NationStates Jolt Archive

I thought I'd have a crack at this topic and see what happens. People do tend to complain about the amount of violence in games. They complain that violent games cause violent action. Well here is my thought on it. Violent games do not cause violent action. The only person who will go out and commit a violent act is a violent person. A gentle person won't go out and butcher someone for the fun of it. However people who are violent and play violent video games do learn better tactics from it.

The logic I don't understand is taking games off shelves because people who shouldn't be playing them are playing them. Maybe I missed something when GTA III was taken off the shelves. They decided to take it off because eight year olds were getting access to it? Perhaps eight year olds shouldn't be near it in the first place? There's a novel idea. Perhaps when you go and buy an MA game you should have to show ID for it like when you go to a movie theatre? No, that would make too much sense.

Some people really need to realise that video games aren't just for eight year olds. There has been plenty of games released for mature gamers (Manhunt, the entire GTA series, Leisure Suit Larry series, Mortal Kombat series, BMX XXX etc) and that perhaps we should be taking better precautions in distributing games and less precautions in softening the blow for kiddies when they get their hands on it.

Maybe the parents just don't give the kids the money to buy the game instead of putting restrictions on who can or can't buy the game? The rating of a game should just be a guide for parents.

I think that if the game rating was more prominent AND more people paid attention to this, that'd get rid of a large chunk of the problem(come on, giving T(teen) and/or M(17+) games to little kids?). You wouldn't take a 7-year-old to an R-rated movie, would you? I agree with requiring an ID for buying/renting M games. Of course, there's also the issue of parents not wanting to get involved with what their child watches/plays, meaning that they whine to the government to censor things for them because they don't want to actually get invovled with their child and teach them that some things they see in movies/TV/video games/whatever aren't real, are wrong, or whatever the issue is.

Maybe the parents just don't give the kids the money to buy the game instead of putting restrictions on who can or can't buy the game? The rating of a game should just be a guide for parents.

Exactly. And suggesting that game violence is more influential than seeing heaps of charred bodies, and firefights that are "actually happening" on the news, is kinda stupid.

Of course, it's all just an excuse. I've been playing violent games for all of my life, and guess what? I wouldn't have the nerve to kill someone.

Here's another bit of news.

Murder happened before violent games! it's a novel concept, but it's true! Or was Vlad the impaler corrupted by games?

Maybe the parents just don't give the kids the money to buy the game instead of putting restrictions on who can or can't buy the game? The rating of a game should just be a guide for parents.

They should but it's become quite obvious that some parents really don't care. Parents really don't care so ID should be reinforced and the distributers should be enforcing the right not to give pre-adolesant kids blood-soaked games.