“I have one bullet left, I want to shoot somebody but I need to find someone to shoot someone.”
I just came home from work and those were the first words I hear as I walk into my bedroom. My girlfriend’s cousin’s 6-year-old son is currently sitting on my bed playing Grand Theft Auto IV. I start to wonder if I should stop him, explain to him that this isn’t an age appropriate game and tell him he should play something else, but I don’t do anything. I just sit here and watch him play, amazed that his father presumably thinks that this is okay. There’s no way the man doesn’t know he’s in the basement flying through Liberty City on my 360. I used to sit and watch my brothers play Doom and Wolfenstein at a very young age, I was probably even younger than he is and I turned out reasonably okay with no apparent homicidal tendencies. I’ve also never thought that video game violence was really that big a deal, neither did my parents, but Grand Theft Auto at 6 years old? This really may be pushing the envelope too far for even me.
“I need to find another cop car so I can get a weapon.”
It’s interesting to watch him play this game , he’s not particularly interested in killing people, right now he seems to just want to drive a Cop car. He’s found one and is currently barreling through Liberty City at high speeds jumping over different objects. To him this game really is a sand box, he seems amazed by what he is actually able to do in this game. Occasionally he’ll jump up and down beside me on the bed as his car flips through the air or as Niko punches a hole through a brand new cards window – It’s almost like he’s playing Kinect or something. I guess it’s how he exerts his excitement.
“I just shot somebody and killed somebody without the cops going after me.”
“I really like this game.”
Until now he’s been relatively careful and hasn’t actually tried to shoot anyone. I’m starting to wonder if his father, who’s upstairs right now surfing the internet, knows he’s playing this game. When I ask him if he’s played Grand Theft Auto before he explains to me that he has it at home and that he plays it with his dad all the time, just that it’s a different version. I’m assuming he means Grand Theft Auto 3 because I know he has a PS2 and I also assume that he’s telling the truth because he seems to know a heck of a lot about the series. I guess this must be okay then, hopefully his father has sat him down and explained that this is just a video game and in no way really relates to the morality of the real world.
According to Jack Thompson I’m currently watching a homicidal maniac in the making, this smiling little boy definitely is not insane, he seems to be just having a genuine good time exploring Liberty City.
I’m really surprised about the little details in the game that amuse him, he loves the fact that you can knock Cop’s hats off and steal any vehicle you want. He’s also amazed that you can fly helicopters. He just tried to steal a cop car and was extremely frustrated that the car’s door was actually locked. The Cops got out of the car and tried to arrest him, he then got shot a few times in the head and dropped to the floor dead. He tried this two more times with two other different Cop cars before realizing it really wasn’t a good idea.
“Good thing the cops aren’t after me though, I just killed someone with my small gun.”
I decided I’d show him how the game worked, he knew a lot about it already and told me he already played Grand Theft Auto 3 before so there really wasn’t that much to explain. He’s still quite obsessed with stealing Cop cars, it’s always his ultimate goal. He likes to get inside one and smash it until either it flips over or explodes. It’s strange when I think about it, my child hood video game was the original Mario Bros. on the NES, his is the GTA franchise. The general idea and concept behind each game is completely different but I can totally relate to the sense of wonder and excitement I see in his eyes. He has no expectations as to what he is actually able to do in GTA IV, he tries to drive everything, tries to climb everything and isn’t restricted by the general norms most of us confine our gaming to.
I’m on the fence with this one, he obviously knows he’s just playing a video but the extreme violence depicted in the GTA franchise is definitely not age appropriate for A 6-year-old. However, it’s his Father’s decision and I’m not his Father. In the end I say 6 is a little young to be beating up hookers, what do you think?
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i son has been playing gta games since he was 2years old & he enjoys it, he’s 6 now & still enjoys playing gta games but mostly just for driving the cars & the ability to venture around a virtual city, games that he plays to clock would be stuff like the sly series. i don’t have a problem with my son playing gta games, we just skip the cut scenes & continue with the missions
Dude, quit being a square!
People need to understand that as time goes by, the future generations will always be more corrupt and street smarter than their predecessors at the same age. I would say, playing Grand Theft Auto should be a requirement for children in today’s bug-eat-bug world! If a child is not playing Grand Theft Auto, he’s just gonna go to school and get his @$$ kicked by the kids that are.
It all starts with the parents! If you were brought up with respect and values, chances are you’ll be alright, as oppose to if you were brought up in a crack house!
Inevitably, a 6 year old is just gonna go to school and learn to say fuck and pussy fart from the delinquents at school.
I am a older gamer with two teenage boys and a 7 year son. We play quite a bit together, mainly shooter games. I am sure we have all put too many hours on the Halo and Call of Duty games. More than once I have sat and talked to my boys about “it just being a game” and ” we would NEVER think of doing this in real life”. I do watch what the boys get and play. I am not a fan of the GTA series. The violence doesn’t bother me as much as the constant swearing in the game. My 7 year olds favorite game to play is Left 4 Dead 2. He will run around and find different ways of killing zombies. Am I worried about him? Not in the least, do I enjoy listening to him giggle and say things like “Crap! I forgot to get a health pack!”, yes I do.
GTA just doesn’t get played in my house. I know my boys have seen and played it at their friends house before but for some reason they just are not interested in it. As I said, the violence doesn’t bother me in the game since it is just that, a game. I just do not think the constant swearing in the game is needed. Especially hearing “GD” all the time.
My $0.02
Good article. I have to say that for someone that grew up playing violent video games from a young age, I don’t see the problem in games in themselves. As far as GTA IV, I wouldn’t introduce a 6 year old to it simply from the sexual and vulgar language side of things. I wouldn’t want my kid dropping the F bomb or any curse words, and the newer GTA games are full of them. I wouldn’t mind him driving around and exploring while I play with him, but I wouldn’t go through the campaign or anything with him. I grew up playing doom with my friend and his dad when I was 6 along with tekken, playing silent scope in the arcades when I was just a bit older, and GTA 3 when I was 12 or so. I have no psychopathic tendencies, haven’t turned into the DC sniper, never even committed a petty crime. I’ve played through probably over 100 mature video games. To me gory movies are way worse. Showing real people get murdered and such wether its fake or not. I’d let a 6 year old play any M rated game over watching a movie like Saw or something of the like. After killing 1000′s of people in video games over the years, the thought of hurting someone in real life makes me cringe. I can beat someone with a baseball bat all day long in GTA and laugh my ass off about it, but the thought of it in real life is sickening. Video games are just that. Games. Like I said in the beginning. As long as it’s not promoting sex, drugs, foul language, etc, I don’t see the problem with it at a younger age.
Its easy to see both sides of the argument with this one. Either its completely bad or its not such a big deal. Personally I go with the second one; I’ve never been all that censored with videogames, music or movies and neither have most of my friends. In fact most of the more… ‘hectic’ youth in my Town consist of people that barely even play videogames.
I’ll never say that media has no effect on children since it effects everyone in some way, but I don’t see it as being some huge influence on a child’s mentality or later actions in life. I’ve probably played around fifty or so war games, most likely more and I haven’t enlisted myself.
I think it’s a combination of bad parenting and to an extent the media that causes kids to become messed up. A messed up kid doing sadistic things in a video game definitely isn’t helping him, but the key factor is that this kid needs to be messed up in the first place for games or any sort of media to have any sort of negative effect on him or her. I think that makes sense…
I think everything needs to be done on a case by case basis. If you stop your child from playing specific games odds are he’s going to want to play them even more, he could also just go to a friends house and play them.
What people need to understand is killing someone in a video game is the equivalent of scoring a goal in a sport. I think some E rated games are actually worse for kids (e.g. mario). Reality is not something you need to hide from a child, but a fantasy game with a false reality where killing things does not produce a corpse is more damaging than when there is realistic gore. And the themes of GTA aren’t too inappropriate for a 6 year old, it’s an anti-violence game with good moral values…you’re not rewarded for murdering anyone but criminals. Mario on the other hand does not have good moral themes.
Well, just saying GTA is ruffly the same compared to Duke Nuk’em which I grew up playing on the computer around his age. I’m currently going in college (UCF) and I’m trying to get into FIEA (A masters program for game design that works with UCF). So unless being more prone to makes games counts as ruining ones life, I doubt playing the game will effect him any.
tell him to quit fucking up your game save
Because we’ve been exposed to media for such a long time, adults have a hard time understanding it. You see, your brain does not think pixels on a screen are real life. You actually have to LEARN the ability to suspend your disbelief that this small screen with flat shapes moving around is supposed to represent actual things (which are never 2D, obey different physics, and really could not be MORE dissimilar).
Believing that a persons brain can misunderstand the difference between reality and a game makes as much sense as expecting the exact same problem with reading text, or hearing spoken words. You have to LEARN how any of those things even represent real stuff.
Also, if kids DID mistake TV or videogames for reality, or if you’re going to operate on that premise…. watch a kids TV show sometime. Or play a videogame meant for kids. THAT is the thing you want to expose them to in order to prepare them for the real world? Accepting that those things are true would qualify a person as clinically insane.
The brain develops very conveniently. If a child is incapable of understanding something, they won’t understand it. If they do understand it, then they are necessarily capable of understanding it and it can do no harm aside from possibly deceive them about how the world works. That is very unlikely, though, because we inundate kids with things that do not resemble reality hardly at all. If your kid doesn’t get perplexed as to why there isn’t a babys dismembered head in the sun after watching Teletubbies, they’re not going to be confused that running over people is OK either.
What a great story, warms my heart to see children enjoying gaming like that. As for the author he needs to chill, seriously. His negative vibes almost ruined a beautiful tale of a boy, his gun, and his goal of stealing a cop car.
@Wally-G
I was pretty “chill,” the entire time, the whole thing just got me thinking, that’s why I wrote this.
@Otalicode
Very well said.
Patrick sweet article, and i think that ultimately it is up to the rent to decide when the kid should play violent video games. Honestly if i had a kid i’d rather him/her have a big sandbox to play in such as Liberty City, than sit and watch fucking Jersey Shore or Teen mom. Games are good for the brain, if the game has a solid physics mechanic hand the controller to a kid and they are going to have a blast because there’s a cause and effect between what they choose to do, and what happens in the environment. It’s part of the entire reason why i still love games as an adult. I played violent games like doom, tekken 2 (snapping mutha fucking arms), even soldier of fortune: Double Helix at a very young age, and although i truly do get enjoyment when i blast an AI’s head off it in no way causes anyone to become brain washed murder’s. If they’re out shooting people in the real world they were fucked from the start. And playing the Ballad of gay tony will certainly not turn you gay MATHEW, i’m sad i share a name with this ignorant fucking idiot.
@Mattyb
Thanks for your comment, That’s pretty much how I feel. I’ve never thought about it like that, GTA really does work as a learning experience sort of.
Buttom line: I big part lies at the parenting. The parents should know there child. And the should know when there kids are ready.
well…id tell him hes way to young and to gtfo. or you could let him play the ballad of gay tony and introduce him to gay characters showing there stuff on screen have a fun life kid
@Mathew
I don’t really understand what your getting at but I assume you mean that if he plays Ballad Of Gay Tony and see’s a few penises then he’s going to be gay? I really REALLY don’t think that would happen and there is certainly nothing wrong with being gay.
I’ve seen a kid around six years old wearing this hoody in a child’s size. They sell knock off ones in the local open air market. They’re on the same clothes rail as the dozens of Scarface t-shirts they sell.
http://tinyurl.com/gtababies
@Kermit The Frog
That’s a pretty scary shirt for a six year old to be wearing, I bet the parents thought it was hilarious.
@Melvin
I totally agree with you, he’s a good kid, really intelligent and I’m not his parents. I just thought it was strange that he let his son play such a violent game at such a yougn age. But like you said, it’s his father’s decision.
When I was a kid I basically played whatever I want, there we’re never any restrictions on my gaming in regards to ultra violent games. My mom would sometimes complain about how violent certain games we’re but never actually took them away from me. I think I turned out alright, no apparent homicidal or psychopathic tendencies and I’m in my 4th year of journalism school. Maybe going to journalism school has something to do with a self hate issue….. hmmm
In all seriousness it really comes down to the parents decision, if they think there kid can handle it I don’t see why you shouldn’t allow them to play whatever they want.