I was talking with a coworker about what games my parents allow me to play, and what they let their kids play. My parents were fine with most things bloody things, like Resident Evil 4, Left 4 Dead and Gears of War, mostly because you were fighting like aliens or zombies. They were fine with military shooters too, and got really interested in the Modern Warfare storylines. The game that they really had a problem with was GTA, of course, but later, when my little sister started playing it, they got invested in GTA 5’s story, so eventually we could just play whatever we really wanted. How bout you all? Did your parents have any weird or strict rules in games or movies?
1H a day. After homework
None, before my mom saw me play Soldier of Fortune and shoot a dudes’ ball off. After that she bought me an “educational, age appropriate game”, The Logical Journey of the Zoombini. I wasn’t supposed to play violent games, and instead play this game I was supposed to get bored of because it’s educational, and go play outside.
Jokes on her, I loved that game, and played it a ton.
Of course I ignored the rule of violent games and just learned to alt+tab as a reflex if I heard someone open my door. Useful skill in other parts of life as well…
Hip Hip! Zoombinis!
Well there you go, you got it.
Man, I wish GOG would bring it back. Original was on quicktime, I’ve tried a couple of times throughout the years to get it working on a modern OS, no dice :(
Shameless gog dreamlist plug if you loved this game too (not mine)
https://www.gog.com/dreamlist/game/zoombinis-logical-journey-2001
Oh man, I remember doing that for NSFW games on newgrounds as a young boi.
We don’t buy games in this house, we pirate them.
I respect that
Any chance you’d know how to get fitgirl repacks to run on linux?
One day they will figure out why they can’t connect the Nintendo Switch to the internet and why they have so many game options.
We did too, but it was because my parents refused to pay full price for a game, so they bought pirate physical copies for dirt cheap and they worked great. Then of course I learned to torrent. Nowadays I only buy games when they’re from indie devs or from small companies.
They tried, but I don’t think they did a great job.
I was limited by time and duration. I wasn’t allowed to start playing games until like 3pm, and wasn’t allowed to play after dinner. (If I went to someone else’s house, the rule didn’t apply. If someone came to my place, video games were also allowed, but my parents didn’t like people coming over). I also had to finish all my homework first. I remember just watching the clock on the weekends waiting for it to tick over to 3pm, then dashing up the stairs to the games.
For some reason, I was allowed to watch as my TV as I wanted. I’m old and tv was limited, and we didn’t have all the channels.
What ended up happening is I would lie. I would say I had finished my homework when I hadn’t to get that sweet, limited video game time. I would say I was watching TV in the basement but I was playing games with the sound down.
This trashed my school habits. I was doing all my homework the morning it was due. I was a smart kid so everything was still getting done well enough for me to get B’s, but this wasn’t great. When I got to college I had no study habits or learning stamina.
To this day I kind of find tv and other passive watching unsatisfying. I never watch anything on my own. Only with someone else.
I don’t know what would have worked better. The clock based limit felt terrible though. Really hated that. Maybe if they had explained “if you put all your stat points in video games now, when skill ups are cheap, you’re going to be underpowered later” it would have landed.
RELATABLE, I destroyed my study habits for the same reason, though, I’m much better at studying now.
I remember my mother briefly being resistant to getting me a violent game at some point. She was not that motivated to moderate what games I bought though. And eventually she didn’t seem to mind anything I was playing.
In my opinon; if you let your kids watch rambo, you better allow them to play rambo.
100% agree, my dad watched GoldenEye with me like 15 times as a kid.
I made a PowerPoint presentation to convince them to let me play monster hunter when I was 13.
They let me.
None. My folks didn’t have any rules about games. Then again my parents really didn’t do rules.
My parents only had a few important ones, like don’t touch the guns, (they kept them out of reach usually.) And don’t mess with the cattle or play in the road.
My parents let me play whatever I wanted, even Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil, but first they taught me the difference between fiction and reality and said I could play for a limited amount of hours per day, and only after doing my homework or after studying. Except on weekends, on weekends they let me play for longer, but also made sure I was playing offline too and going outside. It was pretty good.
The funny thing to me is that my dad would sometimes say it frustrated him that I liked video games because he thought they were “for boys” and yet he was the one who bought my (jailbroken) console and (pirated physical copies of) games until I turned 18 lol
When I was maybe 10, I wanted Mortal Kombat on the Sega Genesis more than anything. My mother, who is an attorney, said it was too violent. So in order to convince her, I built a strong argument and plied her with it non-stop. I would argue that I was a smart kid and all that crap about video games making you violent was garbage. The argument that finally won me my beloved MK was that she had let me watch RoboCop the year before, and I hadn’t gotten messed up by that. After that I was pretty much allowed to play or watch whatever.
It’s the earliest I can remember really forming a coherent argument with supporting facts and whatnot, and advocating for what I want. It’s a skill that would serve me quite well going forward. Well played, Mom.
My parents weren’t very restrictive. But one time, to get me to stop asking for a new game, my Dad said I couldn’t get any new ones until I beat the last game I got.
I think about that a lot still. I think it would have been a good rule, outside of some edge cases like games that were endless or too easy.
But it was off the cuff, he didn’t remember saying it. By the time I finished some game and brought it up, I think he said something like “well don’t you have other games you never finished?”
I had a very similar situation with my parents but it was involving computers. I wanted a computer quite badly, and for whatever reason my parents thought it was only to play video games. So they bought me a laptop-shaped educational toy with a bunch of inane mini games and said I could beat all of them, they’d buy me a real laptop. I beat them all and they went back on their promise. Crushed. Just say no, folks, don’t make your kids jump through hoops for nothing. Unless I guess you want them to get a taste of working adult life early?
My parents were pretty opposed to violent media. As a younger child, I wasn’t really allowed to play anything that had explicit violence. Once instance I remember is when I was about 8 and we got a new PC that came bundled with Age of Empires 2. I was initially allowed to play it, but my dad took the CD away when he saw how much warfare it involved. Generally, they usually kept to the official age recommendations on the boxes. They relaxed their rules significantly from when I was around 12 though. That was also when I got my own PC and a Steam Account and they didn’t really check what I bought on there. Even got my mom to buy me GTA San Andreas (which has a 16+ recommendation here) when I was around 14. They never really approved necessarily, especially my dad, but they let me make my own decisions when they felt I was old enough.
We had no consoles, I saved all my money to buy a Gameboy color and Pokémon crystal.
Which mother then said I had to key my twin use as well
Annoyed as fuck over that. They could have bought their own damnit
Mother looked at the games I bought for the color but I only really played crystal, donkey kong, that sort of thing.
The computer was edutainment games only, but me and twin liked Oregon trail 2 and Amazon trail and the like.
Once the internet arrived they didn’t realize I found a place to download like rpg maker games.
i don’t recall ever having any.
Parents, Rules or Video games?
lol
Rules on video games.
As kids we had a dos 286 pc with some basic vga games. Nearly all of them were educational so my parents let us play those whenever. We got a used SNES for xmas the year the n64 came out, and we played that as much as we could. My parents didn’t know then and still struggle now with computers, so they let me do as I pleased with the PC, within reason.
As a teen I bought my own computer and my own PC games. My parents probably would not have approved of me playing half life, doom, quake, UT, and other graphic games, but I played the hell out of those. I also had stuff like myst that were pretty low key but fun. My PC was my own personal machine, so I did with it what I wanted, when I wanted.
The usual concern with most older gen gamers was having parents telling us video games would rot our brains. As they stared at the TV for hours most nights… Video games sharpen your motor skills, reflex times, logic and reasoning skills, among other things. I find quite the opposite to be true and would advocate that video games are actually very, very good for you in many ways, unlike most television shows. I highly encourage gaming over watching. Our family game night is usually played on a console rather than a table.
One hour of Gameboy every other day. We had Tetris (of course), Super Mario Land 1 (the Egypt themed one) and 2 (the one with the big coins), Star Trek TNG, and Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle. Maybe one or two others that I don’t recall. No other video game systems.
Movies, we weren’t allowed anything past PG until our late teens, and my mom was constantly trying to shove G-rated stuff down our necks. We saw Babe, Toy Story, and It Takes Two in the theater; I was 14 and way too old for that shit. We got Shirley Temple videos in our Easter baskets every year (we did not like Shirley Temple).
Basically we were way too sheltered. It was awful for my social life!
