A thought occurs to me, if this is in the blogs, sorry

I read Ekanaut has kids, and I would assume a few other Uber employees have kids. How much does that effect the kind of games you try to design? Does it give you a certain drive to make design a game that is accessable to your children so when they play you can tell them, "Daddy designed that imp," or "Mommy named came up will all the character names," or whatever.

it kinda is, as well as mentioned in the podcast that Scathis was in.

they talk about how they cant always play violent games at home in front of kids, but that the game they designed, MNC, is only mildly suggestive and contains cartoon violence of a "megaman" variety, with lots of flickering and fire but no blood or dismemberment. and how when they play at home sometimes their children can be interactive, suggesting classes to play and such...

... or something to that nature i remember hearing somewhere.

The other day we had some heavy snow - very rare in my part of the country. I took my little brothers up to Killiney Hill to mess around with sleds and stuff. On our way up, I saw a kid - not older than 10 - running around with a sled held like a shield, shouting "it's like my Riot Shield!".

Now, I'm not the one to jump to conclusions, but I think he was referring to a weapon in a popular FPS. This FPS is 18+. I don't think we're going to have a generation of parents that can make informed decisions about what videogames to let their children play for a good long while, but it will be a sweet time when it comes.

This is too true. The midnight release of the newest of that said games's franchise had almost more 12 year olds with their terrible parents than the adults. One kids' mom kept circling around every 2 minutes checking in on them. It was a school night as well, if that wasn't a given. And also around 2 AM when the line went down.

Oh I LOVE getting Riot Shield kills in MW2. It's just insulting.

I once saw a 13-14 y/o kid arguing with a video game store employee about the content of a game. The kid's grandfather was there, apparently having been conned into purchasing this M-rated game. In the end, the grandfather ended up getting the game, while making some empty threat about taking it away if it was inappropriate.

I guess the moral of that story is that you may have to wait until informed parents become informed grandparents before the rating systems are actually effective...

tbh, what was the game? was its "M" rated content really that bad? the kid might have had a point, i woulda looked at his game and told the grandparent wether it was truely offensive, or if the esrb was just being a bunch of nit pickers like they actually usually do.

parents need to google the game. end of story. street fighter cant be that bad after all.

M rating are for blood, gore, language, drugs, alcohol, nudity, and others. Pretty much any game that is somewhat realistic in some fasion is M.

I went to a midnight release of Black Ops and there were a LOT of underage kids there...many with parents. If it wasn't on a school night, I could have cared less..but on a Monday night? That's just bad parenting. ...I don't even want to get into the fact that if these parents saw how most of these kids acted while playing online, I would like to think they would think twice about letting them play any further.

To get back on topic, I love the fact that I can play MNC in front of my son sometimes (he's 2) and not worry that much about what is going on....I never do this with Black Ops.

Yea, MNC is the only game that my dad is ok with me playing. Which is good, cuz I would play it even if he wasn't. :lol:

I say let the kids play online. Idk we grew up with games ourselves. However...if you give them a headset, now I think your being a bad parent. Do I think 10 year olds should be playing COD. No not really. Do I care. Not really again. Do I care when that 10 year old is shouting vulgar language acting his age and thinking he is funny. Yes.

I dont know some of us grew up playing resident evil, mortal kombat, doom, duke nukem, etc. I dont think the games were the problem. In fact I think some of them shaped what kind of games were interested in now. Just the internet combined with the games sometimes is a little too much for kids to handle. Granted I myself dont have kids so I'm sure this doesnt mean anything, I think most of the acting out comes from the headset.