Why are video games thought of as "for kids"

Panda Z, a Mecha show for little, little kids in Japan, features a rabbit mecha with missiles for boobs. Yeah . . . I think the rules for children over there are a tad bit different than they are across the Pacific and Asian mainland.

Values Dissonance, plain and simple. American Moral Guardians seem to have a pathological fear of any sexuality, Japan doesn't. Going the other way, American media can be disturbingly friendly towards violence so long as no blood is shown, while Japan had to have the torture sequence in Peace Walker censored from featuring stun rods to laughing rods in order to keep the T rating.

Of course, there are also those in America who insist that a character who so much as shoves somebody is glorifying violence and teaching our kids that fighting is the perfect answer to everything.

edited 21st Apr '14 9:30:24 PM by TheAirman

The only experience most people in the media have with games dates back to the NES/SNES era when games were simple and colorful. To them gaming never became a hobby and they only remember it as "that thing I did when I was a kid".

edited 21st Apr '14 9:33:20 PM by McSomeguy

@Hashil: CERO Z Rating was on that page you know...

I think one of the thing that reinforce that perception is probably because of The Great Video Game crash, really, and also Nintendo's Seal of Approval thing...

I think it was the rise of NES that gained massive popularity with kids that the media picked up on that. Despite the fact that we also have the Playstation and the Xbox lines of consoles that are more aimed at older audiences, video games in general will always be seen as children's toys that are manufactured to create children shooters that kill their classmates.

Remember the hot coffee incident in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas? Despite the fact that the game was made for much older teenagers and up, the media blasted the game for allowing sex scenes to be shown towards children.

Not just sex scenes, but Dummied Out sex scenes at that. There was no way of accessing these scenes without modding or hacking the game, but the media didn't care about that.

The media in general never does any fact checking. Hell, Cracked always makes articles showcasing how stupid news media looks when they do a report on something that turned out to be bullshit.

Especially considering this is Fox that said this if I remember the starting post correctly.

And considering video games have been going several decades strong now, the media still thinks games are like the ones from the 1990s.

"Cooper, have you actually ever played Mass Effect?"

"NO!!!"

• Head Desk* *Head Desk* *Head Desk* *Head Desk* *Head Desk* *Head Desk* *Head Desk* *Head Desk* *Head Desk* *Head Desk* *Head Desk* *Head Desk*

I think Nintendo would be partly to blame for the image as they had always concentrated on kiddy gaming and family appeal, and throughout the years they had very much been the Moral Guardian in regards to gaming, whether it be the censorship of Mortal Kombat 1 or not wanting Conker's Bad Fur Day released. Those who are not knowledgeable of gaming see that and think that as the norm, they do not know of the counterterrorist sims on PC or the Survival Horror on Playstation, the grown up mature space opera on XBOX.

Even I have fallen victim to this with thinking I had seen it all, played it all, nothing could shock me. Then I saw Dead Island: Riptide. You know, for kids. I wasn't prepared for that. At all. And like those raging at games being only for kids I wonder what gaming is coming to.

That's because Nintendo has a huge reputation for both quality games and an all-ages appeal as part of their marketing strategy. (It's worked for 30 years, why stop?) AO games are quite often very low production quality and they don't pass the standards Nintendo demands to uphold its reputation for all-ages appeal.

As far as video game companies go, Nintendo's an exception in every way. They're the ONLY company out there who went into video gaming directly from toy making. Everyone else was doing electronic hardware before they ever touched games. They don't have the reputation requirements that Nintendo does.

You mean to tell me that Microsoft didn't start out as a playing card company?

Playing cards aren't really toys, though, are they? I mean, they're games, but they're just as likely to be involved in shady things like gambling as they are in innocent settings.

I'll admit I didn't actually research that claim ahead of time.

That's still making games anyways. Mattel and a couple other toy companies dabbled in making video games in The '80s but they quickly kinda folded their divisions. (Largely because of The Great Video Game Crash Of 1983.)

edited 22nd Apr '14 8:31:03 PM by MajorTom

Nintendo also made toys sure they started out as playing card manufacturer but they did make toys like Ultra Hand and other toys that I can't remember at the moment.

Nintendo didn't make any playing cards, they made Hanafuda cards. Which is a game specifically designed to be hard to gamble with. They've always been a family-friendly company.

edited 23rd Apr '14 7:47:00 AM by Clarste

They did make standard decks of 52 though, as can be seen in JAKQ Dengekitai.

Re the "Hot Coffee" incident specifically: Once you get past the sensationalizing over the content itself, the real issue is that Rockstar didn't inform the ESRB that those scenes were present in the game, Dummied Out or no, when they submitted the game to be rated. The ESRB is supposed to hand out ratings based on the total content present, whether or not it's easily accessible to the players. To put it briefly, their chief sin was lying about their game to get a friendlier rating, not including that scene per se.

That said, the nature of said unrevealed content is probably the main reason it blew up into the scandal it did.

edited 23rd Apr '14 11:55:33 AM by Specialist290

The thing is, that requires ignoring the nature of how programming works. There will *always* be additional content that isn't part of the final experience, because removing unused code is usually impractical.

IMO, Rockstar was entirely in the right, and the ESRB was acting purely out of media backlash.

Why should they bother to inform about something that no one is going to experience if they play the game normally, though? That's like saying Game Freak had to mention the inaccessible (without hacking), barren Safari Zone in Pokemon Gold And Silver.

If you need to hack a game to access content in it, that content is not part of the normal playing experience and thus need not be taken into account in assessing it.

edited 23rd Apr '14 3:02:10 PM by Odd1

And if they do that, and something like the hot coffee incident happens again, everyone apparently has to lose their shit.

What to do?

On the other hand, Nintendo did use to own a chain of Love Hotel's, so...

What to do is to set up an education campaign teaching those reasonable folks who will listen about what happened. After that, ignore the rest. Yes, I know, they have money and backing, but eventually you have to say "fuck it" and stop pandering to self blinded people who just want to jump your shit if you're not on your knees worshiping them their ideology anyway.

I was gonna mention that and got Ninja'd.