr_Day — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:08:15 +0000

Are you saying Father Christmas isn’t real? Because I will cry.

By: Jim Rossignol

Jim Rossignol — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:47:09 +0000

Let’s just hope children are smart enough not believe in invisible superbeings in the sky.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:32:14 +0000

Funny how some take issue with giving kids games, but nobody seems to mind teaching kids religion.

By: Skalpadda

Skalpadda — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:31:12 +0000

I don’t have children of my own, but my mother used to always sit down and watch movies with me and she would explain or even translate things I was too young to understand. I’m really thankful for that, because she did act as a sort of shield and safety for things that scared me and I could always ask her about the things that I didn’t understand. She also played all my NES games (and got really hooked on Zelda in the process) which was kind of cool.

It’s really easy to put all reasponsibility on the parents and urging them to use their common sense and spend time with their children, but it’s pretty clear that a lot don’t have the time, knowledge or the common sense that’s needed.

I worked at a kindergarten for a couple of years and we had one kid who suddenly couldn’t join the others when they were resting after dinner. He wouldn’t even go into the room. After talking to him a bit about what it was that scared him, it turned out he’d been playing Doom 3 with his older brother (he was 5, his brother was in middle school, so probably 9-10) and he was really, really scared of being in a darkened room. I was pretty horrified, and more than a little angry at the parents who had no idea what their kids were playing at the computer. My co-workers were all in their fourties and had no idea what Doom 3 was.

I am a bit torn about this kind of thing, because the age recommendation on the box is clearly not something a lot of parents even look at, and it’s pretty obvious that a lot of kids don’t have parents that keep track of what they’re doing in front of the computer or TV. Meanwhile I think censoring culture is an awful idea, but you can’t just shrug it off and accept some kids as a sort of “collateral damage”.

Parental education, teaching parents to keep an eye on what their children are doing is the only thing I can think of. Teaching common sense? Parenting school?

Sorry for the hideously long comment.

By: Jim Rossignol

Jim Rossignol — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:58:49 +0000

Clone vat.

By: James T

James T — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 08:46:38 +0000

Maybe she had a kid in January and got pregnant again by March. It’s science.

edit: Wait, no it’s not, one of them would be 2, or 4… IT’S NOT SCIENCE AT ALL!

By: Steven Hutton

Steven Hutton — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:41:17 +0000

Triplets or polygamy?