Culture Clash

(June 2008)

Rated M for Make up Your Own Damn Mind

Deciding what kids can play

“Pretend you have an eight year old son,” a friend said recently. “Which of these games would you let him play?”

We were sitting in front of the 360, and since I'm mostly a PC gamer, my console collection isn't really that enormous. Thus I peered at the stack thinking the inquiry had an easy answer. But it didn't. His seemingly obvious question actually gave rise to a much more complicated challenge, a metasociological conundrum of child husbandry.

What exactly are we trying to protect the world's eight year olds from? What content in which game would so break my fictional offspring that I would not allow him to consume it until he's older? Is the concern that violence will frighten the kid? Some parents believe that playing violent games will make young people violent themselves, but I don't. No well-raised, healthy child is going to shoot up a school because he played Grand Theft Auto, and only hysterical alarmists would claim otherwise, as they have claimed since time immemorial about everything.

But even so, we need some limit on what my imaginary spawn can be allowed to play. He's certainly not getting free rein just because I happen to work in the industry. Arguably I should be stricter about this stuff, since I'm a gamer myself and know exactly how rough some Mature-rated titles can be. The funny thing about rated content, though, is that one man's pornography is another's art. Moreover, sometimes there's darkness lurking in things you might consider most innocuous.

Viva Piñata is by all accounts a kids' game. It's about farming piñatas, for crying out loud; how bad can it be? But I wonder whether parents would be so willing to hand it over to young kids if they knew about Viva Piñata's incest, cannibalism, animal cruelty, strongly implied bestiality, land defilement, exploitation of helpless creatures, GLBT relationships, or absentee parentism. Many would happily buy Wii Fit for their rotund progeny, only to squawk when the game shatters confidence and leaves the ego in ruins. Gears of War features chainsaw disembowelment, but it doesn't call you fat. Is violence worse or better than a snide crack about your weight? Should warning labels about anorexia and murderous rampages come on game boxes? And if so, where's the consistency? Elevator Action is violent, nobody complained about it. Gears is more realistic, but at least you're bisecting non-humans. Or does that mean the game condones racism? The fact is you can find something offensive in everything.

Consider another parental pickle: is it worse to let a kid chainsaw Locust hordes, or to let him eat his weight in Hot Pockets? According to Jack Thompson and Fox News, violent videogames are far, far more injurious to a child's health than junk food. Here in Reality Land, though, the jury's still out on the effects of games on young minds, while we can all agree that childhood obesity – brought on largely because parents let their kids eat as much as they want of whatever they want – is killing a generation. Games have warning labels, most food products do not. And never mind that games teach and inspire, while chocolate Paydays and soft drinks do no such thing. Parents tear out their hair deciding which games are okay for little Timmy to play even as they hand the sprog a creamsicle to suck on while he awaits their conclusion.

The last few months saw the release of both the Byron Report and Grand Theft Childhood, two publications that are of great value in the defense of the games industry. The now-familiar refrain – that parents, not developers or retailers, are primarily responsible for monitoring their offspring's entertainment consumption – has been lent extra credence thanks to those two largely supportive studies. Parents, however, tend to ignore the help the industry provides, claiming that the ratings system is too complicated.

Which, I gotta say, makes me worry about the parents of the world. I'll grant that PEGI's obscure glyphs could use a little work, but that's about it. If you're a parent and you see a number or age category on a game box, how hard can it be to make the Herculean mental leap to the conclusion that the kid should be that age or older in order to play?

Ratings are not parental tutors. They eject their payload of information without any spin or discussion: this game is violent. That game has drug references. This game has lewd humor. That's it; the ratings and content descriptors don't tell parents how to parent, they're just the facts, the equivalent of an ingredient list. It's up to the parent, who knows their child, to make more fine-tuned decisions. This leads us back to my friend asking which 360 games I'd allow my eight year old to play, if I had one.

After thinking hard, I was surprised to conclude that I'd be okay with the kid playing almost any game in my collection, just not necessarily by himself. Certain games would, I felt, call for the presence of an adult – not to supervise, exactly, but to provide a context. Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect and Bioshock , for example, include themes of religious friction, racism, and drug use; things I'd want to explain, give historical framework, and couch in my own values. Simple exposure to such content isn't going to hurt a kid, and mature discussion of those themes might be very valuable.

All in all I could come up with only three games in the admittedly small pile that would unequivocally receive a “not until you're older” stamp. Gun, because I don't want to explain prostitution to an eight year old; Devil May Cry 4, because of its outrageous, venomous misogyny; and Dead Rising, because it's such a mean-spirited game, and so hateful in its portrayal of Americans. The violence in those three games doesn't enter the equation at all.

That may seem like an industry wog's self-support, saying “all games are okay for all ages,” but it's not that simple. Personally I believe that kids are affected by very different things than adults are; they perceive violence as an abstract concept while we recognize it as a terrifying reality. Meanwhile, we can shrug off blistering slurs and insults that would smash a child's heart. When asking yourself what games you'd allow a child to play, consider not only the milk-eggs-flour of the content, but how the flavors combine to form an experience. As helpful as those little ratings symbols on the bottom of the box are, they lack wisdom, something a parent must have to spare.