The infantilization of video games is a serious problem

Great Debates
41

I agree with the OP that some people still think of video games as being for kids, but I don’t think it’s a huge problem because people that make video games and people who buy video games don’t see things that way, and those two groups are the only ones that matter in any video game topic.

I think the market is at work here. I can go to Best Buy after work and buy all the video games I want, where as kids might get 2 or 3 a year. Sure, there was the odd dust up about the sex scenes in GTA San Andreas, but I don’t think it changed game content much if at all.

The order of mainstream acceptance of vices in games seems to be:

  1. Violence: You could tear heads off in Mortal Kombat over a decade ago. People have been bitching about that for a long time, yet they made at least 8 more Mortal Kombat games, and you could tear heads off (at minimum) in every single one. Clearly, the adults won that match.

  2. Language: Pretty much every war game now has characters talking like soldiers. Fuck is common. Shit, Dick, Pussy, you name it. Adults rule.

  3. Nudity, sex: Sex is not yet totally accepted (witness GTA), but I don’t remember anyone getting upset about bare tits in God of War, which was a huge selling game a year or so back. Adults will win this battle too, as children are week and easily tricked.

Now, if someone could explain to me why I can’t buy a goddamn Formula One Diecast “toy” (costing upwards of $100 a unit) with the correct tobacco livery, I’d be a happy man.

42

[QUOTE=Marley23]
Minor correction to the OP, though: stores won’t carry Mature Only games, but they’d probably never have the chance to - Microsoft and Nintendo (among others?) won’t manufacture them.
[/QUOTE]

I used to work for a video game company that deliberatly cultivated a sex-and-violence image for their games. We would go as far up to the Adults Only line as we could without crossing it. The reason we never crossed it? Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart won’t stock AO titles, and if Wal-Mart won’t stock it, we won’t bother printing it. In video games, at least, content restriction is very much driven by the retail outlets, not the manufacturers.

43

[QUOTE=Hampshire]
I don’t know why the video game industry didn’t just adopt the same G, PG, PG-13, R, X rating the movie industry has. Instead they came out with their own odd rating system.
[/QUOTE]
Probably because the Motion Picture Association of America has the G/PG/etc system trademarked, and won’t let anybody else use the ratings. In order to put “Rated R” on your movie, you have to submit yourself to the MPAA’s ratings process; if you try to say your movie has an R rating without going through the MPAA, they’ll sue the balls off you. I suspect the video game industry looked at the situation and chose to come up with their own system rather than initiate what was likely to be a protracted negotiation with the MPAA that had no guarantee of arriving at a mutually equable solution. Just for the record and stuff. :slight_smile:

44

throws up hands As usual, **WhyNot **has the answers. Why do I even post? From now on, WhyNot, you are officially delegated to post for me! :smiley:

45

[QUOTE=Anaamika]
throws up hands As usual, **WhyNot **has the answers. Why do I even post? From now on, WhyNot, you are officially delegated to post for me! :smiley:
[/QUOTE]

:stuck_out_tongue: Well, I was answering *your *question, hon! :smiley:

46

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
:stuck_out_tongue: Well, I was answering *your *question, hon! :smiley:
[/QUOTE]

Yes, but everything you said pretty much answered the thread, my questions, *and *also filled in anything I would have said.

I stand impressed.

47

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Because we (you, me, **Sarahfeena **and everyone in this thread probably) grew up during a period of time, from the 80’s to the late 90’s, where video games WERE, with a very few exceptions (LLL, already mentioned), for kids. They were marketed to kids and kids asked for them for Christmas and kids picked out the games and spent most of the time playing them. I’m not saying there was never an adult out there who played a round of Donkey Kong. I’m sure there was, but it was not marketed and advertised as an adult activity. No one ever tried to sell my grandmother, or even my mother, a video game system of her very own. They tried to sell my grandmother and my mother a video game system to give as a gift to her grandchild or child - namely, me.

When my husband was a freshman in college (uh, 1988) you weren’t allowed a television set in your dorm room, much less a game system. So video games were something left at home, like your pogo stick and your dogeared copy of Illustrated Junior Library’s Treasure Island. You might play with it when home on Christmas break, but it wasn’t part of your everyday life. By the time you graduated, the system was probably old and crappy and mom had packed it away somewhere, and you were out of the habit of playing everyday, so you just did other things with your time - adult things, things that you didn’t do when you were a kid.

It wasn’t until the mid to late 90’s that it became apparent, to me, anyway, that people didn’t stop playing video games anymore when they went off to college. They brought their systems with them, and continued playing them, and they’ve brought them into adulthood, too.

Please note that I’m not condemning this. This is my favorite xkcd strip ever. I myself dress up in Renaissance clothing and play make-believe with a couple thousand strangers every summer. I read more young adult novels than adult ones. I’m all for enjoying yourself and ignoring marketing demographics. But I think this is where the idea that “video games are for kids” comes from. In 30 more years, it won’t be questioned, anymore than we question today that *Promethea *and *Sandman *are not “comics for kids”.

Right now, the people who think video games are for kids are the ones who don’t play them. In another 50 years, we’ll all be dead and gone and y’all can play “Halo 924” on our graves.
[/QUOTE]

You’re right of course, but I’m not happy to sit down and accept that it’s just going to take time to fix. I want your point that “It’s inevitably an adult activity” so widely understood that the people who run game development companies are no longer afraid to make adult games, or to write proper scripts or feel they’re “taking a risk” because their game is only suitable for adults.

I want the outcome you’re describing in the next five years, maximum, not the next fifty!

48

I don’t consider playing video games exclusively “childs play”, and I know times have changed, etc. But if someone makes a point of video games being
“infantilized”, then I feel it appropriate to counter that if you want to talk about “infantilization”, let’s have a gander at our own dang selves (and I include my own dang self in this assessment). Actually, I like Marley23’s term “adolescentization” better. I don’t mean it to be judgemental, just that it’s a different attitude in adults today, more juvenile. That has its good points and bad points, and I don’t really care either way. It’s just markedly different. What’s also different is the level of “adult” information kids today are having to process. It’s almost like these two lines could even converge at some point in the future.

49

And needed their coffee and their hot chocolate so bad, but didn’t appreciate it enough to tip more than $0.004 each. (900 customers from 5 PM to 4 AM the night of the release.)

Nintendo tried that in 1985. Didn’t work, except in a marketing sense; retailers who had been convinced by the 1983 crash that “video games” wouldn’t sell anymore, picked up the Nintendo “Entertainment System” because they believed it was a fundamentally different product. It worked out pretty well for everyone involved, but the fact that we went right back to calling it all “video games” soon afterwards should tell you something.

Puzzle games exercise the mind quite a bit, and action games require (and exercise) quick thinking, short reaction times, and excellent hand-eye coordination. Both genres are extremely popular, and IME most modern games include some elements of both. And the most avid video game players often make decent careers out of it, whether through professional competition (which is serious business), game-related journalism, game design, programming, graphic design, whatever. Without having any solid numbers, I would wager that the proportion of video game players who put food on their tables through video games is much, much higher than the proportion of bad-TV watchers who put food on their tables through bad TV.

No they aren’t, not when legislators and retail executives are involved.

50

[QUOTE=VCO3]
This attitude creates major problems for the development of games as a medium, and for the adult consumers that want to play them, as evidenced by the whole recent Manhunt 2 debacle, in which a violent game rated for adults-only was forced to be censored because stores won’t even carry or sell games that receive that highest content rating - even though the same stories carry rated-R and unreated movies that are aimed at adults. The prejudicial mentality is that “toys” shouldn’t have “adult” content.
[/QUOTE]
M-rated games are analogous to R-rated movies -and M-rated games are extremely, extremely common. AO-rated games are analogous to X-rated movies -and those are both not so common (especially at walmart).

I think you’re comparing apples and oranges. You can’t expect AO-rated games to be as common as R-rated movies. (And, while there are AO games out there if you know where to look, you can’t expect there to be as much of a market for them as video porn - usually you want your hands free for that stuff. :wink: )

[QUOTE=VCO3]
I’ve played many games that were clearly censored in many ways, even though they had Mature ratings - games with licensed songs where the profanity was censored, where nudity was blocked that was clearly unblocked in the japanese version, etc. It’s silly, and as a gamer adult, it feels like the equivalent of paying to see a rated R movie and having the blood and nudity pixellated or covered with black bars.
[/QUOTE]
Remember, M-rating means R. So it’s like playing an M-rated game and having the blood taken out - which doesn’t happen. (I’ve been playing Oblivion–plenty of blood. No nudity, but then, with the controllable camera, that would make it AO.) Also, games and animation in Japan are legally required to censor genitals - so I wonder why you think it was “clearly unblocked in the japanese version”. It’s actually much more common for a given hentai game or anime to be censored in Japan, and uncensored in the western release (in the off chance there is a specifically western release).

So, I really have to wonder what games you’re playing; your perception doesn’t seem anything like my reality.

[QUOTE=VCO3]
Do you think that this is a serious problem for adults? Is it hindering the development of games as a medium for mature adults?
[/QUOTE]
No, I think the focus on violence and shoot-em-ups is hurting games as a medium for adults - that stuff is the baliwick of teenagers. :stuck_out_tongue:

51

Actually I read the other day that 20% of gamers were over 50!

52

[QUOTE=fetus]

No they aren’t, not when legislators and retail executives are involved.
[/QUOTE]

Legislators don’t matter. When I was a lad, we heard a rumor that Mortal Kombat II wasn’t getting released because it was made illegal. (But someone’s cousin had played it and it was reportedly awesome) Guess what, Mortal Kombat II did come and it was bloodier than the first. And then like 8 more came. Let the legislators go on record as being pro-family. It hasn’t made a difference yet, and I doubt it ever will.

As for marketing execs, what do you expect? Wal-Mart doesn’t sell adults only movies, why would you expect them to sell AO games? If there were a market for games like this, there would be people willing to make and sell them. Notice there is no shortage of pornography shops, even if Wal-Mart doesn’t sell porn?

53

[QUOTE=T_SQUARE]
As for marketing execs, what do you expect? Wal-Mart doesn’t sell adults only movies, why would you expect them to sell AO games? If there were a market for games like this, there would be people willing to make and sell them. Notice there is no shortage of pornography shops, even if Wal-Mart doesn’t sell porn?
[/QUOTE]
Odds are real good that it’s cheaper to make porn vidoes than an AO-computer games - so video porn would be likelier to be profitable in a smaller market (even without the benefit of economies of scale). Nonetheless, AO-computer games are made and sold - just not as many of them. (Of course, movies outnumber computer games in general, anyway.)

54

[QUOTE=begbert2]
M-rated games are analogous to R-rated movies -and M-rated games are extremely, extremely common. AO-rated games are analogous to X-rated movies -and those are both not so common (especially at walmart).
[/quote]

No, they’re not, really. Video game ratings are much more restrictive than movie ratings. A game I worked on at the aforementioned “adult oriented” game company featured a boss battle where the big bad pitched backwards over a rail and fell into an industrial meat grinder, which immediatly extruded a pile of Villain Hamburger. This was a game for the original X-Box, and one that didn’t exactly stress the system’s capabilities. In other words, it was not particularly gruesome or realistic looking. We had to change it, because the ESRB was going to give us an AO rating, based on that one boss battle. The same scene has been replicated in dozens of cheesy R-rated action and horror movies. Heck, I’ve seen a similar scene on television, and I’m not talking pay cable, here. Wal-Mart will sell you a movie featuring a person being fed to a giant meat grinder. They will not sell you a video game that features an identical scene.

55

[QUOTE=Miller]
No, they’re not, really. Video game ratings are much more restrictive than movie ratings. A game I worked on at the aforementioned “adult oriented” game company featured a boss battle where the big bad pitched backwards over a rail and fell into an industrial meat grinder, which immediatly extruded a pile of Villain Hamburger. This was a game for the original X-Box, and one that didn’t exactly stress the system’s capabilities. In other words, it was not particularly gruesome or realistic looking. We had to change it, because the ESRB was going to give us an AO rating, based on that one boss battle. The same scene has been replicated in dozens of cheesy R-rated action and horror movies. Heck, I’ve seen a similar scene on television, and I’m not talking pay cable, here. Wal-Mart will sell you a movie featuring a person being fed to a giant meat grinder. They will not sell you a video game that features an identical scene.
[/QUOTE]
Hmm, you may have a point - though I don’t think your point extends quite enough to account for the OP’s position. Infantilization?

Also I wonder if this sort of things is applied equally for games on different gaming systems and the PC. We’ve definitely had ‘gibs’ on the PC, in various M-rated games. (I don’t follow consoles.)

56

[QUOTE=Hampshire]
I don’t understand this menatality. Why would spending a lot of time watching TV or playing video games for entertainment be considered childish while reading would not? What makes reading such a worthwhile pursuit and where did the “the more your read the better” mindset come from?
[/QUOTE]
Let me clarify…reading just anything would not qualify as a worthwhile pursuit in my mind…you can waste a lot of time reading junk, as well. And, to clarify some more, I’m not saying that these pursuits are inherently childish (I’ve said that 3 times, now), but that too much time spent on them to the detriment of more worthwhile pursuits might be considered such.

57

Everything WhyNot said is also true for me…when video games really hit the big time, there pretty much were no adults who were interested in playing them with us, and the concept of “adult” video games is somewhat foreign to me. When VCO3 complains that videogames are infantilized, I think it’s kind of amusing…apparently, they became sophisticaed when I wasn’t looking, and now adults consider them “theirs,” and worry about them becoming something for kids again.

58

[QUOTE=fetus]
Puzzle games exercise the mind quite a bit, and action games require (and exercise) quick thinking, short reaction times, and excellent hand-eye coordination. Both genres are extremely popular, and IME most modern games include some elements of both. And the most avid video game players often make decent careers out of it, whether through professional competition (which is serious business), game-related journalism, game design, programming, graphic design, whatever. Without having any solid numbers, I would wager that the proportion of video game players who put food on their tables through video games is much, much higher than the proportion of bad-TV watchers who put food on their tables through bad TV.
[/QUOTE]
I wouldn’t call any of the pursuits you name, with the possible exception of professional competition, to be the same thing as just “playing” a video game. All those things are professional and creative careers, and I wouldn’t condemn them as being not worthwhile just because the person happens to be working in a particular industry. It may be true that bad-TV watchers don’t often go into any of those fields as they relate to TV as a career, but if they were to do so, I would consider it a career just like any other, as well.

59

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Because we (you, me, **Sarahfeena **and everyone in this thread probably) grew up during a period of time, from the 80’s to the late 90’s, where video games WERE, with a very few exceptions (LLL, already mentioned), for kids. They were marketed to kids and kids asked for them for Christmas and kids picked out the games and spent most of the time playing them. I’m not saying there was never an adult out there who played a round of Donkey Kong. I’m sure there was, but it was not marketed and advertised as an adult activity. No one ever tried to sell my grandmother, or even my mother, a video game system of her very own. They tried to sell my grandmother and my mother a video game system to give as a gift to her grandchild or child - namely, me.

[/QUOTE]

That’s not how I remember it. As I mentioned, Pong was a bar game. Computer Space, Atari’s first game, got put in the MIT student center. In 1980 there were Space Invader games in the New Orleans airport - not a kid hangout. I first saw a 2600 in 1981, at the house of a friend who didn’t have kids. We ran out and got one, and my wife spent a good bit of her first pregnancy playing it.
Games were marketed to kids, but they also got marketed to adults. 2600s were in ToysRUs, but so were C64s.

Today game reviews are not exiled to the comics section, but usually run in the Technology section - at least in the Times.

BTW, children :slight_smile: 50 years ago I watched plenty of TV also. People before that listened to the radio, which was just as mind numbing.

60

[QUOTE=An Arky]
Actually, I like Marley23’s term “adolescentization” better. I don’t mean it to be judgemental, just that it’s a different attitude in adults today, more juvenile. That has its good points and bad points, and I don’t really care either way. It’s just markedly different. What’s also different is the level of “adult” information kids today are having to process. It’s almost like these two lines could even converge at some point in the future.
[/QUOTE]

..which would actually bring us closer to the world-wide, historical-wide norm, I believe. In the sense that “teenagehood” and adolescence are fairly modern ideas - even as recently as Dickensian times, children were expected to work and concern themselves with adult worries like money and food and rent. Having a distinct era between childhood and adulthood is really a tiny bump in the timeline of human behavior, and one exclusive to wealthy industrialized nations, isn’t it?