AppleQueso wrote:Sadly, the parents that take this approach are blasted and called terrible parents when they allow their kid to play some game outside of their ESRB age group.
Too true. My mom gave me a lot of freedom growing up and let me make my own mistakes and learn from them and I think I turned out a better person for it. These days, though, that kind of hands-off parenting is frowned upon in favor of controlling your children to an extreme and allowing them little, if any, freedom at all. Ironically, that approach makes kids more likely to rebel and lash out. I was never a rebellious kid because I never had a reason to be, but I shudder to think how my life might have been different if I'd been born ten years later.
This is awesome as well. And you are certainly not alone, this is all so common:
My parents weren't too fond of my gaming habits, which definitely pushed me to more hardcore. My dad didn't like games in any form and my mom didn't like the violence.
I remember when my dad decided we should get a computer, back in 1994 - it had Windows 3.11 and was pretty much as fancy a machine as you could get. Back in those days, almost all games were made for DOS, since Windows was really just a shell. But someone told my dad that when you mess around in DOS, you can mess things up and as such completely forbid me from playing games that weren't for Windows. (When we got a new computer several years later, he lightened up and I became a DOS GAME ADDICT.)
Usually my dad would just tell me how the game system needs to be turned off because I've gotten enough points for one day and had to take a walk. (I've learned to hate going on walks because of this.) He would routinely tell me that gaming is destroying my generation and that all the technology will bring about the downfall of society.
My mom didn't like me playing Wolfenstein 3D on the PC. She took away my copy of the 32X version of Night Trap for several years (I'm amazed I got it back!) because it freaked out my little brother - this had to be around 1997 or so... way past the time when the game was controversial and I would have been 11 years old. She was pretty reasonable really - I can't think of any other games she wouldn't let me play. It was really other media that got the biggest frowns.
A lot of relatives didn't understand games. For a while, one of my favorite DOS games Duke Nukem - the original 2D side-scrolling one. I remember an aunto who clearly never played it but had heard rumors of Duke Nukem 3D telling me about how horrible it was since the game involved raping women, putting their bodies on meathooks, and dismembering them for points. (EVEN IN DUKE NUKEM 3D, I THINK THAT'S A LITTLE OVERSTATED.)
I don't think any of my situations are too extreme (besides the DOS game ban) but it's still probably influenced my habits! I mean, I spend so much time gaming, I MADE MY OWN FREAKING GAME. And even though I'm not into super-violent games, I still have a soft-spot for ridiculous classics like Night Trap, Mortal Kombat, and Doom!
One time my mom read something in the paper about violent games and specifically beating dogs and nurses with a steel pipe in Silent Hill. She decided to have a talk with me about it and I just said "I played through Silent Hill again last month. I've had it for a couple of years. I beat those dogs to a pulp because it saves bullets but It's OK because they're evil dogs from hell and the nurses are already dead.". She just gave me a funny look and said "Oh. Umm.. You understand it's just a game, right?"
Nemoide wrote:
I remember when my dad decided we should get a computer, back in 1994 - it had Windows 3.11 and was pretty much as fancy a machine as you could get. Back in those days, almost all games were made for DOS, since Windows was really just a shell. But someone told my dad that when you mess around in DOS, you can mess things up and as such completely forbid me from playing games that weren't for Windows. (When we got a new computer several years later, he lightened up and I became a DOS GAME ADDICT.)
Haha this is pretty much the same as me (even down to getting our first computer in 1994). My dad was the same, but he would allow me to play games if he set me up on them. I just wasn't allowed to touch the computer by myself basically.
This thread and with all its talk of violent games actually reminded me of a time when my parents banned me from playing games they deemed "scary" or "violent." When I was about 8 or 9, I randomly started getting really bad nightmares every night. It was consecutive and kind of relentless. I'm not sure what started it, but my parents came to the conclusion it was the video games I was playing. So I got banned from playing some of my games they thought might be causing it. Like Tomb Raider... I'm not sure how they worked out Tomb Raider was scary or particularly violent, but oh well.
Own: Mega Drive, Saturn, Dreamcast, Playstation 1, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, PS Vita, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Gamecube, Wii U, Game Boy Advance, DS, 3DS, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox, Xbox 360
I don't have any extreme stories of something being taken away like that, but my mom did have some negative reactions to certain things.
Like one time when Halo had just come out, I saw the review of it on X-Play. At one point my mom walked into the room right as they showed a gameplay clip of a spartan getting shot while he happened to be standing next to a tree. She was astonished at all of the blood, and thought the game character was tied up to the tree and being executed violently. As such she said I was never allowed to buy an Xbox, which was fine by me honestly because I had no interest in getting one at the time.
At another point someone (I think Cartoon Network, or it might have been X-Play again) was running a contest with a PS2 and a copy of Jak and Daxter as the first prize. For some reason I was under the impression (Or perhaps it was a mistake on the TV channels part) that the game had "100 levels." I begged my mom to let me enter the contest and she agreed, but only if I promised to not play all 100 of those levels because "that would take way too much time." I never won the contest of course.
Ultimately, fast forward to today, my mom doesn't care what I play. She admits that I understand the difference between right and wrong and would never copy some kind of violent thing I see in a game.
Though she still doesn't understand my fascination with anime or Japanese games, and sort of makes fun of me whenever I talk about them. I've tried explaining, but she has the impression that every anime/game that comes out of Japan is about pre-teen schoolgirls doing "girly things." I'm not sure where she's even gotten that impression, since I've never done anything like that in front of her and she certainly has never experienced something like that herself.
I feel old when talking to anyone my age yet too inexperienced to effectively talk to anyone older. Life is grand that way.
Nemoide wrote:A lot of relatives didn't understand games.
Now this is where my story gets weirder. My mom and I lived with her parents / my grandparents off and on up until I was 4, and originally the first NES we got was a gift for my grandpa.
This probably doesn't go where some might guess, but no it was never a waste on him, because we actually both played games a lot together when I was super young at the time. We usually did simultaneous two player stuff pretty often, I beat TMNT2 / 3 with my grandpa! And we played Battletoads, etc heh. My grandparents spoiled me those few very early years, he would basically take me out to rent a game almost weekly it felt, when there was some chain of rental stores in Hen House at the time, so when we got food I got a game (and 90% of the time rented Megaman games).
My grandpa continued to actually hold some interest in gaming throughout the years, I think one of his favorite games was probably Donkey Kong Country.
Admittedly, he pulled the religious card on me once too haha. We were at Blockbuster when I was older and I wanted to rent Zelda OoT, so he read the back of the box and "I shouldn't be playing this". lol
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