My friend
Cindy posted today about anger and violent video games. In my comment, I said that my kids don't play violent games and they still get violently angry, even when playing something as benign as
Super Monkey Ball or
Mario Kart Double Dash. This usually results in suspension for hours or even days, depending on the offense.
I grew up with an Atari. We had a
5200, and it was the greatest. My Dad and I were especially addicted. Even then, while playing nothing more sinister than
Frogger,
Pac-Man or
Missile Command in all their 8-bit glory, we became terribly angry from time to time, yelling, throwing the controller, and sometimes a bad word would slip out of my Dad's mouth during an especially tense round of
Breakout.
I was a teen when the Atari came to our house, so I lost interest after a few years, having much better things to do with my time, like date. But being the oldest of 4 children assured that there were always video games around -
Nintendo,
SuperNES,
N64, and first generation
Gameboys all lived in my parents house. About that time, my youngest sibling began to get into computer gaming, and the consoles began collecting dust. But there was always that anger that went along with video games.
I won't apologize, we are still video game people - I love
Pitfall on the
Gamecube. My husband loves
GranTurismo 3 on the
PS2. We also have two Gameboys.
There is definitely concern about what some of these games put into kids heads. I have seen some of the games that my son's friends have brought over. If a friend brings a game, I will first study the back of the box, then if I'm in doubt I will supervise play for a while to see what's what. Sometimes I'm appalled. I was thoroughly disappointed to find that Tony Hawk had
lent his name to games that had blood, violence, bad words and suggestive themes. Some of this stuff belongs in R-rated movies. To see/rent an R-rated movie, you have to show ID that you are at least 17. Not so for video games.
I do want to touch on one thing here: the
ESRB ratings. Take it from an experienced game-renting mom, the ratings are a great
guideline, but they are often wrong as far as an individual family is concerned. I have seen rated E (everyone) games that I was unhappy with and rated T (teen) games that were fully appropriate for my kids.That's not the fault of the ratings system, it simply has to do with how each parent has different values for their kids. So I highly stress that just reading the rating on the back of the box is no substitute for good parental involvement and awareness.
A recommendation if you're not a console-owning family -
PopCap games. I have been using them for years for great PC games. They promise no spyware or spam, and in my experience that is entirely true. The games, to the best of my knowledge, are all family friendly, and each game I've tried caters to everyone, from the little tykes that are just getting good at using a mouse, all the way up to adults. At our house we especially like
Insaniquairum,
Zuma, and
Bejeweled 2. I also like
NingPo MahJong and
Pixelus. Fair warning: these games can be addictive, even to adults. ;-)
Back on the subject; who
hasn't flipped the board in anger at a game of Monopoly or Life? OK, maybe not
everyone has done that, but we all have gotten angry. We even see professional athletes lose their cool, big time on a regular basis, so it's not limited to board or video games. We used to call it being a poor-sport, but I think it was the same animal that manifests itself in today's video game play.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's no difference between Monopoly and
Mortal Kombat. I'm just wondering what we can do about this anger that springs up - and I'm not saying I'm innocent - when we lose a game?
Games give us a sense of accomplishment, probably a somewhat misplaced sense of success. They give us bragging rights, so a sense of pride. Because for many kids today, as for kids throughout the video game generations and beyond, game skill is a measure of personal value. Even back during the
Pinball Wizard days, it was extraordinarily cool to beat a game. I'm not sure how best to combat this problem, all I know at this time is how to respond to it. That's with game suspension, just like in the NBA or NFL.
In the end, I told my son that "anger at a video game is useless: the game doesn't feel bad when you lose and can't be punished for it; so all anger gets you is suspension from the games you enjoy, all anger hurts is
you. If you're angry, take a short voluntary break, otherwise the result will be a longer forced break."
Oh and I missed one other important point - time limits. I think that's something that has to be judged on a case-by-case basis, but it's never a good thing to allow kids unlimited access to video games. Then the games become their world, and I think this, more than anything, leads to the real problem with violence. So my kids - in the summer they have to play outside four hours for every hour of video games. I'm not legalistic about it, that's just the guide. In the winter - it depends on the weather, but they have to trade off with board games, chores, homework and screen time.
I'm not saying I know everything and I'm perfect parent. It may be
hard out here for a pimp, but they got absolutely nothin' on being a parent. Just like every generation before us, our kids are facing things we didn't face and all we can do is just try to be reasonable. I don't think video games are evil. I don't even think that a good amount of play once in awhile is evil. I do think that parents that are oblivious to the impact video games have in their kids lives, parents who are ignorant or apathetic about what their kids see - even if it is animated - in video games, are, well .... part of the problem.
Be sure to check out
Mediawise's 2006 Video Game Report Card. Scroll down and there are lists of the top 10 games to avoid and the top 10 recommended games.
So, my 5th grader came home yesterday and told me that kids were making fun of him because he wasn't allowed to watch some TV show (I honestly don't remember which one) or play
Resident Evil . We had a very interesting discussion about peer pressure that is off subject, so I won't get into it right now. It makes me sad, even though I know peer pressure is as old as humankind.
This makes me sad, too, to think of all those kids whose parents don't know or don't care what their kids see. I know as a parent you can't much control what your kids do at other kids' houses. I'm not a Video-Content-Nazi or a Hand-Sanitizer-Hyper kind of parent. But I do believe you can be as involved and proactive as possible. It does make you wonder where the parent's are at the other kids houses, but I do know not all these kids are *just* seeing this stuff at other people's houses.
I guess my point? Let's not just blame the games. I do think some of what goes into these games is exceedingly unnecessary, to say the least, even for an adult. But then again, we've been seeing crap in movies forever - so it's not just video games, it's the entire entertainment industry, and it has to be monitored.
We need to take responsibility, to the best of our ability, for where our child's sense of self-worth lies. Is their greatest achievement *beating* a video game? Do they feel worthless when they lose? Or do they know how valuable they are to us as people?
Likewise, we need to be aware of whose responsibility it really is if your child is seeing gore, sex and demons in their video games. Think about it.
