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1. Comment - Survey: Parents fear in-game sex, real life drugs

   (Aug 23, 2008 - 9:12 PM)

   Hello,
   
   I am an avid gamer, and have been for the majority of my life. From what I've come to understand about parents and video games is VERY simple. I shall start by listing them.
   
   1) Parent's get so obsessed over what types of cause-effect relationship that video games hold over their children, but they fail to check the ESRB rating on the back of the game before they purchase it for their child. Why? Because it's fairly obvious that little Jimmy who they never have to yell at, and feel the need to buy whatever he requests for them, without researching said item being bought, would NEVER think to do anything 'bad' behind their parents back.
   
   This is a fairly simple reason. In the current times, parent's are being much less responsible when it comes to proper child rearing, and fail to instill values, morales, and do checks on their own mental maturity. If your child doesn't know right from wrong, and you buy the child a violent game like Grand Theft Auto (GTA) or Gears of War (GoW); and they go out into the world and replicate said action in a video game on another human being, it is NOT the video games fault. Instead, it falls on the parent who bought the game, which their child was not mature/smart/ enough to handle it, and understand that it is just a game.
   
   2) The path and controversy that video games is currently under-going, seems to be a repeat of what happened to music, a good ten~thirty years back. Hmmm, a child goes out, smokes weed, and kills someone. It must be musics fault for them singing about drugs, rape, and violence. Sound Familiar? Current entertainment seems to be the communities favorite scape goat for when a child acts up and lashes out at society for something. Look at Columbine High School for example. The two shooters went in, murdered a large number of people, then commited suicide. What was the original and IMMEDIATE blame for this? A game called Doom. But once they investigated the actual cause, it turned out to be something much different than what they had originally pinned it on. A game.
   
   I have many more examples if you wish for me to list them, but I think that these two would suffice in going to show that if a parent isn't comfortable with their child playing a game, then they should do research on it, and not buy it for them.
   
   If their child does something and gets into trouble, buck up. It's your kid. It's your responsibility. Stop trying to blame it on something else, and pay for your own mistakes of not properly raising your child. Punish the child, and ensure that it never happens again.
   
   Joe-