Parenting Gamers

Understanding Your Gamer’s Disappointment

disappointed-boy
How do you handle this disappointment?

This is the first post in a new series I am starting called “As A Gamer” . These articles will be written from my perspective as a gamer, not a parent. My goal is to help you better understand your gamer’s worldview.

Imagine you have been invited to a big party. The invitations go out 6 months before the big day. All your friends were invited.

As the day draws closer, more information starts to come out about it. It turns out there are some major celebrities on the guest list! And there is going to be live music, your favorite band! You’re totally pumped, wishing it was tonight!

You start to get ready. This party is a big deal so you buy a new outfit. You make plans with your friends, deciding who is driving, when and where you will meet, what you are going to do when it is over. It is going to be a blast!

Finally, the big day is here! Instead of getting out of bed and starting to get ready, though, you promptly run to the bathroom to get sick. Somehow, you have caught the flu. No party for you. All that planning, all that anticipation, for nothing.

Your friends feel bad for you. You tell them to go enjoy themselves, to not let your sickness ruin their fun. And they do. They have a great time. You listen to their stories, wishing you could have been there too. But there is one overarching feeling you just cannot shake.

Disappointment.

That disappointment is exactly what I felt about Watch Dogs.

One of our main jobs as parents is to set healthy boundaries for our children. There will be times when those boundaries lead to disappointment for our gamers. They will want to play a game of which we do not approve. It is important to understand their disappointment while still standing firm.

While I have boundaries for my kids, I also have boundaries for myself. I understand that, even at 36, there is some content I just need to avoid.

The main boundary I have set for myself is with nudity and sexual content. This boundary applies whether I am talking about a video game, a movie, or a TV show. If it has nudity or strong sexual content in it, I avoid it.

Watch Dogs is a game I was anticipating. It is an open-world game like Grand Theft Auto, which I did not play because of the above mentioned boundary. It has a futuristic tone that seemed interesting. I was really hopeful it would be good.

As I do with any game that I’m anticipating buying, I looked up its rating. I went to the ESRB and found this:

  • Blood
  • Intense Violence
  • Nudity
  • Strong Language
  • Strong Sexual Content
  • Use of Drugs and Alcohol

Bah! Apparently Watch Dogs has several scenes of topless women and sexual acts. So this is a game I will not be playing.

I know I should not be surprised by this. And honestly, I’m not. This is the direction this genre is headed. I mean, when Grand Theft Auto 5 makes $1 billion in 3 days, people are going to copy.

However, I was extremely disappointed. My first thought when I saw it was, “Ugh! Why do they do that?”

Where does that disappointment come from? I have stressed the abundance of options in the video game industry. Heck, right now I have a slew of games in my Steam library. I have plenty other games to play. Missing out on one should not be that big a deal, should it?

It is a big deal for 2 reasons.

  1. As I said, I had been anticipating this game. This was not just a case of knowing about a game. I have been interested in it, rooting for it to be good since it was announced 2 years ago.
  2. I want to be part of the conversation. A big release like this dominates the gamer conversation for several weeks. All the major gaming sites have reviews up. All the podcast are talking about it. I want to participate, even if it is just by sharing the experience.

The thing I want you as a parent to understand is this disappointment is very real. Yes, you are the parent and you have to draw hard boundaries for your gamer. And yes, there are times when you have to be firm even under pressure from them. But it is important to understand where that pressure originates.

It might be defiance. It might be a misunderstanding of the boundaries, which should lead to a conversation about what they are and why they exist. It might be a reaction to the peer-pressure they are feeling.

Or it might be genuine disappointment that a game they were so excited about is off-limits.

This disappointment is an opportunity for you to connect with your gamer’s heart. Talk to them about it. Let them express why they are so disappointed. Acknowledge that their feelings are real and valid. Tell them a story about when you felt similar disappointment.

How to Handle Video Game Violence

mortal_kombat
Image by Barbara Williams2010, Creative Commons

In today’s society, it would be very easy to assume all video games are violent. The only time you hear about them in mainstream media is when someone who plays a lot of games does something terrible.

I started Parenting Gamers to combat that idea. I want to help you connect with your gamer. Coming at video games from a place of fear or attack will hurt that connection.

With that being said, however, the truth is, some video games are violent. Technology has advanced to the point where the graphics in these games are amazing. This gives developers the ability to depict more graphic situations than ever before.

As a parent, you are the arbiter of what is allowed in your home. No one knows your children better than you. No one understands what they can and cannot handle better than you. You have to decide what you are willing to allow in your home.

Know the Rating System

I have compared the ESRB rating system to the system used in movies. E = G, E-10=PG and so on. However, there is one distinction I want to make.

A movie can be rated R for many different reasons. The Passion of the Christ was rated R for its violence alone. The Heat received an R rating for some violence but mostly language. The Wolf of Wall Street for nudity and extreme sexual content, among other things. The R rating alone does not tell you everything you need to know about the content of the movie.

Video games, however, are different.

A video game with an M rating is violent.

I cannot think of any game that received an M rating for language or nudity without being violent. A game may include those things on top of violence. But with where things stand today, M means violent.

This makes it easy to keep violent games out of your home if that is the path you choose. If it is rated M, you do not want it. It is that simple.

If, however, you are OK with violence in certain situations, you will need to do some more research. Luckily the ESRB takes much of the guess work out.

You Have Options

I want to encourage you with this. Most video games are not violent. In 2012, the ESRB rated 1,218 games. 9% of those games received an M rating. That means 91% of the games rated received a rating equivalent to PG-13 or less.

So, whatever you choose for your home, you have options. There are a ton of quality games your gamer can play without being exposed to extreme violence. You just have to take an active role is helping them choose those games.

Evaluating Video Game Content

I am a firm believer in the benefits of video games. However, that is not to say that every video game is appropriate for everyone.

Part of our job as parents is to filter the content we allow our children to consume. This can be a tough job with video games. You can watch a movie or read the lyrics to a song to see if it is appropriate. However, video games can take hours to complete, if completion is even possible.

So how can you make sure your child is not going to see something inappropriate? That is where the ESRB comes in.

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is a non-profit, self-regulatory body that assigns age and content ratings for video games and mobile apps so parents can make informed choices.

ESRB About Page

The ESRB provides 3 levels of detail for each game. They are Rating Symbols, Content Descriptors, and Rating Summaries.

Rating Symbols

The first level of detail is the rating symbol. A game rating symbol is similar to a movies ratings. Here are the symbols the ESRB uses with their movie equivalents. You can find the full descriptions of these symbols here.

  • Early Childhood (EC) – Movie Rating = G
  • Everyone (E) – Movie Rating = G/PG
  • Everyone 10+ (E10+) – Movie Rating = PG
  • Teen (T) – Movie Rating = PG-13
  • Mature (M) – Movie Rating = R
  • Adults Only (AO) – Movie Rating = NC-17

Depending on the age of your child, a game symbol may be all you need to make a decision. I know I do not want my young children playing anything rated T or M. As they get older, however, I will need more information to make informed decisions. I will need to drill down to the Content Descriptors.

Content Descriptors

Rating symbols can only tell you so much. For example, The Passion of the Christ and Bridesmaids are both rated R. However, that rating means something very different for each movie.

You can use the content descriptors to get a better understand of a games content. These are included on the box with the rating symbol.

The ESRB will assign descriptors from their list of 30 possibilities. These include things like Blood, Intense Violence, and Nudity.

You will want to read through the descriptors when looking at a game for your child. If you are looking at an M rated game, it will be violent. I do not know of any M rated video games that are not violent. However, there may be other things in the game you do not want your child to see.

The Witcher 2 is an RPG that is rated M. It has the “Blood and Gore” and “Intense Violence” descriptors you would expect. It also includes the “Nudity” and “Strong Sexual Content” descriptors that you will not see in other games. This may not affect your view of the game but you will want to know about it before making a purchase.

Of course, sometimes even the content descriptors could use more detail. Thankfully, the ESRB includes full rating summaries on their website.

Rating Summaries

When evaluating a particular game, you may come across a descriptor you are not sure about. A good example is the “Partial Nudity” descriptor. Knowing what content triggered that descriptor can be helpful. You may not care if your teenage son sees a male backside but may not want him to see female nudity at all. This is when you will need to look at the game’s rating summary.

Unlike the rating symbol and content descriptors, which can be found on a game’s box, the rating summary is found on the ESRB website. Here is their definition of the summary.

Rating summaries are a supplementary source of information that go beyond ESRB ratings to give parents a detailed yet brief and straightforward description of exactly the kind of content they would want to know about when choosing a game for their child.

With this summary, you should have all the information you need to evaluate a given game.

I highly recommend you take some time to get to know the ESRB website. It can be found at esrb.org. You can check out their FAQ here.