Thoughts on video game ratings?

The ratings are more there to protect the companies that make them rather than the customer.

I think they use ratings as high as 18 years old because eveyrone matures at a different age. So they have to go with the least mature people and think what age would it be ok for them.

But at the end of the day its down to the parents to educate their children rather than blaming games for violence.
 
Pointless. Parents simply buy these games for their children with no regard for the age rating on the box. My colleague at work bought her 13 year old son MW2 when it came out, despite not liking her children playing these types of games and fully aware of the airport scene.

I was in the purple high street game store just before AVP came out, and a mother with her two young children (I would say they were max 10) and the guy behind the counter asked if they would like anything else (they bought a PS3 game) and he asked if they would like to pre-order AVP.

Would he also ask if they would like to buy Saw if they purchased Up? :rolleyes:

:/
 
Game characters are the same as cartoons like Tom & Jerry, Ren & Stimpy & Roadrunner & the Coyote.
Anybody including kids that are influenced by such things are Mental anyway.
 
A slow decline in morals and standards throughout the whole of the entertainment industry and our lives on the whole decade by decade.

Whats acceptable today would shock people from earlier generations. This slow decline has been passed onto kids and it's no wonder they get worse by each passing decade.
 
Game characters are the same as cartoons like Tom & Jerry, Ren & Stimpy & Roadrunner & the Coyote.
Anybody including kids that are influenced by such things are Mental anyway.

so you think increasingly photorealistic depictions of people who you shoot is the same as tom and jerry?! :rolleyes:
 
Since playing Mass Effect, I've wanted to have sexual relations with a blue alien. I'm 27
...So you can be influenced at any age!

I do believe that the age restrictions should stay and be adhered to by shops. I also feel parents need to beable to gauge their children.

I was watching predator at a young age, With men being skinned and hung up side down in trees. However I was never allowed to watch Rising Sun, with Wesley Snipes and Sean Connery around the same time. My parents felt my line was boobies....Unfortunately

Maybe thats why i want alien boobs now...If i'd been able to watch lush japanese boobies as a child, I'd probably not be so interested in blue ones now.
 
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I have young kids, so I do find this an interesting debate.

Both of mine have seen me play COD, they got it was a game and wasn't real. And that daddy sucked. I have 2 girls, so admittedly they weren't particularly interested in the game itself.

Personally, I worry less about the gameplay affecting my kids than I do the foul mouth on a good proportion of the online players. While I'll certainly let my kids play online younger than a game dictates (ie: when I consider them old enough) but there is no way they will have a headset.

I also worry a lot less about gaming than I do about other media - imho if you want to desenstize kids to violence, let them watch the lunchtime news everyday. The shocking images they show on there astonish me, bearing in mind how strictly other TV media is controlled.
 
id reccomend to anyone interested in this subject to watch penn & teller : BS episode on video games, its mainly comedy but it shows the difference between shooting games and firing a real gun. Also has some great stats on school massacres in relation to video games.
 
at the end of the day it's down to the parents and if the child has any sort of mental instability. me and my friends were watching some pretty gory films before we were even 10. i saw predator before i even saw bambi. infact i think it makes children stonger and to man up more.

kids that think it is okay to go around killing people has a lot more to do with different influences then computer games. i was playing stuff like robocop vs terminator when i was like 6/7 years old and back then it was a pretty gruesome game yet not once did i ever think of recreating it. the only thing we used to recreate was the gauntlet from gladiators using school bags till it got banned because some kid got a black eye.
 
Having sold games for a living ratings mean squat. If the game isn't sold to the kid their parents will buy it. Still think there should be age ratings but something better than pegi, bfcc id the way forward.
 
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