Computer Gaming and the ASD Child

[LancsLad]

I was of the view that a couple of my comments had hijacked a thread regarding an individuals dilema which did involve a xbox and her son. The post developed into computer gaming in general and so I have attempted to move the debate across to a better titles post to give it some longevity. There are some excellent comments prviousy made and so would search for 'Sorry folks in need of a rant' if you come to this some way down the line.

 

to continue....

 

Darkshine is very right in saying that games are changing in a big way. I will try and explain why and how this is happening and hopefully highlight the need for parents to be pretty clued up as to what their children are playing and how this might affect ASD kids, some ideas for thought really.

 

There was a time as we managed to disect silicon in half that processor speeds could double possibly twice a year or so, that period has simply come to an end, as such we are not changing our home PC's as frequently and the effect is that computer game turn over has reduced considerably. The context we are now in is one of invest in a good hardware system as it will not be out of date in a year or so's time. In a similar way it is not a case of constant new software releases to match the latest version of a playstation or xbox.

 

The games industry is in fact doing what so many other sectors have been through in the past three decades, they are merging into large corporations, promoting strong brand identity and introducing tools to encourage brand loyalty. This is what we see at a overt level, at a psychological level there are a lot more covert things going on. As adults we should be careful not to judge our kids in this area without looking to ourselves first. How many of us use the same supermarket over 80% of the time, carry their loyalty card in an overt way. Do we think I need some fresh bread when we cross the supermarket threshold because artifical smells are pushed through the air conditioning at the point we might get our shopping lists out, are we aware that nearly all the products at the eye height of the average female on the shelves have the highest profit margins for the organisation, covert marketing. The truth is this is the reality of our society, adults are susceptible to this influence and as less mature minds children will very much be.

 

A big thing which is happening with game developers is in trying to gather data about game play in exactly the same way as a supermarket might use a loyalty card. To do this they need to make the connection between you the person and the groceries laid out on the conveyor which can say so much about your lifestyle, you give them permision to do this when you hand over that card to collect your points. In terms of gaming to do this they need an internet connection.

 

The games industry had a good reason to introduce the first layer of a system due to massive piracy of game software. They saw it as important that you had to register your legal purchase of a game to prove you had it then release an unlock code for you to do this you had to open an account. A lot of my gaming is done on the PC and as such in this area I need to be live to play. What this means is that though the game is on my hard drive, a recent game such as 'Skyrim' I have to contact a group 'Steam' through my account and as such I am connected to my local server 'Manchester' as I play. What this means in reality is that I have given permision for a system to read and record my playing habits, in much the same way a loyalty card records a large lifestyle element of an individual for the supermarket who have permision to do so and can in many cases legally sell such data on. Whilst this is true of a lot of new PC games, it is also the case with consoles and with wireless technology built in to consoles these days that BT hub system you bought so you could walk around the house talking to aunt Ethel on the phone whilst you hang the washing over radiators also provides the link for the game and you might be unaware of it. As I am not a big console player we have a family Wii some other members such as Darkshine might expand on this area.

 

In response to Chris and his perceptions I think you are half right. In my experience I think the games industry has been pretty good at regulating content, and with this covert psycholgical tools it uses in games through the age classification 'PEGI' ratings. Yes 18 means anything goes to be honest and be very carefull in this area, but you only need to reflect on what is now acceptable at an equivalent 15 classification in films to realise that this is now yesterdays 18 in many respects. Where Chris is potentialy wrong is his views may be simply based on content, appologies if I am wrong here. For instance a lot of people for example might think a fantasy title with dragons might be bad because it could include sword fighting yet a Lego Harry Potter game will be ok. In my experience the levels of violence even in comic scenarios is not the real issue for me but the nature of how the game works, it absorption qualities, and importantly its pace. There is a lot of evidence that violence per se kill the baddy has no real psychological impact on children at a very simplistic level typical of traditional games, plays out universal concepts of good and bad and as such I am happy to play World of Warcraft with my 7 year old son in controled areas, and my partner is happy that I do from time to time. There are however a lot of very psychological driven games out there which are easy to recognise at an 18 level, what is far more difficult is to pick up some of the same patterns in a game for example which looks childlike.

 

Given this broad introduction, what do I see as the main issues for a child with ASD. I think the biggest problem is that often we are really good at playing games if we do not have difficulties with fine motor control, even if we do there are whole genres of strategy games which provide an entry point. Given ASD we can have very high concentration levels, think in a logical and structured manner and can become easily fixated on achieving something. This last point is important as memory is now massive on PC's and in consoles, and as developers are not aiming for turnover of titles and spend more time possibly over a year or two developing their latest release games have become massive. A consequence is that getting through a game needs a lot of applied effort, this is possibly explained from personal experience, remeber I have AS throughout these examples.

 

I used to play games many years ago in isolation with no thought whatsoever about how other people played them (this might be a good position). The first time things changed for me was when a group of lads in my tutor group in secondary school were bragging about a popular title which had been out for a month or so and which I had played. One was saying they had completed the game two or three times without being killed and so I asked what is the end title sequence animation then, which I knew you would have to be aware of if you had finished the game in full? I called out his bluff and obviously they wanted to know the answer which I would not say. At break time a bunch of about 20 kids turned up asking the same question, no internet common in those days to find the answer from someone else in the world. I then said I would be interested to find anyone in the school who knew the end sequence. For the remainder of the week life was hell, kids coming up I am at this stage now how far from the end am I questions. I arrived at school at about 7:00 am Monday morning to find three boys outside my office very excited, we wrote down the end title description on pieces of paper and opened them together to prove we had all completed the game or at least I think they had as they were from different peer groups. This whole episode left me thinking, I hadn't bought the game the day it came out, had played it casually not my usuall efforts, and a week or so had passed since finishing it. Yet here I was in a community with a few hundered hard core gammers so to speak (2400 kids in school) and even them it took days to get through it including a weekend and I knew a lot were after the qudos of giving me the right answer, question just how good was I?

 

To bring my experiences up to date before Christmas a new realease 'Skyrim' came out I have played and completed all the games in the series before it, as with all game releases these days I give it a few weeks before I decide do I really want to play it and keep things in perspective. You really have to watch something like World of Warcraft release an update and watch live the drive to be one of the first to get to the new highest level to realise tens of thousands of individuals are totally adicted to status in games such as this, something I refuse to be part of. I walked into Game and asked for 'Skyrim' the reply being there is a special offer on the guide to the game which is a pretty thick book, said games are massive these days. My reply was no thank you, 'but its really difficult and complex, me and my mates have been playing for three weeks now every night, and I think you will need the guide' again 'no thanks, I managed to get through their previous titles without it so I might be ok'. I go home and register the game immediatly I am part of a Skyrim community, I have played for no hours and have achieved nothing in the game. If I want to I can see all the data of others in the community which tells me what percentage of them have got through what achievements and how long it took them to do so. I also know a lot of this will be with a guide by their side telling them where and what to do in the fastest sequences. There is also the internet to turn to if you get stuch or need to see a video on youtube showing how its done etc... you might call this cheating but it is all supported by the people who produce the game even provide early releases so their is a support network established, so can it be really, more of a case of it is cheating in my black and white mentality. This is not gaming in isolation if i want it to be it allows me to answer a simple question and that is ASD man how good are you really? I think that is a big draw for me, and one I personally need to draw back from. In truth I have played the game for enjoyment when I felt like it and not felt compeled to push on. I am 90% through the content and achieved all the major achievements in pretty fast time and as such am sitting pretty high near the top of the community tree, but this is what I would expect from ASD man.

 

The question I am asking here is this if our kids are really good at something should we encourge it or restrict it, is it a good or a bad thing? There have been times in my own life where following release from a secure mental health unit and not being able to face the real world I have turned to a virtual world and this was the backdrop for my entry into The World of Warcraft, a massive multiplayer online game. The context here is a virtual world but populated with real people living out an alternative existance for a period of time. In this world I rebuilt my confidence co-leading a popular guild with hundreds of members with a guy from Holland. Strange things happened in this world, I remeber speaking to a guild member through the games chat window who had set up a date in real life with another member of the guild but was worried, I asked what the problem was and she told me she had Cerebal Palsy and was in a wheelchair and he didn't know. I asked her a few weeks later how the relationship was going, she told me 'the sex was fantastic', they got engaged and I believe they are now married. I have also been in the game when a young male from Greece came out on the chat to say he was gay, ashamed of the fact as his parents would disown him and he was intending to take his own life. Through a lot of work offline that night with others still talking to him about their experiences of being gay we managed to get the equivalent of the Samaritans to go round to his flat at about 3:00 am in the morning. I think what I am saying is that potentially computer gaming can be a very complex environment, and on balance it has been a positive in my life.

 

For me and I suspect this is the case for many children and young adults with ASD the gaming world is a place which is on balance constructed in my favour. I perform better in this place than I seem to do so in real life. My skills are better placed here than they are lets say in a classroom. I have talked to teenagers about 'Championship Manager' a game which lets you be in charge of the management of a football club and work your way up, and asked what their strategy is on wage structures in their virtual club and percentage fees for transfares and contract clauses, how they calculate when to invest in expanding stadia in respect to revenue streams and attendance figures etc... they then tell me they are in the bottom set for maths, but they work these things out in the game because they want too, if only their maths teacher knew how to motivate in this way. However I know I need to strike a balance between feeding my Aspie tendancies through computer escapism and other aspects of my live. If I have had a hard day and things have not been in my favour is it not a good thing that I rebuild my self esteem in my computer world, to tell myself I am really good. At one level this might be a relationship of the game and me which coaxes out my natural talent and might reward those talents with a points score, at more developed levels it is all about out performing other individuals in online games. You might take the ###### out of me for my autistic traits in the playground and my lack of social skills but my spatial awareness is so tuned in I can make the conection between three set of buildings and get up close behind you and shoot you dead, now that pissed you off! I know this is not the same person but does that really matter, it feels right. Another case might be playing an assasin in medieval times, the whole game being based on stealth, kind of being in the real worlds but following a parallel highly sensetised existence at a distance, fliting in an out of others lives and wreaking havock then retreating into the shadows, remind you of anything? Hope you can see the draw especially for teenagers with ASD's.

 

Some parents might say but my kid's younger and not into this type of thing 'yet'! As I have said a lot of these child centred games are starting to include the elements of being online and keeping score in respect to an age specific game community, its all behaviour modeling. My seven year old can watch satelite tv on a childrens channel and press the red button to play a game, he is online. He came home in the holidays and as a precursor for world maths day was playing maths games against 3 other children in a head to head challenge to see who won, he played with kids from the USA, Australia, Hong Kong and Chilie. There were leauge tables all very nationalistic displaying the Union flag next to his name, believe me its all there, most of the time he virtually killed them, he won, they lost, does it matter course it does should have seen his face first time he got well beat, now you know what its all about mate was my first thought.

 

Another thing is that for me many of his games the Lego series for example are very adictive more so than the vast majority of my adult titles. These are very strong psychological games, in adult titles I have been given scope to provide the story in many instance to make choices along the way, in childrens games this is not often the case. Younger games are far more storyline directed they place you on a pathway which you need to try and follow. To do this they need to keep you moving and use all manner of things to do so. I would strongly suggest to parents they try playing a few of these games for half an hour and then do so with no sound on, it will become very apparent how much stimulus is created by something which often has nothing to do with gameplay but simply on keeping thing going sound. A lot of this is to do with setting up rythms and creating a thinking beat. The same is true of visual things such a colour sequences, shapes etc... things I understand well as a designer. For the AS child who can be very sensitive this is a real pull. Think of it a bit like me singing a really irritating tune to you over an over agian something like "one green bottle standing on the wall, one green bottle......", now try and get it out of your head, difficult isn't it. A lot of childrens games are like this and you need to get through the level in a way so you can escape. Looked at in this way I think you might start to appreciate the difficulties in breaking a kids concentration or in putting in place artifical stopping points.

 

If I had a child with ASD would I let them play on computer game, most definatly, but I would want to play them for some time first and ask myself the question how does this game work at a psychological level. I am very much of the opinion and Sally comes from the same place here, that there are different types of games for different occasions. This can be difficult when someone might have their latest 'special project' game and believe me these are projects they are so big these days. With special project mentality there are games out there which are well adapted, even the developers know they are many purchasers who have normal lives. Some of the more adult games are better at this and as such I believe may be more appropriate. Whilst they might have main and side story lines, they often need you to build your characters through the routine completion of everyday tasks, going fishing for food, making things to sell, running on an jogging machine to get fitter. Things like this you can play with for 20 minutes, can remember having to spend a week at my in laws and loaded WofW on their computer and went fishing for half an hour a day as a coping mechanism for being away from home, if I got up and moved in the game it would crash on their poor computer. As soon as I got back home remeber logging onto the game and flying around on my eagle over mountains for about 10 minutes because though the experience was usefull away from home it was so claustraphobic, then got a cup of tea, call this adiction not sure but it was my reality.

 

Another thing I would do is help them to set their own targets in the games they play. My experiences are that online worlds are highly populated by autistic individuals who are very good at what they do often in real life. I can remeber having a group toilet break in WofW one night and the question was asked who has a degree here, quite a few, then went onto who's got a masters, then a PHD, there was no one with a doctorate, but we did have someone 'she' was not playing with us that night as she was giving a lecture we later found out. The incident was the first time that we had realised that subconciously we had gravitated towards each other over many months through reputation the language we used etc... My experience is that there are healthy sub communities in online worlds and unhealthy ones the big thing being able to target set as the seperating element. In unhealthy environments the fact it is out there means we have to try and achieve it, and games are designed to make this very apparent. If I am playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii with my son we know we want to get to Darth Vadar, we even see him in the background at times as we move through the levels and he goes round a corner, when we get there there is a locked door and we have no key,all powerfull stuff. As someone with AS I know I can keep playing "I will get you Vadar youcan't run away from Hans Solo lego man for ever you know", unfortunalty my partner then wants to watch Waterloo Road and he gets away, not fair I say! I think we need to sets targets I have to do this all the time, but not in terms of hours that is not relevant in a game world far more realistic to make 2,000 simoleans in your job in 'Sims' than to play for half an hour, in reality much the same thing but you need to know the games.

 

At a final level I support games because I think they can teach us a lot as individuals with ASD. Sure we will like all the hard core stuff, the maths, strategy etc... but there are other things, structure, routines, responsibility to learn. Games such as Sims are pretty easy but bring a baby into the houshold and watch things start to break down, now I havn't time to call my friends on the phone let alone go to the dinner and meet up with them because their hygeine rating has just gone red, all very good stuff for anyone to realise. My son has wrecked Sims games by bringing babies into them, hope this sticks with him till he is at least in his twenties and things are stable, thats what the game teaches anyway.

 

Games are really complex these days and in most instances that is a god thing. Peopel with ASD are highly complex as well and so make a good match, in fact it is often way beyond that, it is a symbiotic relationship, we both need each other to survive in this world, I put myself into that bracket. Like all sysmbiotic relationships you have to understand the needs of both parties and game developers on the whole are highly reliant on revenue streams from an autistic community. As a result they are pretty understanding as game developers and understand our needs, they let us turn music off, change intensity levels of screens and graphics etc... What I would be wary of and a lot of this post is about this fact, and that is corporation needs are coming into play and the drive for brand loyalty and with it the manipulation of this autistic community. On the whole this is difficult for them as adult gamers we are not sheep easily swayed by a tesco loyalty card, rather we a quite against that sort of thing, but they are making inroads. The place where they are trying to make inroads is in modeling loyalty behaviour at a younger age so please be aware of this element in what your children are doing.

 

I hope the post helps keep things going in the debate, appologies for its length but I think this is a complex issue, and I suspect it plays a big role in many peoples lives who are on this forum as either someone with ASD or as a parent of such an individual, thanks for your patience.

[chris54]

Perhaps my view are a bit simplistic. They are the views of someone who does not play computer games, or at least the sort that are being talked about here.

 

They were not around when I was a child.( You only had 2 TV channels to choose from, 1 hour of children's TV a day 5-6 pm. and telly shut down by midnight.)

You realy did make you own entertainment as there was nothing else.

 

I was just about OK with the first generation of computer games, but as they got faster and more complex I just could not keep up.

My son who will be 12 in a few weeks, has never shown any interest in computer games. Of course he has had very little exposure to them. Do I think he is missing out? It was only when given a secondhand laptop a year or two ago, that he found a few online games that he plays. As I said before, these are not the action type games but constructive games.

What would I prefer him to be doing, reading a book, playing in the garden, (What hes doing right now) playing with one of his construction kits, or playing a computer game?

Edited March 3, 2012 by chris54

[LancsLad]

Chris I think you are absoloutly right. Yesterday cooked tea and we went out for a walk in countryside exploring near to our home and came back in the dark. Spent most of the walk talking about Charles Darwin a subject my seven year old raised. There are far more important things in life than computer games. I also believe life is far to complex and that most of us are now unable to cope easily, and that we should all try to simplify things. I for one would yearn for a life where I live in a simple home in a fantastic location, am self sufficient and possibly owned 10 or 20 things of real quality. I just can't seem to get there and no matter how much I put the brakes on it feels like I am moving away from this ideal not closer to it.

 

I think there is a point to which you can go and keep a child insulated from wider negative aspects of society, some sub cultures seem to be able to do this with very strict religious views for example. My own feeling is that there may be some merit in this but does it reach a point where it becomes counterproductive? I managed without computer games as a kid, but was into fantasy role playing though which required full day excursions to a specialist shop full of similar minded university types in Liverpool, I was 12 at the time, so guess personality might play a big role in choices.

 

I kind of see computer games a bit like McDonalds with my son, I know he knows it is there and I wish he felt it all tasted like bland rubish as I do, but he doesn't. As a result we limit it to a maximum of once a week, in reality more like once every three weeks. What has this meant is he sees it as a treat to go to McDonalds which is the last thing I would call it, and as such has it elevated McDonalds up in his mind to an artifical level. Now feel like force feeding him the stuff non stop for a fortnight to bring it back into reality. In a similar way computer games are part of our society, the problem with them is that unlike numerous McDonalds with which the average AS kid would eventually gag and throw up on in contrast people like me can simply digest more and more gameplay without a problem. Maybe the answer is to never let us get a taste of it in the first place, and your instincts Chris might well lean this way, you might just be right.

[chris54]

Funny you should mention McDonalds, my son has no particular liking for that sort of food or that sort of location, so not a problem for us. He would much prefer to go for a pub meal. Maybe that because that is what he was exposed to from a baby, if we were going out for a meal, that's were we went, one of our then, local pub/restaurants. Both me and my wife frequenters pubs as one of our main places of recreation in our younger like so that, maybe set the scene.

 

Trying not to go to far off topic, we do, or maybe that's, should have a big influence over our children's experiences in life. If maybe I was a few years younger (more that a few) I would have had different experiences and would be passing them on to my son. Maybe I'm viewed as old fashioned by some. I know at work I'm seen as odd that I don't have a mobile phone permanently glued to my ear. Got one in the car for emergencies, but seldom switch it on. "What if someone want to get hold of you at work" well the works number is by the phone at home, in case of emergencies.

 

Will my son be out of step with his friends, maybe, but then it is likely that his real friends in life, will be out of step with the world anyway.

 

He is on his laptop right now, investigating how all the operating systems work, what are all the different ways to do things, trying things out. Playing on his computer? If I want to know how to do something I ask him.

 

I intend to buy him a "Raspberry Pi". See how he gets on with it.

Edited March 3, 2012 by chris54

[LancsLad]

As always some really good points, I do think our kids in so many ways are a reflection on us. I would not see age as a disadvantage either, I consider myself to being an old dad for first time at 40. If anything as families have become more mobile and have moved in the search for work, the impact this has had on kids by reducing their time with grandparents is really significant and a loss to society. In many ways I fear for the kids bringing up kids generations we might be facing soon.

 

Have you registered your interest for a Raspberry Pi, link below for anyone interested;

 

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=raspberrypi

 

Personally hoping to get my hands on one of the first ones to see what I can do with it, some kids never grow up as they say.

 

I do own a mobile phone, and constantly refused to be given one throughout my working life. Mine lives in the saddle bags on my bikes for emergencies. Went through a phase of testing it in the Pennine hills to find out where you couldn't get a reception, for some reason I find a liking for the roads and bridleways in these areas now because I know I am away from it all, mobiles would be one of my items for room 101 if you have seen the series on BBC.

[chris54]

My first experience of computers was doing a course, were we worked on a main frame, It hard to believe now, but monitors were seen as a novelty, up untill then you communicated with the computer using the printout. The print command was printprint, Print on its own was the monitor.

The main frame lived in its own air conditioned room.

 

I owned a Sinclare Spectrum. Plugged into the telly, and programs were recorded on cassette tape.

I wrote a few programs by today's standards extremely basic. Basic, the name of the machine code used.

 

We later had a PC at home but they were little more than glorified word processors.

 

And then along came the Internet.

Edited March 3, 2012 by chris54

[LancsLad]

I had a spectrum think it was first the ZX80 then the ZX81and wrote my first simple stuff on them. I then went to university and we worked on BBC's combining them with electronics. I made the mistake of then breaking up my spectrums and soldering into them to use the processor to control simple robotic arms and stuff I built, wish I hadn't as I believe they are worth a few quid now.

 

Recal the cassette tapes were a nightmare you would run through the download and it wouldn't work half the time, they were fun days and I hope the RaspberyPi brings a bit of it back playing with my son.

 

Computers has been one of those things I have found that you have to scrap like mad to keep up with advancements something I have always tried to do especially in the field of computer design. In my recent time back at university at postrgraduate level I was pleasantly surprised to find I was possibly the most skilled at the start of my course which I put down to 20 years experience. What I would say is that the pace at which 24 year olds learn is so fast compared to when I was that age that they can catch up to my level pretty quickly which is frightening. Must say the Chineese on my course are exceptional in this area which has a lot to do with work ethic and cultural expectations. I will be interested to see what my own child is like in this area as he grows up must say I am a bit worried about how good kids will be in 10 years time then I really might start to feel my age in this area.

 

Surprisingly at university I have found young people to be pretty useless at using the internet to find information. They are pretty naf in a libary as well which is the issue here, don't think we have taught them the skills to look through information in an organised way and to ask the right questions. I found they are easily overhwelmed and go off on tangents based on presentation standards rather than quality of information they are in my opinion influenced far to much by a marketing world, consequently I find too much of the internet to be about style rather than information.

 

just a few thoughts.

[darkshine]

Console gaming? As we've said it's come on leaps and bounds from what it used to be... once upon a time you needed a pc to achieve good graphics, now some of these games are so good they almost look real.

 

In my home we have a lot of computers: handhelds = game boy colour, game boy advance sp, game boy ds, sony psp

and consoles = Wii, 2 xbox 360 consoles, gamecube, nintendo 64, sega master system, PS2 and PS1

and finally pc games

 

between these we have amassed many many games - I'd estimate the figure at more than 200 games

 

But in relation to change - the xbox 360 is the forerunner (can't comment on its competition the PS3 as I've never had this console) the xbox is amazing, the graphics incredible, the area of game play/the game play worlds are vast on some games and the whole thing is geared at making people want to play and more importantly keep on playing.

 

Because of the microsoft link, the console can be linked to microsoft email accounts (windows messenger, hotmail, live etc) they give you points for joining xbox live, and rewards for playing and doing well in games, these points can be spent on additional game content, avatars and avatar clothes, titles, and movies amongst other things.

 

You don't have to go out and buy a game, you can spend microsoft points and just download it right in your house.

 

Then we come to the games themselves.... every game (and I mean EVERY game) has a list of achievements to gain, they give you points towards your "gamer score" (this can be compared with friends and the rest of the world). In addition there are also lists of achievements within games themselves (high scores, fastest time, xp level, items to unlock etc etc).

 

On top of this is the online element, playing the rest of the world or just mates - there's a choice - you can enter some games with a group of friends and work together if you want... I've sat and watched my mates play war games for hours on end and everything suddenly becomes about "ranking up".

 

As for information gathered.. well... with the link to microsoft messenger and ease of access to what games are being played and how often - its scary how much information they can gather, especially when some people have everything linked up you know? Xbox, windows messenger, blackberry, facebook... its all there in some computer's databank somewhere - not to mention the new rage of cloud storage

 

As far as how make gaming appropriate for children with an ASD, well, I guess its a similar challenge as for NT kids (I've seen plenty of kids fixated on gaming) its a challenge when parents don't understand the game or know the content - ideally a parent would play the game through themselves if the content was questionable - but this isn't realistic as some people just hate games, or aren't good at them, or simply don't have the time. And some of the PEGI ratings are questionable...

 

I mentioned Grand Theft Auto in the other post - I mentioned this game because I remember GTA San Andreas being released, and at the time I was in the company of quite a few people with kids (aged 11 - 14) and they all wanted this game (I believe it was rated 18) and what's more... they all got it.

 

I think this is a good example of becoming immune to things - I can see why the game is completely inappropriate for children, I really do, but personally? I don't think twice about violent content when playin games (in the main - certain things stand out).

 

Even though I feel this way, I find it concerning that it is so easy to become unfazed, children are impressionable - should they become like me? Unfazed? I don't think so. I was playing red dead redemption the other day and there's a zombie game I bought as an add on, it completely threw me when I joined a lobby and started a game and suddenly these kids started talking to each other about killing zombies. They were from the States, and maybe 10-12 tops, and the language discussing killing the zombies was pretty gruesome but incredibly casual - is it a big jump to go from killing zombies to being a soldier in aother game and killing people?

 

And if people make links between GTA and car theft (I read numerous articles blaming this game for a rise in car crime).... then are these links relevant for killing games....

 

I'm actually uncertain on this because in some ways where's the harm in war games? My dad used to play with bows and arrows as a kid, my brother played cops and robbers with cap guns, I played both, and today some kids play soldiers on a computer. I guess it really matters when the content is unsuitable for a younger player - but then another question is... are some of them unsuitable full stop - whatever age?

 

I remember one game I got asked to play/review by a relative because their son wanted it - so I rented it out - the game was manhunt for ps2 and is still at the number one spot for the most violent and sick game I ever played, I didn't need to finish it to reply with a resounding "no! do not buy this game for your 12 year old son" comparatively it made GTA san andreas seem angelic.

 

In previous years, whenever I've played computer games with a kid I've always gone for child friendly stuff - but on the consoles like xbox and PS3 - they seem to have reduced the ranges somewhat - nintendo Wii really has the best all round market for kids games, and I guess the movement with the controls is better than them just sitting there holding a control and not moving.

 

I think it gets harder when kids get into their teens as the games designed purely for young children are pretty easy to locate - its the ones for 12-17 year olds that makes things start to get tricky...

 

If there's anything more specific anyone wants to know feel free to ask as I've just provided a broad overview mixed with some of my opinions