4 ms·
Good point. Is a game that simulates sex somehow less ethically acceptable than one that simulates murder or warfare?
by philbo 16y ago
Good point. Is a game that simulates sex somehow less ethically acceptable than one that simulates murder or warfare?
- tptacek 16y agoNo. It is equally bad to put realistic violence in the hands of grade school kids; I won't let my 11 year old play Call of Duty, and am actually a little queasy about Halo. I don't like that AO does to gaming what NC-17 does to movies; adults should be free to play adult-themed games. But I also don't see it as a great loss to humanity. It sucks a little that Microsoft and Sony are catering to a lazy style of parenting, but you can write those games for an uncensored platform instead.
- arethuza 16y agoI'm not sure that video games really make exposure to violence that much worse - certainly when I was in my youth in the '70s we didn't have video games but we did have imaginations that turned just about anything we could get our hands on into an imaginary weapon (being in the UK the Bad Guys were, of course, the Germans). I let my 11 year old play CoD and Halo - sometimes with a twinge of concern but as all his friends do it would have to be more than a twinge to make me stop him. I don't think this has impaired his view of violence in the real world - we watched a TV recreation of the events of Bloody Sunday and he was genuinely shocked by the behavior of British soldiers even though his school has an Army Cadet unit and he has friends with big brothers in the forces.
- tptacek 16y agoI don't think less of you for letting your 11 year old play CoD. But: why do you have that twinge? And, what does "what all his friends do" really have to do with your own parenting decisions? All my son's friends drink bottomless cups of carbonated sugar syrup, too.