A recent article in the Daily Telegraph shows us that in Australia (and presumably the rest of the world), most parents don’t understand how to control the video games their children play.
This really is not a good thing; as we have seen over the last twenty years, video games are depicting increasingly realistic violence and sexuality. I personally do not have an issue with this trend. As an open-minded adult, I have no problems with blood or boobs, but I do understand that parents want to control how much access their children have to this sort of thing… and to be honest, I think that I wouldn’t want my kids accessing some of that stuff until they reached a particular age.
Many parents keep a watchful eye on the movies and television shows that their kids watch, and I’m sure that media beatups of games for adult concepts must have at least some of them alarmed. So I encourage them to get involved. Learn how to lock down that console, and discuss game choices with kids. Research what games are coming out. Obviously your thirteen year old son is not going to want to play the latest “My Little Pony” adventure, but he’ll probably be up for Modern Warfare 2 or Dragon Age.
In the meantime, we should keep campaigning for an 18+ rating on video games. The market has moved beyond teenagers killing time in front of the TV. This is now entertainment being pitched at adults, and as such games need to be classified that way. Given that the OFLC has forced Valve to censor Left 4 Dead 2, I’ll be importing a copy from the UK.
But I won’t be letting anybody’s kids play that copy.