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Message: <blockquote data-quote="derula" data-source="post: 291" data-attributes="member: 10">[USER=50]@Kefka1134[/USER] video games definitely still are a misunderstood medium. You touched upon something that I'd like to put into perspective, that people wrongly connect the content of a game with the player's personal mindset. I'll get into that more later, but first I'd like to comment on your remark that they don't make the same mistake with other forms of media, like movies and books.Truth is, that they did do that with movies and books. It's an illness that seems to generally come with new forms of art. In history like misunderstandings were only temporary. I'm hopeful that it will be the same with video games. But even if it won't, you can clearly see the parallel. (I could go on a tangent here and go on about how people are just scared of everything that's new or unknown... when you read things people wrote about trains back when those were new, it sounds an awful lot like what some people say about video games today. But I will stop here, you can research that more for yourself.)But in general, I think there are two common almost antithetical misunderstandings, both of which are equally as harmful:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">If someone plays videogames with violent content, they will learn to think that this violence is okay and soon employ the same kind of violence</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Violence in videogames is completely immaterial and it's okay for little kids to play FPS games with their friends.</li> </ol>Interestingly enough, there's often people who think that both statements are accurate while not seeing how they're not compatible. We, of course, know that both are wrong.Kids shouldn't be subjected to this content, not because it will teach them that murder is okay and they will turn into murderers growing up, but because these games require some prior knowledge and maturity in order to be taken the right way. Those big publishers of mainstream FPSs don't care, all they care about is maximizing their income. I really wish publishers would take some responsibility and act like the adults they are, doing their best to limit exposure of kids to their content.On the other hand, kids shouldn't be completely sheltered from anything remotely implying violence either. They need to learn that it exists, and how they can deal with it. And not only violence, but death, illness, or just bullying and identity. They need to learn that they're okay. That not everyone will agree with them, and that that's okay. And how to deal with bad situations as they arise. Glorified war games just don't tackle these issues at all, they're just kill or be killed. And again, that's not going to turn them into heartless killers... but it will hold back the development they should be going through.Obviously I don't mean to say that kids should all play BO:LoK. While I'd argue it would be better for them than playing Call of Duty or Fortnite, I don't think either are the right way for them to be confronted with death for the first time. What is the right way? I don't really know. But I do wonder if the extreme popularity of "kill or be killed" kind of games today is due to a deficit in many people's upbringing. I'm not saying these games don't have their place or that everyone who likes them is dumb, I'm just talking about the extreme broadness of their popularity.</blockquote>

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