| S.T.A.G.E. said: Tomb Raider has generally been rated Teen which starts at 13+ but was an exaggerated experience coming after the likes of Pitfall with a sexualized female. The reason the new Tomb Raider was rated M was because they turned Lara Croft into Rambo in a desperate attempt to get the male population to take her seriously. If you ask me, another game called the Last of Us is priming us for how you create a proper female protagonist who commands respect and doesnt feel forced in a male dominated audience. Gamers have matured because the majority of them are over the age of thirty who grew up with gaming and still game to this day. There are still ratings guidelines for anyone under eighteen in the US. Yes, the children who play certain games who play mature games before their time have essentially lost their innocence. They've become desensitized. Name the games that you would consider good for a 11 or 13 year old because they will always choose violence over Mario. We were kids, the most anticipated games were the ones we never should've been playing. It's always going to be the talk of the town for kids and they will never understand why they shouldn't yet be allowed to play it. As I said before, this is why horror genres are dying out or are secondary. They have to resort to cheap peek-a-boo tactics to make you jump now. Kids innocence are generally numbing to the effects to the simulated experience. It's widely accepted by psychologists that videogames have desensitization effects on children, they just want to know what spark it but even though they are taking the right steps they are studying ass backwards. A gamer knows that if you want to study the psychological and physiological makeup of a game you use a non-gamer as the variables (major testers whom will have varied effects)and the lifelong gamer as the control (without letting him know he's an experiment). They are doing a study on desensitization of at such early ages so choosing college students defeats the purpose as well. They are using the wrong people to test out their theories. This is also a similar case to movies. http://utsa.edu/today/2013/08/videogames.html In 2014 they should have the results of the study. I assure you it will have a backwards result. If we have zero standards for society in protecting our childrens gradual growth well then, we get what we get. |
Exactly my point on the second paragraph, instances where we as 30 yr old gamers who have played since the late 80, I am at least used to all games. I understand how the industry has changed with the improvement of graphics. In the late 80s games could never be considered violent as it was too comical, little sprites shooting pixel out of a gun is not considered 'violent'. As graphics improved so did the realism, which means they are more violent but we have grown with this improvement. Kids however haven't, they start with games where realistic looking people are killing other people.
In most cases though it's down to the individual child/parent. In answer to your other question above as well, ratings does not have any affect on me as a gamer, I'm old enough to know what games I want to buy. However, I'd have to consider the relative maturity of the person I'm buying the game for, a 13 yr old may be mature enough for me to buy them the 15 rated Uncharted, however I wouldn't let them play GTA. A 9-11yr old shouldn't be playing Uncharted.
This said, I also wouldn't let a kid play any game I'd consider bad in general, this is elitism/snobbery.
Hmm, pie.
