Well this happened recently. The answer is what you'd expect at face value. A big scary M rated game can't possibly be marketed at kids could it? Its Assassins creed, its got ass and assassins all in that one word so its double as evil for kids right? Next thing you know they'll be running around in knives and hoodies stabbing each other. Oh wait, Ninjas are already marketed to kids and have been for years, and yet their not waging ninja clan wars against each other and the human race has been going along like normal. They aren't picking up and swinging katanas, or throwing poisoned shurikens, they're instead laughing about ninja jokes or "ninjaing" something (usually means invisibly achieving something) with their friends. Actually at the likeliest extreme they end up reading and taking an interest in Japan's history and how Ninjas legitimately existed. This leads me to a pretty bold topic about kids and violent video games, and a point I've been wanting to talk about for a while. To put it blunt I'm tired of two things around this subject: Treating kids like idiots who must be sheltered from anything spooky or morally questionable, and hypocrites who are calling for this while growing up playing M rated games themselves.
I think I've covered this in the past, but just to be clear I've been playing violent games since I was little. Not many necessarily, most video games on the whole were hard for me to grasp, but I know turok 2 was still among one of them, alongside Rampage if that's worth anything. There was a PlayStation 2 in my household before I was out of elementary school, and I know that's where a lot of my main course of childhood gaming came in and was also the same console and time period where I became a fan of FPS games (Turok evolution, Killzone, and timesplitters 2 being among some of my favorites around the time). I'm not an exception either, as my group of friends consisted of gamers who had been well experienced in gaming as well with pretty much everyone of them being massive fans of Halo (which sadly I couldn't discuss much with considering console barriers). I did know a couple of guys with it restricted, and that wasn't necessarily working out the best. The gamers I knew that were able to play what they wanted were good people. Heck most of them wouldn't even risk doing something as aggressive as an argument. I wouldn't say it necessarily had something to do with the games, but I can safely say the opposite isn't true where gaming somehow makes them bad.
Kids aren't idiots. Censoring things from them can be necessary, but there's a matter of what it is being censored. How real is it, how could it impact there lives, and how could it be a risky exposure? Heavy dark material might be held back to shelter them a bit longer from a horrible or grim concept they may not be able to cope with. Nudity and sex might be something you'll want to keep at least until their about teenagers (and then there's considered a time where you should "talk" about it). Intense language... perhaps, yeah you wouldn't want them repeating that. At the very least tell them these are words that aren't worth repeating. However laser guns, dagger drop down kills, impaling enemies, and other cartoonish levels of crazy fantasy violence... yeah they're not going to have their lives shattered by that or a bit of swearing. If they know right from wrong, that's just it. It starts and ends with the video game, at least as much as it does for most of us. I'm sorry but hours upon hours of shooting laser auto-rifles at monkies in Timesplitters does not turn a person evil, and neither will Master Chief's megablock form. To a totally sane being, be it of age 8 or 44, common media violence should not be much to worry about. Now on the other hand if we bring the topic to online play within some of the violent games, I'd worry about taking some parental precautions there as the explicit content can be much more unpredictable. Plus it'll save us of complaints about them using microphones.
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| Uh... you need 18 years of life to handle this? Really? |
So please stop with the media grade BS about violent video games. Its not hurting your children, they aren't hypersensitive to this thing. Sure maybe as a parent you can decide some stuff is too much for your kids. Heavy rain, GTA, and more might have some content that goes beyond just random arcadey violence, and I wont blame you if you hold that back from a kid. However just seeing M or violent fiction at face value is a really low thing to judge on, and to be blunt its a bit showing of how shallow some people are (is violence really all you can see in AC? Please tell me you're exaggerating, otherwise you may be the one with the problem). These are the same ratings that demand you to be a teen to see Pikachu hitting Mario in Smash bros, or the shocking revelation of a cartoon cannon in Worms 3D. Oh yeah and there was that recent inconsistency with Dark Souls 2, where I'm hoping they came to their senses and admitted that yeah Dark Souls isn't so bad that you must be an adult to endure swords hitting polygons. Meanwhile there are kids discussing Mortal Kombat in middle school who are handling their lives just fine.
Honestly though the funny thing is this wasn't the subject of what sparked this discussion. Instead its about Ubisoft taking AC to kids through toys and other potential routes. I don't know for sure how its going to look several years from now, but if they were to make a kid friendly spin-off of the series, or simply go into other mediums like toys, books, etc then I say sure go for it. I don't think it actually is the best idea, but it can happen and its far from the only thing to do it. I wonder if people were such hypersensitive bubblewrap type parents over the subject matter of Aliens, and Mortal Kombat invading television and toys in past decades. Heck I adored the evolution cartoon when I was little, and that was linked to more of a mature comedy movie. Here's a brief spoiler for how this all went; Kids did fine. Oh but toy lightsaberes, solider figurines with guns, megablock pirates (which the AC stuff looks soooo close to), and person sized cowboy pop guns were always okay for kids, because double standards are fun! Stop treating kids like idiots guys. Seriously, you're not doing them any favors by telling someone they can't handle a bit of digital fantasy violence... or plastic violence? Stop being that shallow and let kids find for themselves what is fun in the entertainment industry. Who knows, maybe they'll be inspired to learn history from Assassins Creed just like I wanted to learn all about WW2 after playing some MOH games.
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| Oh the inhumane horror! |
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