Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Message Board  

Well, I applaud you for controlling what your own kids play instead of blaming other people. As you can see in my signature (that's what it's called right?) I've played these games since the age of 10. I'm not a violent freak, I'm in university making a future success of myself. Me and 99.9% of people that play these games are normal people that don't take it seriously. The few that do are already messed in the head and really shouldn't be out in society to begin with.

I do agree that little kids don't know the difference between games and real life but that's why ratings are implemented. It's the parents responsibility to control what their kids do, the gaming industry has no moral or business responsibility to do so. All games are rated and they are displayed clearly, parents should know enough to stop their young kids from buying these games. I can see you're a responsible parent but the sad truth is that most have no idea what their kids play.

Here's a very good example of this. Everyone here would agree that Halo is a violent game, it's not meant for little kids. Once, on a local news station there was a story about a school using video games to teach kids in elementary school. They were interviewing a mom about her view on this, she said as long as the games aren't violent she is alright with it and that she doesn't let her kids play violent games. The whole time you can clearly see her two 9 to 10 year old kids playing Halo in the back. That just goes to show how hypocritical most parents are about violence, they had kids and they are responsible for protecting them, but instead they go and tell the government to do their jobs for them, PATHETIC. Either they should control their kids or just let them play whatever they want and not complain about it.

But I must say I STRONGLY disagree with you about banning it. It's rated M for MATURE, meaning only people 18 and older can play so there should be no problem. Big stores check I.D. before selling them to you. Smaller stores don't, that's how I bought previous Grand Theft Auto games. My parents grew up in India and immigrated here so they don't really know much about a lot of the technology here. My mom hates the swearing in the games but she's usually at work when I play so it's not a big problem. Systems are in place to control who buys these games, clearly they can be bypassed, but in most cases parents can easily put a stop to this. If we started banning violent games, we'd end up banning all games. Mario, Pokemon, DragonBall Z; technically their all violent. All racing games encourage driving fast, which is blamed UNFAIRLY for most deaths while driving. Then strategy games would be banned because they let you make armies and fight each other. Eventually there would be nothing left.

[Edited by SuperSkyline89, 2/12/2008 10:24:17 AM]

Stores sell mature games to kids. My kids have bought them. All the clerk does is have me pay for them. The clerk knows the games are for the kids,not me. So long as I pay for them its cool with the clerk. As for GTA,we have all of them,but I locked them up after my oldest son became so violent,he busted open a kids head with a curtain rod. I strive to encourage my children to play racing games and skateboarding games,rather than games where there is killing,stealing,and other illegal practices.

Most big stores won't sell games like that to little kids. I know that EB Games can charge a clerk $5000 for selling it to a little kid. Zellers asks me for an my drivers license when I try buying games there. Usually I buy my games from a small store that doesn't care who buys the games but I only shop there because they aren't so finicky about returns unlike the big chain stores.

But the incident with your oldest son is very rare. Some people just have violent tendencies, that doesn't change with age. I'm not trying to say anything against your son but things like that rarely happen. I'm fine with parents stopping their own kids from playing certain games but when they try to control other peoples' kids that is going to far. Banning Grand Theft Auto wouldn't make society any safer, murderers will still kill people and other crimes will also happen. The only thing it would accomplish is to make millions of gamers very very mad.