Most parents here where I live will buy the game for their kid, thats how they get it. High school and even middle school are probably worse than this game. Grade school is getting there as well. As another poster said there is only a very small percentage of people who will take the things in this game and actually act them out in real life. That percentage is almost nil considering how many people are going to buy this game. A person who does this also likely has other issues, its not a case of "the game made me do it" in normal human beings who can distinguish reality from fiction.

There is also going to be problems with every other form of media, everyone who reads books knows that books are probably one of the most adult forms of entertainment you can get, and there is nothing stopping a kid with a library card from taking books out and reading them. I cannot see how this game is worse than the stuff they have on the local news either (and remember people, kids are supposed to watch the news because its educational).

I remember the Turok series. I remember renting Turok: Dinosaur Hunter from Blockbuster when I was 9. That game was like my "gateway drug" into shooters. I've got to remember to play through those games when I have the time.

High School is much worse then any M-rated game.

"whack"? I... thought that term had died out a while ago XD .

We should clearly note that just because a Parent decides to make a choice contrary to others, doesn't make them bad Parents. A Parent knows their own child better than anyone else and is in the best position to know what is or is not appropriate for their own child. No other individual, organization, and/or government entity can make as well inofrmed a decision about what is or is not appropriate for any given child as the child's own Parent can.

As "morally superior" as some folks feel, the above will always remain true.

Nightwng2000
NW2K Software

@Nightwng2000

Can't disagree. I'd say my mother brought me up pretty damn well, even though she let me play doom (a game rated 15 here in the UK) when I was 5, 10 years below the rating. I also played Duke Nukem 3D (an 18 rated game) at a very young age too.

I bought the first Grand Theft Auto game (not the very first--but you know what I mean) for my son when he was 12 years old. I had read about the game thoroughly beforehand, had watched the trailer and some cutscenes, and had looked at screenshots. As I was holding the game in my hand at ToysRUs (!) I told him--maybe a little too loudly--that he was not to beat and rob old women and that he was not to have sex with and steal from hookers and that you could have plenty of fun just doing the missions and not killing random people in the street.

The other parents in the videogame department looked at me like I was from Mars, and of course my son was mortified. However, he did play the game and he enjoyed it (I can't drive for shit in videogames so it wasn't much fun for me) and it was clear that he knew the difference between videogames and reality.

Similarly, I wouldn't take my son to every R-rated movie, but there were certainly some R-rated movies that were clearly no problem. But parents have to take an interest and educate themselves before they can make informed decisions.

Same here. I was probably 16 when I checked out my first M. And my parents were pretty tight about that stuff. Yes, I can distiguish between fantasy and reality, and so can most kids.

But then you get that one idiot who thought GTA heists would work in real life, and everything goes to hell.

Papa Midnight:

Middle and High School makes Grand Theft Auto look saintly. Kids are cruel. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that shit anymore.

In short, ESRB ratings only encourage lazy parenting.

I'm sorry but I just fail to see the issue on how for the 17 year old 12 months or less will make a difference.

Ahhh, but the controversy is driven by the fact that major retailers are still selling these Mature games to kids of all ages. The FTC says so. This is one of the dumbest articles ever, as no one disputes that kids can and do get these games by other means. Duh

I'd feel better about MTV's reporting if they asked those three how much porn they have accumulated as well.

...of course then parents would probably pee their pants, but I think it would make a nice counter-weight to this discussion.

What I'm trying to get at is if a kid wants something a kid will get something. Period. Good parenting is simply giving your kids the skill of good judgement. Even IF you made a penalty for aquiring games ahead of the ESRB rating it would be just as "effective" as prohibition was...

...or as effective as the lack of an R18 rating is in Australia as well.

Still rooting for all the Aussies here to get that!

What high schools did you guys go to that left you with the impression that they're worse than GTA? Nobody has a good time in school before college; hell, I got into my share of trouble, but I never whacked a hooker. Yeah, there's more cussing, drinking, and life-determining social integration in school than most kids let on to their parents, but there's a clear line between that and hitman-carjacker scenarios. If a kid is really into anything so dangerous, they get suspended or drop out. Sometimes both.

To my mind, saying that school "prepares" anyone for the content of an M-rated game (especially those grounded in relevant modern-day settings) is analogous to saying that those same games can "prepare" a challenged youth to become a school shooter. I'm okay with the declarations that education in North America needs improvement in a lot of ways and that the M should be a guideline, rather than a statute. But let's not take up the mantle of statements that inexorably link violent games to youth environments. That'll just feed the faulty chain of logic that well-meaning lawmakers grasp upon in their band-aid solutions: "if we ban violent games, high schools will be safe again!"

My mom tells me the first movie I ever really watched was Nightmare on Elm Street when I was about one. Oddly enough, despite the fact that I have baddass nightmare powers, I never feel the need to use them.

@Ian Cooper:

That's a glib interpretation. Using the ESRB is a tool to help parents decide, but much like other people are saying, it's not canon to them. Parents who understand what content is in a game and carefully decide to let their kids play aren't bad parents... it's the ones that don't understand what's in a game and still say it's okay. While an ESRB rating in and of itself is broad in definition (E, T, M, etc.), the box always contains descriptors on the back to mention the content that warranted the rating.

While I somewhat agree with you that using JUST the ESRB rating is still being a bit misinformed, the alternative of not having the rating is far worse.

Also, a good parent is one who continues to evolve with the world around them in order to better understand their children and the world they live in. Experience doesn't stop with the birth of a child.

@ecco6t9:

Erm... M rating is 17+. That means there's no with him when the interview was conducted. It seems to me he was recalling past experiences.

Yes, imagine if all of this was about wanting to restrict or ban murder mysteries (or books in general) because a tiny number of criminals claimed to be inspired by the things they had read.

@Chris B.

SPOT ON! :)

@ Chris B.

I noticed that you didn't put that you were arrested for the items listed and, unless you are incredibly skilled at manipulating objects beyond the grave or undead, you did not commit suicide so you and your family wouldn't have fallen into the topic that I discussed.

My topic was in response to the comment "A parent knows their own child better than anyone else and is in the best position to know what is or is not appropriate for their own child." Which we both hinted that the statement is a bit flawed as there are many parents who need a lesson in parenting.

Thompson,

Actually, what the FTC said a year ago was that when you provide a teenager (13 -16) with money, transportation, and instructions to buy an M-rated game they are successful at major retailers less than half the time (37%). As such, it’s difficult to say how big of a problem sales of M-rated games to minors really is. What would be really telling is an FTC study on how often sales of M-rated games to minors actually happens in the real world.

Oh, and if no one is disputing that kids “can and do get these games by other means” than why are you and others trying to pass legislation to prevent sales to children, the least common method of children obtaining these games?

“Duh” indeed.


Andrew Eisen

@Jack Thompson, soon to be former Attorney

Also, what of the MPAA then?

@Jack Thompson Attorney

Jack, while some retailers have sold M-Rated games to kids, the majority of them ask for an ID and the percentage of stores that card for an ID is increasing. Also I get the feeling that those kids who do buy M games get the money from their parents. One last thing Jack the article isn't saying that this is the only way that kids get violent video games; what it is saying is that this is how these three kids got GTA.

The idea that kids age 15 and 16 playing Grand Theft Auto are too immature for the content is almost laughable. They worse language in school every day, and worse violence on your average television show.

@Jack

Ahhh, but the controversy is driven by the fact that major retailers are still selling these Mature games to kids of all ages. The FTC says so. This is one of the dumbest articles ever, as no one disputes that kids can and do get these games by other means. Duh

You mean other means such as their parents purchasing M rated games for with full knowledge of the content, and no objection to it? Like two of these kids had done?

Horror of horrors, clearly retailers must put a stop to this! Parents can't be allowed to raise their own kids! Only the State, and lawyers wishing they could be Big Brother can be allowed to raise people's children.

Parents have the responsibility to monitor their kids, and to make decisions on their maturity. My parents let me play M-Rated games and I'm 14 because they know that I can distinguish between this and real life, and I'm not going to be influenced. Frankly, people need to realize that a one fit solution does not fit everyone, and its ultimately the parents responsibility to make choices based on what they know about their kids. I believe the major problem with video games are how some FPS's somehow present issues as black and white. while CoD 4 is a excellent game, its just another iteration of "we good, they bad, shoot them down to hell". Its just a problem with society, it seems easier to control the dumbed down populace with newstainment, and the latest dramas.
People like to blame video games for society's ills, but one essential fact remains; violence has always been present in the life of children, with even less nowdays. In my old school in India teachers used to beat kids for answering questions wrong. This is worse than playing Halo 3, this teaches kids that violent retribution is right. Yet ask a teacher in India what they think about video games, and they will probably talk about the degeneration by popular media. Video games are just used as scapegoats for all the problems in sociey, and people Jack Thompson find it easy to critizice virtual violence but not real life violence, i have never heard Jack Thompson talking about the million dead Iraqis or the four thousand dead American servicemen. this is the case with Fox news too, they find it easy to rave on about how video games will make you a killer, but they will always support violent solutions to problems in real lfe. This exposes a great amount of hypocrisy.

And some people still think that teenage boys can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

When I was younger, in my teens, I chose the games I wanted and most were E, E10+ and T rated games.

It was my own choice,

And looking back now, it would not be a crime for me to want an M rated game if I could feel that I knew about the difference between fantasy and reality.

Also I feel that my parents raised me really well, except they did not know a single thing about videogames and were often worried when things came up on the news.

But during my school life, I understood a bit more about how not to judge people before you are able to talk to them first.

Sometimes I feel that instead of forcing people to believe that an M rated game is bad for teens, you will do allot more better to TALK to teenagers who do want to play M rated games and see for yourself if they are violent, or perhaps miss-understood and they really want to just play games that they consider fun to them just like we all do.

Well, looking at all the torture memo and paid fake war news informant stuff finally being admitted to, I have little hope for our government or older-style (TV news) media coming to admit that videogames aren't a great evil, since they need scapegoats, but hopefully reiteration of the truth again and again will at least convince them that legislating against videogame sales would be useless because of the extremely limited potential for that to keep higher-age-rated games out of kids' hands when the parents usually buy them for the kids. Regardless of whether the children in question are mature enough.

Although switching legislation efforts to penalizing parents for not following age recommendations would be every bit as illegal, it would be a slightly more (larger population "protected") effective goal. But mostly, I'd prefer to see that because it would be so blatantly obvious how unconstitutional (and in other ways illegal) and unenforceable that would be--if the legislation were of that sort, it would have been quashed long past.

Of course, that might be giving our lawmakers too much credit, but so far they're been toeing the line for the First Amendment even when they liked the legislation against it, despite having no knowledge about the subject matter the laws would impact.

When are we putting the upper age limit in place for the judiciary, and stopping the president from appointing them so they aren't just toadies?

@Grizzam

Actually, exposure does NOT equal desensitization, and while I don't think you were saying it did, that false equation could be inferred from your methods. As it has been for videogame play's violence even though there is no correlation, let alone causation, between that and real violence or apathy toward the same.

Just observing something a number of times does nothing, for many people; and experiencing something a number of times tends merely to acquaint you with better methods to deal with it (or freak you out even more). That's just in the general world though, where we can intentionally expose ourselves to heights or darkness or whatever safely so that we're more accustomed to it--but even then, we're not desensitized, just taught better coping methods or shown that our fear isn't rational or given a better understanding of a scary critter to fend off our knee-jerk reactions.

People come away from the Army's frontlines with PTSD because the human brain's ability to deal with really traumatic events is diminished with each exposure. For example, a person who has already survived excrutiating torture will be MORE likely to break sooner and give more information simply because the anticipation of pain makes the real pain that much worse, and the knowledge of what each torture method will bring as far as pain or crippling makes it considerably harder to bear.

In the same vein, a soldier is at monumentally higher risk of PTSD with each exposure to battle, and this risk remains steady or rises, even with rest between, each time they return to battle. With extremely stressful events, contrary to popular misconception, we're more reactive to them the more we're exposed to them, even if we learn to hide that reaction.

That's why I've always wondered what people were smoking to infer that videogames' play violence a) illogically affected our reaction to or propensity to commit real violence, and following on that presumption, b) instead of making us more psychologically and physiologically reactive to such real-life distress events, desensitized us rather than causing us to react as we would to any real high-level stressors like replete violence.

There's no scientific backing for desensitization at all--only for "accustomization", where we come to accept certain actions as standard or adopt norms suited to our experiences, but limit those to the situations in which we witness them. We aren't less effected by them, just less startled. Of course, the degree to which that can occur with traumatic or vicious events is severely limited for the "normal" brain, and much the opposite occurs, an increased sensitivity to such events and whatever surrounds or accompanies them such that certain experiences can trigger flashbacks or depression.

I see a couple people putting examples like: my parents, me, or people i know. Just because you or people you know aren't affected, doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't happen. I found this page while doing a report, and although I agree that video games are not fully blamable for aggressive and/or anti-social behavior, I do think that violent ones can be contributed.

I also see the phrase: Good parents should be able to, or should know that...

Tell me, about how many parents are classified as good parents? And what is your definition of good, since it is an ambiguous term?

The fact of the matter is that society is depreciating.

Another thing: I think I read somewhere that up until mid to late teens, that children are fully shapable regardless of what they are being taught. Heck, I'm a good example of this in some sense. My parent's attempt to bring me up into a favorable person: hard-working, non-insultive, ignorant of the unfavorable society, which all of this I think I am. I have never sworn, don't listen to music, absolutely despise MTV, VH1, and all of them sex, gay, and lesbian shows my sister watches on end, as well as ignore the 'reality' TV (which is all acting, in my opinion). But, I find myself swearing in my mind, and longing for various unfavorable acts because of curiousity, since I don't have a clue as to what it's about.

Maybe I need help; I wonder that about myself constantly, but reassure myself through the fact that I try to force them out, which I can only seem to do by playing video games.

I don't own GTA, but have played it, and i have to say, I love putting in the tank cheat and blasting anything that gets in my way. of course, i know it can't and won't happen in real life. I try to stay realistic.

And now that my probably ignored lecture is coming to a close, I remind myself to finish that 10 page report so that I may become a computer/game programmer, so as to make games like GTA come to life. *sighs*