black ops?

[controlfreakery]

my 13(and a half) year old son only wants one thing for xmas... cod black ops (18 cert). I am 99% sure that I don't want to buy him this. he thinks i am mrs meany mcmean from meantown. is he right??please let me have your views...

Phew! I thought we may be about to have our first MN fight!

never!

I have 3 ds aged 17 15 and 10 they all play on all the COD games and the halo games - it is as somebody else pointed out a fantasy-reality differentiation thing ds3 aged 10 plays it with his brothers and on a live connection and im told hes very good as he kicked his brothers friend who is butt on it - still doesnt stop him playing with his leg cuddling the dog and buying more animals for his pet shop on the Ds.

the brothers friend is 18 and ds3 kicked his butt ,thats meant to read ...... and he plays with lego not his leg .

We had the same request - Black Ops for Xmas from DS2 (13 in January) and we refused point black. We had an evening of sulks but we were firm.

The regulatory regimes of cinema and video games are relatively liberal and sensible and they serve a genuine purpose. pointy dog's argument about the kids being socially excluded without access to Black Ops is defeatist and has the effect of elevating a policy of lowest-common denominator to some sort of valuable cultural standard.

At the age of 13, kids are still learning about making value judgements. We know he has played Black Ops at friends but we are consciously sending out a message saying that while we are not going to prevent him from going to the houses where he can play it, we nonetheless disapprove of uncritical displays of torture and violence in Black Ops and will not sanction it in our home. And we explain to him why we think it is inappropriate.

After a day or so, he got over it. Of course I haven't got a clue what to get him instead because according to DS1 (20) who we use as spy, interpreter and adviser, Assassin's Creed is crap!

My little brother is 13, will be 14 a few days after Christmas. He wants it. He's not allowed it - it's the language as much as anything else, my parents say. He's not allowed COD either. Other brother is 18 and the little one feels hard done by but that is what my parents are doing.

there's no way black ops is comparable to films like Saw

ds (nearly 14) bought black ops last month - had been saving up for it for ages. He knew he had to turn off the swearing and go for reduced violence (option at the start of the game)

most of the time he plays combat training online with his friends - it's just the same as something like paintballing as far as I can see - it's very sociable and they're all laughing and joking - so far none has had a problem distinguishing fiction and reality ...

the console is in the living room and uses the family tv so his access is limited by default and he knows when he's had too much

he got given Assassin's Creed last year - I wasn't so careful about that cos it's a 15 - but it's actually much more violent than the bits he plays on Black Ops

Check out the assessment on Commonsensemedia.org.

I like CSM not because I'll necessarily agree with their ratings, but they do go into a lot of specific detail about what might be objectionable about any particular game or film. It's been very helpful.

DH and I are both gamers, although neither of us has much burning desire to black Black Ops (he's getting Halo Reach for Xmas, I'm getting Fallout New Vegas ) so we do know what goes on on these games.
DHs brother who is 13 on New Years Eve has had it since it came out. He's the only 13 year old boy I know and he is NOT ready for a game like that. Not because the violence scares him, but because it doesn't. He's been playing 18 cert games for years (he adores GTA ) and he really has become de-sensitised to violence. I know it sounds like something the media would invent, but I've seen it with my own eyes. While I don't think this will necessarily lead to him gunning down his classmates one day (largely because he rarely attends school due to being knackered after playing games all night) it's still a crying shame.

However, this is just one boy and tbh his issues run deeper than games and his parents do him no favours. But I thought I'd offer it out anyway. I don't think the games themselves are terrible, but as parents I think we have a right to enforce rules around the playing of these games and to try to keep kids interested in the world outside of their TV as well.

(easy for me to say, I know. DD is only a year and a half old so we havent actually had this come up for us )

personally i wouldn't let my 13 year old ds have it, he is only allowed ps3 games for his age as he prone to acting out the games he plays and can get silly. but it is up to the parents themselves, they know what their child can handle.

IMO shoot em up games are no big deal, COD is just electronic war games. I would say NO if it was Grand Theft Auto or something like that though

could try a kinect for the xbox instead? - the younger limbs can take the strain pricey - but then you could all join in over xmas?

I think, in my experience, I have two step sons aged 13 and 15.5. The older can handle playing the 18 games, but the younger one, I find becomes very agressive after playing,and its very addictive whilst playing. So they want to play for hours and hours. Then you get hours and hours of cranky behaviour. Proceed with caution and a tight rein, and maybe your ds might get what he wants?

Basildon - have you watched the whole thing though, or just the multi-player game play?

The combat training isn't particularly bad in my not-at-all expert opinion. It's more graphic then something like Halo but I would have thought it would have been given a cert 16 taken on its own. But the film clips setting out the story-line between the game levels in the solo campaign justify a cert 18. Showing fairly realistic scenes of torture/violence for entertainment purposes should be restricted to that age on the basis of similar film classifications.

LWSW - I found Reach soo disappointing, felt like they'd run out of ideas.

controlfreakery - you're right. no question. you know you're right. stick to your (pacifist) guns!

from a fellow control freak, with a 7 yr old who is going to be playing black ops (whatever that is - never heard of it before but greatly dislike the sound of it) at 13 over his mother's dead body

My children are not getting this game - they are 13. It is an 18 certificate and the people who put these certificates on the games and films tend to want to put lower certificates on anyway. The problem is the long term damage and the emotional damage. Buy Assassins Creed - there is a new one out and apparently its much better. I have a facebook page Parents against Call of Duty.

Parents are there to set boundaries - its our job ! The older that children are then the less impressionable.

A lot of parents at our school actually buy this black ops game for their kids the day it comes out - nothing like restraint ! or saving up for things - oh no not in a well off area !! ANd not only that two of the mums play on it alongside their kids ! To make sure they learn all the tricks - talk about pushy parenting gone to the extreme ! HOwever whats really pathetic is the kids are too young to buy this so the parents have to buy it for them. My kids may not like it but do you know it has actually maybe been good for them - in the end they've not really minded and it also stops them playing online with some of the kids I might prefer them not to play online with anyway.... So good luck with the decision and remember this is the very first generation to have been hit with such graphic images - even those kids who are 20-25 now never had this sort of game at that age so we are entering a whole new territory

jennyftm : "even those kids who are 20-25 now never had this sort of game at that age so we are entering a whole new territory"

Video nasties?

I think COD Black Ops is a 16? I noticed 16 stickers on it in Sainsbury's yesterday.

I have a friend who returned all her sons cod games. She said it made them change their behaviour.

It doesn't change my sons behaviour but then I don't restrict playing times, it's not a big deal and I get dh to play them so he knows what the content is.

I honestly believe that if you make it a big deal it becomes a big deal. My boys both have games consoles in their bedrooms (shoot me) but they play them as a last resort, if they can be outside or doing something with friends that is their preference. Games consoles are what they do when there is nothing else to do.

There is a lot of mass hysteria surrounding these games and unless your child is incapable of self regulating or has murderous tendencies then I don't see the problem.

Again, speaking from the depths of inexperience here, I would imagine that the problem isn't that any parents really think that playing Black Ops is going to turn their children into little murderers, but a bit more subtle than that: that it's all about some sort of machismo and that teenage boys playing it don't really need any more of that (!), that parents allowing it into their homes might set the wrong tone by suggesting that violence (at least in play) is entertaining (not that this will encourage them to actually go and commit violent acts in RL, but that it does trivialise it in some ways that parents might not be comfortable with), that the games are about vengeance and power and that these are not values to be unnecessarily encouraged. Again, I don't think it directly affects behaviour or that any ordinary teenage boy would mistake fiction and reality, but I think indirectly it could be deemed to send messages which are not the kinds of messages most parents want to promote in their own homes.

I'm not saying this because I either agree or disagree with Black Ops being played by teenagers, but just because I think the debate about games and video nasties etc always gets exaggerated, as if they either have absolutely no effect whatsoever or they turn children into killers. I'm sure it's more subtle and intangible than that ...

My children never had 18 games when they were young-perhaps thats why they were socially ostracised........
Well actually I just said no. This resulted in them thinking it was cool to rebel and obtain pirates from friends. However I did find out from other mums that most did not buy their children 18 games. This is the usual scenario of being emotionally pressured as a parent by being told stories bout what everyone else is getting. Dont give in.

My son (14) has black ops and doesn't like it as much as COD which he is addicted too. We now have a time rule in place. All his friends play it and they chat online so I do think thats a bit better than being totally solitary. He does recognise he is addicted and is quite pleased when I get him off it.

Spoke to ds1 (22) about this on your behalf. He said that if you do buy it for him (he said he wouldn't buy it for a 13 year old but he understood where your ds was coming from re his friends all having it), you should insist he "turn off the swearing and go for reduced violence (option at the start of the game)" as suggested by another poster and also only allow him to play the multi-player game rather than the single-player game as there is too much violence in that for a 13 year old in his opinion.

He also said, for those of you happy to allow your dcs to have games consoles but not wanting to allow them to have any 18 rated games, there is a parental control option on the consoles.

Hi, I felt compelled to join Mumsnet to add my thoughts to this discussion.

I?ve played Black Ops through on single player (offline) and currently playing multi-player (online). I?ve been playing games for over 2 decades, I love ?em!

The single player missions are gory, you?re being tortured (electro-shock, chemical, mental) for info thought the story which is told through flashbacks. During the game, cut scenes (short story building un-skipable in-game set pieces) a character has an eye gouged out with a knife, you force a shard of glass into a contacts mouth then punch him in the face, knife people in the throat and you also watch others forced into a gas chamber and get gassed. In game play you use human shields, watch people burn and see burnt, mutilated and mutated (by gas) corpses. These are just some of the scenes I remember off the top of my head, the game does have a BBFC 18 rating, they don?t make it illegal to sell to under 18?s for nothing. Online gameplay is different as there?s no story, just other gamers to play with, so the experience depends greatly on who DS/DD is playing against/with or talking to at the other end. Homophobic pre-teens, neo-nazis, sweary Americans, all the consoles (and in-game in Black Ops) have ?griefing? systems inplace to report troublesome players.

As one commenter mentioned the player can choose to turn the violence off or on. And consoles do have some parental control settings.

There are 2 classification systems PEGI and BBFC, the latter the only one with legal clout. Both the websites (pegi.eu and an iPhone App ?PEGI? and pbbfc.co.uk) have lot of advice for parents on games, parental controls on consoles, online safety, links to studies and specific information on the games and why they got the rating they did.

Whether you buy CoD:BO for DS/D who?s under age or not is you?re choice. Just make sure you?re not complacent in that choice.

Black Ops is by far no where near a good game for a 13 year old child. Both myself and my partner are video game fanatics and already can see our future when comes to our son trying to get us to buy him a game that's clearly too violent for him to play, he's bound to hate us for knowing about what games are about!
Assassin's Creed is also a bad choice, Look at the name ASSASSIN for a a moment and take a good guess what you do. It's a sneaky game where the main character tends to have hidden weapons and kills bad guys usually from behind or jumping ontop of them. Not something should really show anyone under the age of 15.
Does your son enjoy music type games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero? Most of these are 12 rated and are real fun, plus Band Hero can be played with friends or family members so least your son can play with his mates as well.