Bad parenting really is international..

[PokeParadox]

GTA (1-X) is much worse than Quake.

In Quake you save the world (good guy) from monsters with strange weapons in a strange looking environment.

In GTA you are a full grown criminal in citys that look like real ones.

I'd rather give/pay my son puzzle games and lessons on musical instruments, sports and philosophy

so he will be more creative, useful and popular with the ladies too .

This is only half right. In GTA you have the freedom to do what you want. Honestly the number of times in San Andreas I was just cruising around the map with customs tracks blasting out... I can't even remember.

Of course to advance the game progress you have to do the missions and probably do stuff like kill/steal etc but it's possible to exprience part of the game innocently.

But I still don't agree with someone so young being allowed to play the game although I was playing Duke Nukem 3D when I wasn't 18... I forget how old I was but yeah. It depends on the mental maturity I guess.

 

[thatgui]

So, we can safely say that every age rating system is just complete nonsense and everbody should do as he/she pleases ?

These rating are meant as a warning. It is not for everyone. A 14 kids can have the foot way more in the reality than some adults.Yes GTA5 is bad, but that wont make the majority of kids drug dealers or cars stealers...

Don't know about France, but around here they aren't a warning but a legal restriction with legal consequences if authorties become aware of a neglect. Playing GTA5 (or any other game that connects non social behaviour with success) certainly does not make somebody a criminal / murder/etc., that would imply a causality that simply has noting to do with reality.I was about 9 or 10 when I first entered the 80s action movie wolrd with my father. I was also told that the things that I saw weren't real - but a childs minds just don't work that way (http://www.creativecriminals.com/images/vwachildrenseethingsdifferently1.jpg).

The problem here is that no one can tell whether harm was done or not as there is no "comparison group", so you can't determine wether your son is affected or not in any way.

Otherwise what arguments would be left against freeing any other "adult" material from any age restriction. I'm sure I could sit down with my son, tell him that what he is about to see has little to nothing to do with how adults have sex, and watch some porn movies with him, and would not see abnormal behaviour. His future girlfriends may, but that is something I would not notice anyway.

Long speech little sense:

Age verification is there for a reason and it may be too strict in some or even many cases, but that is just the problem if you wan't to apply a set of rules to something as complicated as human society/human beeings. But in my opinion thats a price worth paying, as what harm is done if someone is playing a game at the age of 18 instead of 16 ?

The issue is : all the friend of your kids have the game. So it's either he gets it and play at home (aka under your control) or he's every day at a friend'sd house or an other to play that game with his friend (aka without your control).

Mine got GTA4 last year, I've some of his friends coming home to play this. Previously, my kid was moving to others friends' house to play that.

I deeply prefer having him home. So I can force a few pauses in the game hence having the game a bit less immersive.

Where is the difference ? There is no reason to believe that your son playing some games at a friends place is less immersive than at home.

 

[fusion_power]

The main issue (at least in germany) is that the "child protection lobby" is very very huge and powerful. They just need scenes like these little kids playing adult games to have another reason to put a game or Movie onto the index which is a direct consequence also for Adults. Resulting in cut versions, "indexed" titles that are not allowed to be advertised or even completely banned like basicly every "Mortal Combat" title still is in germany. I blame all Parents that let heit little kids play these games and I blame all little stupid kids that dare to play adult games and then get issues because of this. There are Age classifications for a reason and at least here it's a crime to give children access to this stuff.

It's really frustreating when yo uas adult has to suffer from stupid youth protection laws that don't protect the youth but stop adults from consume what they want. Thanks to steam and thir politics for example, many titles are not available in germany or just in cencored versions I hate this so much, I could vomit all day because of this behaviour! I hate censorship over everything but it just doesn't get much better.  Before I watch a movie in german TV I always visit www.schnittberichte.com to chweck if the movie is watchable (uncut) or not (cut). FSK18 means it's for adults but does not mean it's uncut then, that's the problem.  Most of the more mature stuff is cut in TV here, at least not in sexual things but as soon as violence comes in, it went bad. From Horror to Action, and especialy Anime stuff (yeah, great idea to put Dragonball, One Pice, Naruto, Innu Yasha & Co. in the daily kids TV frame to pretend these are cartoons for little brats -_- ).

Sorry, pretty emotional theme. ^^"  I just suggest to let your kids NOT play these games, wath these Movies until they can handle it. Even if only to prevent weird buerocrats to find more reasons to censor and ban such stuff even for adults.

 

[Klumpen]

The issue is : all the friend of your kids have the game. So it's either he gets it and play at home (aka under your control) or he's every day at a friend'sd house or an other to play that game with his friend (aka without your control).


Mine got GTA4 last year, I've some of his friends coming home to play this. Previously, my kid was moving to others friends' house to play that.


I deeply prefer having him home. So I can force a few pauses in the game hence having the game a bit less immersive.

Where is the difference ? There is no reason to believe that your son playing some games at a friends place is less immersive than at home.

The difference is, that you do not support it.

Talking with the parents of your childs buddies or even keeping a friendship to them also solves some problems.

BTW: What Fusion_Power says is true. By now I try to get uncensored german language versions from Austria,

which is not easy every time. In Germany, every part/version of Unreal Tournament and Fallout is censored, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic und many other games too,

Mortal Kombat and Quake 3 Arena is completely banned and Doom 1+2, Quake 1 and Duke Nukem 3D were banned for about 20 years before last year, I think.

 

[fusion_power]

It seems GTA5 will be uncut and FSK18, and there are Uncut Patches for UT as usual. For UT3 it is enough afaik to rename some files. Yes, they went a little bit more tolerant in the last years, de-banning Doom and quake series was an important step imho. And after 25 years onto the "Index" titles are de-banned automaticly if the ban is not renewed. Funny example for me was "River Raid", yes, this eveil, blood drained game was banned for almost 20 years in germany!

 

[Fzero]

blimey - Not seen/played that River Raid game in years.

Used to really enjoy that too, completely forgotten about.

Think it was on my Atari 2600 I had a copy

Nice one for the flashback