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trslim @pawb.social

What were your parent's rules on video games?

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?

67 comments

  • 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

  • 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 remember when Super Smash Bros. Melee came out, I had to convince my parents to let me get it on the basis that the first game was rated E, so this sequel clearly should've also been E instead of T. Didn't actually take much convincing, they were fine with it.

    I never asked to play any M rated games, because there were never any that interested me to begin with. I think they definitely would've said no.

  • I didn't really have a whole lot of restrictions. My first home console was the Wii, and ofc there weren't a lot of mature titles to worry about there. When I got a little older I got an Xbox 360 and really wanted to get Call of Duty, which my mother was a little hesitant about but eventually relented.

    The real thing my mother cared about was online interactions. I was not allowed to be friends with people or talk to people I didn't know. (Eventually I started doing it anyway, and she didn't appreciate it when she found out)

  • I grew up with a gameboy advance sp that was a gift from my grandmother and we got a family Wii when I was about 12. I don’t think my mom knew much about the ratings but we weren’t allowed to play much besides mario kart and Wii sports. I started playing more when I moved out at 18.

  • Not exactly rules on content (though they were in charge of buying me games until I was old enough that it no longer mattered, so they stuck to family friendly games for the most part.)

    However they initially refused to buy me another console other than the NES that I was gifted when I was very little. Some years later, my older brother took pity on me and got me a Genesis (they did not appreciate it.) The only other time I was bought a console was my mom got me a Nintendo 64 as a pity gift for a lot of terrible things that happened to me that year.

    I remember them saying they didn't want to have to buy another console every year, with new games, etc. In hindsight, they were definitely predicting the future market haha.

  • 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.

  • I generally wasn't allowed to play video games because they were a waste of time. Eventually I was allowed to play dexterity-based games like DDR and Guitar Hero, but not often.

    Most of the games I've played were after I moved out, and I never really got into them.

  • Surprisingly there weren't any rules around video games, it was everything else they had a problem with. TV shows, music, movies, Pokemon cards, too much time on the internet... Everything was "satanic", and yet I could game all day and no problems there. Maybe my taste in games was just never seen as an issue to them, or it was too much work to audit the content of them.

  • I grew up with gaming on a DOS PC, Atari, and original NES. My parents didn't regulate my use, but refused to spend money on consoles or the games themselves. I supported my gaming interests with summer jobs, skipping lunch and saving the lunch money instead. Both of my parents were also addicts, so I could usually steal 5-10$ once in a while when they were high without being noticed. Not sure when the ESRB rating system rolled out, but it's something I paid attention to when buying games for myself, and eventually my kids.

    When I had my own stepchildren, they were free to game as much as they wanted when chores and homework were done, and adhered to a 10 pm lights out to get 8 hrs of sleep. As my stepson grew more interested in mature titles, I often played those titles to see what the content was like before deciding if I would allow him to play it. His bio mom was clueless about games, and tended to be more restrictive than me. I played OG halo before deciding it was a game he could play as a 14 year old. I played some of the GTA games before deciding he had to be 16 before we would let him play those. (My issue was picking up a prostitute and then being able to beat her after to get the $ back.) I started playing WOW because my stepson wanted to play. After some exploring I thought it was a safe title for him. Gaming was something that brought us closer together, and I spent so much time gaming with him. If I had the chance to give birth to my own kids, I would wish for a biological son like my stepson.

  • No specific rules on content, although I'm sure a game would have been retroactively banned if our mom saw something gory. The rules were on time spent playing. 30 min per kid per school day, only after schoolwork and chores were done. 60 min per kid on weekend days, again after chores were done.

    Minesweeper was not considered a game, for some reason. So we were all hella fast at minesweeper on the highest difficulty.

  • Born in the 80s, when I started playing video games around 6 they kept me on games adequate to my age until I reached high school.

    After that they mostly let me play whichever game I wanted, the only conditions were that I had to get enough sleep (and if I didn't, not to complain that I was tired in the morning) and have good grades.

  • The only rule was I had to get them myself (unless it was a special occasion) and not to disturb the house while gaming.

    Most of my PC games were from the win95 and MS-DOS era. But I do remember getting half-life 1 and eventually 2, and all the crazy mods that came out for those.

    I remember playing the leisure suit larry games and not understanding any of the jokes haha.

  • Only one hour a day initially. And my mom hated any games with guns, so no games with guns. Creating an absolute bloodbath in Age of Empires was completely okidoki tho. At some point I wanted to buy GTA 3. My mom obviously said no (and fairly so, I was like 12 or something). But my dad, in an absolute chad move, said "oh I know that game, it's fine". I tended to play at the houses of friends who had less strict rules. I remember playing GTA Vice City on the original Xbox some time before I was allowed to buy GTA myself.

  • No rules, except that they weren't paying for anything, so I play a bunch of free-to-play games and (maybe) learned the ways of Captain Jack Sparrow 🏴‍☠️ 😉

    I mean, my parents didn't even care if I shoplifted as long as I don't get caught. (I don't shoplift, but if I did, my parent would be more worried like "did they see you take it" more than the morality/legality implications.)

  • I don't remember rules about video games. My house was chaotic and unpredictable, and my parents don't understand boundaries. Besides, video games back then were primitive and family friendly. They were seen as just another toy.

  • I was never much into video games, but my first real interest was for Doom and then for StarCraft. I was also heavy into C&C... I was already an adult and fixed my own rules, deciding on what I wished to spend my time and waste my money.

    The first video game I played as a kid was some kind of Pong version, on an Atari console. So, yeah... not much video games for me as a child. With the other kids, we played cards, board games, we played outside too (it's great), we played chess and checkers, we also played doctor, we read a lot too. And there was no real need to set rules or limits (even less so on what we were allowed to read), not even when we played doctor, mind you—not even to tell us what was then obvious but that seems very much forgotten by too many nowadays, to not be a dick, because acting like one would warrant instant karma feedback from all the others players/participants involved... and that was kinda very quickly formative ;)

  • I think my parents looked at the PEGI logo, or whatever it was before, and respected it until I was 13 or 14. But I was a sensitive child so I didn't want to watch violent movies or killing zombies.

  • For the most part they trusted me. It helped that my step-dad played videogames before he met my mom. It probably also helped that I never gave them any concerns. I was a fat nerd who never got into fights or showed any signs of violence. My parents were concerned about me spending too much time indoors and not getting enough physical and social activity, but never concerned with the content.

    I also was a smart enough kid that I knew the limits of what I could ask for. I wasn't going to ask them for Leisure Suit Larry or BMX XXX, for example.

    There were a couple of exceptions where my mom heard things about specific games through the media. I remember the marketing campaigns for God of War and GTA3 really leaned into the controversy. Although I did end up getting GTA3 eventually.

    Ironically, there was only one case where I felt like I was allowed to play a game before I was ready, but it wasn't one I asked for. My step-dad bought Twisted Metal Black. I had played a bit of the Twisted Metal series earlier, but preferred the much more whimsical Vigilante 8. I still remember getting nightmares about getting my head locked into a mask like the one character (I think her name may have been Dollface?). As I am remembering it now I realize it was probably a metaphor about identity, but as a middle schooler I was just freaked out about it.

67 comments