Knowing is Half the Battle
Submitted by Boys and Schools Blog
I sometimes feel like it’s it’s almost too easy to jump on the anti-video game wagon when it comes to pinpointing problems with boys. They can be a handy punching bag, especially when you consider the fact that they don’t punch back. But I’m limited by my own biases–namely, that I like video games and don’t think that they’re universally bad. Just that they require a lot of parental knowledge and awareness.
For example, today is the US release of the game Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest in a blockbuster game series, and virtually guaranteed to become one of the biggest selling, most popular games of the year. It’s also the game series that pioneered the ability to pick up prostitutes to help your health in the game, and then shoot said prostitute to get your money back. So, it’s not a kid’s game. With that said, the reason it’s so popular is because it’s well made, well-scripted, and interesting to play. Heck, it’s even interesting to watch. (In one of the previous titles, James Woods voiced the character of a rogue CIA agent who constantly dropped references to his part in wild government conspiracies, and Dennis Hopper played an anarchist hippy.) There are moments in the game that challenge movies for watchable entertainment value.
The main issue though, is that we’re talking solid R-Rated movies here, not harmless action movies featuring plucky kids or talking animals. I think that some people get a little misled by the word, “game,” in video game, and think of harmless Atari and NES era pursuits, like eating power pellets and swinging over lakes of crocodiles. (I maintain that it is impossible to jump over the three crocodile heads in the originial Pitfall without the swinging rope.) But the truth is that the spectrum of games now is so wide, that there is such a thing as a purely adult game. Unfortunately, we parents aren’t all on the same page, so making sure that your children aren’t playing (or exposed to) titles that are too mature for them requires research and communication. And there’s a certain amount of personal judgment that goes into it as well. Some might have no problem with games that involve violence so long as their kids are older and the game takes the side of the “good guys” (e.g. you play as a soldier fighting terrorists–believe me, when various games let you play as anything from a mafioso thug to a professional hitman, this is not an insignificant difference). Other people might put a moratorium on all games that involve any kind of violence or gun play. And some parents might not have any limits at all. So it’s up to us as parents to communicate and do our homework about what kind of game play is appropriate for our kids–and to respect other parents’ boundaries if they are a bit more restrictive than you.
Of course, I’m focusing on content here rather than time spent playing games, which is its own problem, and arguably as serious an issue as game content. Clearly, both need to be managed by careful parents, since umpteen hours playing Hello Kitty’s Island Adventure can be just as harmful in its own way as 20 minutes spent playing Hitman. But it’s up to us to us–not the gaming industry or the government–to police these things in our boys’ lives.
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