Ben-DutkaThis is exactly what I've been talking about for years.
The politicians and lawmakers and general video game haters can blame the games all they want. The ESRB ratings are there for a reason, titles like Grand Theft Auto V are not in any way designed – or marketed to – children, and if a kid ends up with a copy, the blame lies entirely with the parents or direct caregivers.
Check out this disturbing article posted over at Kotaku. It's from someone who works in a game store, and he said he sold a lot of copies of GTAV to parents who "just don't give a damn." In fact, he says he sold the game to parents with kids "who could barely see over the counter." This is the crux of the problem. This is why we have people wondering what sort of effects a game like GTAV can have on kids.
As far as I'm concerned, we don't need to wonder; the effects are guaranteed to be detrimental. That's because the game wasn't made for children, and the entire video game industry never once intended it to be played by children. It's not marketed toward kids, it has the big fat "M" (Mature) rating on the box with plenty of information attached to it, and nobody at Rockstar or Take-Two is purposely trying to corrupt our youth. They're not making a game for our youth; they're making a game for adults. Just like any filmmaker makes a violent movie and doesn't mean for it to be seen by children.
It's the number of clueless parents that has always concerned me. It almost seems as if a shocking majority of parents aren't qualified to be parents. It doesn't take more than a few minutes to do a bit of research online; you'd find out very quickly that GTAV isn't a game for your 8-year-old. And if you think it doesn't matter, if you think your kid can "handle it," you're disqualified to be a caregiver of young, developing individuals. End of story.
Related Game(s): Grand Theft Auto V
Go watch the last episode of Annoyed Gamer on GT. He calls out those type of people.
AMEN!!
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/at1oul/annoyed-gamer-gta-v-is-not-the-enemy
Heck yea but wen something bad happens everybody looks at the video game industry lik o I thought all games r 4 kids wtf really
RIGHT ON! "Silicon babysitting" with NO overview BEFOREHAND = irresponsibility!
Maybe the ESRB ratings should change to the letters used by the movie rating company's. Restricted replaces mature, pg-13 replaces teen, and so on. Maybe then the parents would get it.
How many stores sell the games to anyone, Walmart, Target, Game Stop, etc., all are guilty of selling games to kids that they shouldn't. Yes there are plenty of dumbass parents to buy GTA V! Hell, my GF at the time, her ex husband bought GTA IV for her son, because he wanted to be the cool dad, after I had told him no that we weren't going to get the game for him because of the material and content… And he was told the coffee code by his friends… BTW he was 11 when it was released, he also had a comprehension problem and was more like a 8 or 9 year old.
Y'all crack me up, on one hand you ALL berate the media and politicians for claiming violent video games are responsible for screwing up today's youth, then in the next breath you all berate the parents for buying such games for their children because YOU feel they WILL screw up the kids… The FACT is, is that NO TWO PEOPLE ARE THE SAME, NO ONE can lay a blanket claim such as "Game X will corrupt our children" and it be truthful when the fact of the matter is that no one knows how something will honestly effect anyone. Most people can't even say how something will effect THEMSELVES. How would ANY of you REALLY react to say, seeing a shooting death first hand? People might have an IDEA of how they MIGHT react, but no one KNOWS how they will react because they have NEVER been in such a situation. Fact is that there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions or more) acts of violence in video games playing out every day of the year, yet there are VERY few instances where this video game violence directly contributes to real world violence every year. To say GTA 5 (or a similar game) WILL screw up "children" in general is in itself an idiotic statement, especially when coupled with the fact NO ONE knows how something will effect someone else.
Should a parent buy a violent video game for their child? Shouldn't THAT be up to the PARENT and not YOU, or politicians, or the media? Or all of you whining about one group but turning around and being hypocrites? It's NOT weather a parent buys a game for their child that is the issue IMO, it's what the parent does AFTER they buy the game. The ones that leave the kids to their own devices and have no further input into what the child sees are the ones the disturb me, what a GOOD parent should do is EXPLAIN TO THE CHILD what is right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable in what they see take place in a video game. What saddens me is that there are very few parent, in my experience, that actively take part in explaining to their children the way of life. Children are smarter than most adults give them credit for, it's not like they hit 18 and some magic switch flips and all of a sudden they KNOW the ins and outs of the world and what is proper and what is social unacceptable, THOSE are things a PARENT should be TEACHING their children, and where MANY fail in my eyes.
Really, all I see here are people complaining about politicians wanting to make video games very restrictive and limited in sales then the SAME people turning around and saying "oh that parent shouldn't buy THAT for their child", which equates out the EXACT SAME THING politicians are saying… Besides, do ANY of you KNOW that EVERY parent is JUST letting their child play the game w/o any sort of supervision? Yes I'm sure many are doing just that, but ALL of them???
I have been playing video games since the late '80s, I have known MANY people who have also played video games for a LONG time, but I personally don't know a single person who has taken the violence they have seen in video games and translated it to real life, NOT A SINGLE PERSON. No, I do not have any children of my own yet but when I do I fully intend to make sure they UNDERSTAND the difference between acceptable behavior and unacceptable, THAT is what parenting is TRULY about.
@t SirLoin there are the Sly collection.Jak and Daxter collection,littlebig plante 1,2 and Modnaition racers,little big planet jkart racing and that there Nintendo for kids age 4 to 13.
there are parents who know about the rating of games they buy for their kids it just they don't care as long their little one is busy playing a game so the parent can spend time on facebook