Violent Video Games

[Glassy]

I was thinking this was coming one day.

Should we ban or restrict the use of violent video games?
What is your opinion? Post here.

[Justin]

I believe the current rating:
PG
T
M
Is fair. People should realize it's only a video game.

[specizripn]

Justin is right about the ratings, and violent video games take up the majority of the video game market. There would be a lot of jobs lost and less tax paid to the government, so I think it is impossible to get rid of them. It is like cigarettes, although they kill people and don't do any good in real life, the government makes too much off them, and too many people like them so taxes may increase on them, but they will never go away. And the tax increase will further lock them into our existence. This is my opinion... Have a good day!

[Mayhem]

Banning is not necessary as long as people keep in mind the ratings. For kids(which is most important), parents will look out. So there wouldn't really be a need to ban a game.

[Glassy]

I don't think so.
There are worse things that influence kids being messed up, that we can't control.

Plus, the older we introduce these kids to violence the more damage they'll be able to cause with it. If we introduce violence, wrestling or whatever to them at a young age, by the time they are old enough to be able to cause damage they'll be mature about it.

[Evil Stewie]

Of course we should. Take a look at our kids today, all you ever hear on the news is all about young kids bashing and threatening innocent people. Why ? It's bad enough these kids have been abused by another child or an adult either sexually, verbally, physically, visually and mentally. Now you want to manifest that violence from video games ? Its bad enough what we watch on television.

[Opulence]

You can't ban video games targeted for adults because some kids might be able to get their hands on them. In China, where you find a huge amount of serious gamers at young age, there's still yet to see an increase in violence done by kids, or young people.

It's easy to blame the video games, just like it was easy to black Rock music two generations ago, but the problem lies elsewhere.

[AceInfinity]

No, that's like giving credit to human stupidity for not reading the description placed on the back of the game along with the big white rating in the bottom right corner.

It's no one's fault except the gamer's, when they decide they don't like a game because it's too violent. No one forces you to play it, no one forces you to buy it.

It would be the same for movies. Like trying to sue the director because you found it interesting to "begin" watching, but in the end you didn't like it.

[Omniscient]

Restrict how?

Right now game stores will see anyone an M rated game. I think that's wrong.

And I think many parents are clueless about how violent some games really are. Then there is the online gaming factor where people in Xbox Live are discussing just about anything openly. If they spoke that way in school they'd be expelled.

[AceInfinity]

For Online, I'd agree, but it's really the same thing as being on the internet. If you're on msn or a chatsite, or a forum, voiced or not, you're still exposed to that kind of content regardless.

The best thing they could do is make government ads like they do for tobacco on parents awareness towards games and their ratings, and to be more cautious about which games they buy. Kids can't buy M rated games in stores, so it really is up to the parents discretion to decide.

For Online gaming, i'd agree to things like network moderators that will kick or ban peoples privileges from online gaming if they get out of control with that opportunity.