I spend a lot of time thinking about the age appropriateness of various types of video game content.
I do this not only because it’s my job – in addition to covering games for Post Arcade I also contribute to an American outlet that focuses on evaluating media and technology with parents in mind – but also because I am a dad.
Up until last year, I had the sense that most of my daughter’s peers generally played age-appropriate games – Minecraft, Mario Kart, what have you. But as soon as she hit the fourth grade her schoolyard chums were suddenly talking to her about playing Grand Theft Auto and Saint’s Row – games with heaping amounts of violence, sex, drugs, and profanity, not to mention heroes with serious morality handicaps that are never rectified.
This probably shouldn’t have shocked me, yet it did. I’m all for moms and dads deciding what their kids can and can’t handle, but I felt like asking her teacher for a list of parents’ email addresses so I could send out a subtly scolding missive informing these kids’ folks in no uncertain terms of what they’re letting their kids – all of whom are of an age that can still be counted on the fingers of two hands – consume.
Still, I’ll allow that it can be hard – especially for non-gaming parents – to determine when kids are mature enough to properly process things like simulated violence and intercourse.
The key, it seems to me, lies in being involved and interested in what your kids are doing so you can see their reactions, interpret them, and talk about difficult concepts as they come up.
A recent article in Wired magazine asks the question: When is the right time for my kid to watch Star Wars? The answer – wonderful in its simple, inarguable truth – is that age isn’t as important as the person sitting on the couch beside them when they do.
Granted, games are different than movies. Most parents aren’t likely to sit beside their kids for 50 hours while they play through a giant role-playing game. But there are other ways in which they can be meaningfully involved with their kids’ interactive entertainment.
Activision
Back in 2009 a story made its way around the web about a 13-year-old boy who was dying to play Call of Duty – one of the earlier iterations set during the Second World War. The game was rated for players 18 and up due to its gritty violence, and his father wasn’t sure it was a good idea. But he also knew his son, and he understood him to be a mature and reasonable kid. So he made a deal with him: His son had to read the Geneva Conventions before he played the game and then discuss them with his dad. When the kid started playing he needed to take note of whether characters in the game followed the rules of war, then talk to his dad if they didn’t.
It’s a terrific example of a responsible father understanding his kid and taking an interest in his hobby. More than that, it made the son think critically about what he saw while playing – certainly more than the majority of kids who play Call of Duty.
In the years since that story came out I’ve occasionally received emails from parents wondering about the age appropriateness of certain games – as well as kids who have petitioned me to contact their parents because they decided not to allow them to play a particular game based on one of my reviews.
Both types of correspondence make me happy. The former reassure me that not all parents let their kids play whatever games they like without considering what might be in them, while the latter are generally written by smart kids who are as passionate about the medium as I was at their age – a possible indication that they may, in fact, be ready to play a given game even if they aren’t of its ESRB-approved age.
I always start my responses to parents by telling them that they know their kids best, then try to give them a sense of what their son or daughter will encounter in the game. Then, in the creative spirit of the dad who made his son read the Geneva Conventions before playing Call of Duty, I sometimes attempt to come up with a way to satisfy both sides. Give the kid a chance to play, but in a way that makes him or her think about the experience in a mature way.
A young teen recently asked me to explain to his parents why ought to be allowed to play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, an open-ended fantasy role-playing game in which the player has complete control over the protagonist’s personality and actions. He or she can be noble champion who always quests to do the honourable thing, or a duplicitous villain, killing innocents and stealing anything that captures their eye.
Bethesda SoftworksThere are a lot of dragons in Skyrim
My suggestion to the teen’s father – assuming he thought his son was prepared for the game’s graphic violence, which is unavoidable no matter the player’s decisions – was to instruct his son to play the game as though he were the hero, to make the same decisions he himself would make in the real world. Then he was to have chats with his dad, who would ask questions like: Are there appropriate consequences to criminal actions? Did situations come up in which doing the right thing was notably less appealing than doing the wrong thing? What did you choose to do?
There’s a world of difference, I think, between mindlessly performing actions in a game and being forced to think about what those actions mean. Adults tend to think about significance and symbolism naturally, but kids often get caught up in the giddy spectacle of the action. They internalize what they see without considering what it means. Having a conversation with an adult to dissect the substance of the experience can help change that.
I received another email from a parent a few years ago about the appropriateness of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood for her early-teens son.
I’ve always thought the Assassin’s Creed games’ incredibly detailed recreations of period locations (in this case Rome circa 1499) were so impressive that they could serve as viable supplements to a social studies course. So I described its mature content – bloody melee combat, some language and sexuality – and suggested to the mom that if she thought her son could handle that, she should consider having him dig deeper into the experience by researching the accuracy of specific landmark buildings, the social customs of the time as described in the game, and some of the actual historical characters that pop up in the narrative.
My thought was to create a dialogue between the mother and her son. He could talk to his mom about what he was passionate about and maybe even learn something, and she would have an opportunity to better understand what her son was doing with his free time.
MicrosoftYou can create your own worlds in Minecraft
Thankfully, my own daughter is still quite satisfied playing Minecraft and Mario Kart, which is fine by me. There’s a world of entertaining games without blood and sex and profanity that even adults can have fun playing. No need for kids to get to games with more mature themes until they’re good and ready.
But even in games appropriate for her age I’ve still found opportunities to discuss concepts like consumerism (Skylanders), the depiction of female characters (Disney Infinity), and even cruelty to animals (Pokemon).
Point being, it’s important to know what your kids are playing – not just in order to ensure they can properly process it, but also to discuss what it means, make them think critically about it, and simply show them you’re interested in what they’re doing.
When you’re beside them, guiding them in even the subtlest of ways, you’re helping ensure that your kids will eventually be able to make smart decisions about what they choose to play and how they think about it when the day eventually comes that you aren’t there.
