

Kids are making friends in the Arab world - via Call of Duty - benwerd
http://www.scottbraddock.com/2011/03/freedom-fighters/

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estel
Whilst obviously I see it as ultimately down to parental discretion and
judgement, I just don't understand the mindset that sees a parent buying their
12 year old child COD Black Ops.

~~~
jergason
That was my first thought as well. The games are rated 17+ for a reason:
graphic violence and strong language in a "fun" context is not something I
would want my 12-year old experiencing for hours on end.

~~~
electromagnetic
Why are you letting your 12-year old play video games 'for hours on end' to
begin with?

I used to play 18 rating games when I was 10 because I bought them (UK legally
enforced rating system FTW), when 3/4 of the games I was killing zombies with
green blood and my parents didn't see much difference between what I saw in
video games and what I saw on TV.

Incidentally I'm literally talking about Carmageddon (released 1997) and Star
Ship Troopers (released 1997). The former was rated 18, the latter was rated
15 in the UK. The former involved killing Zombies and destroying cars. The
latter involved human-on-human violence, people being ripped limb from limb,
aliens being mutilated and tortured, a cow getting ripped to pieces, and
multiple scenes with full-frontal nudity. Also released that year was Titanic,
which again had a nude scene and a sex scene, it had a suicide attempt, a
suicide on screen, it had someone killed with blood while trying to escape a
sinking ship, it also dropped the F-bomb and a dozen shits amongst other swear
words; it was rated 12 in the UK.

I'm sorry, but the themes in video games (at least when I was growing up)
tended to be more child-friendly than most of the movies children were
permitted to see or we allowed to see by their parents.

If you don't want your kids playing violent video games, then don't let your
kid play violent video games. You have zero justification to impose your rules
and values on anyone else.

I also find it very foolish that you cannot see that video games are rated
insanely over the top with almost no common sense applied "because they're
interactive".

Honestly, I think your 12 year old likely has received more life-time
emotional and mental damage by being in school surrounded by other children
than they ever would being exposed to violent video games. Also note that it's
a very limited subset of gamers that _only_ play FPS games.

~~~
nopinsight
> Star Ship Troopers > human-on-human violence, people being ripped limb from
> limb..

> Titanic > a nude scene and a sex scene, it had a suicide attempt, a suicide
> on screen, ..

You seemed to complain that the rating organization requires older age on the
viewers of Star Ship Troopers than Titanic. Do you really consider these two
scenes as being equally bad for the kids?

Moreover, I bet that being immersed in an interactive scenario and controlling
parts of scenes is more captivating and can influence you more than merely
watching something passively. Not to mention the number of hours kids
typically spend playing such a game is vastly higher than what they spend
watching a movie of the same level of violence/nudity.

As for real-life violence, I do not think "people being ripped limb from limb"
is a usual happening in any school playground.

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BasDirks
I played CoD4 for $$$, (playing on international teams), traveled to more than
6 different countries to play tournaments, and after a while nationality
really did become irrelevant.

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bayareaguy
A similar thing happened in my own family a while back.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226987>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Do you think it's possible to have such a game with out mortal combat as the
central theme and still make a big impact in the gaming world. Cooperative but
not cooperating to kill the other team?

~~~
ZoFreX
Worth noting is that "kill the other team" is a blanket term that encompasses
many different levels of violence. Yes, in some games you do actually kill
people, but there are so many variations - in platformers you often just jump
on their cartoon heads, in strategy games it's more about conquest, like
playing Risk.

Looking through my own gaming library, there are a lot of completely non-
violent games where you could class it as "mortal combat" - for example in
Osmos you play a single-celled organism (sort of) trying to survive by
absorbing those smaller than you and avoiding those bigger than you.

There are many games out there less violent than Call of Duty that kids could
play to bond or make friends, but they get overlooked because they get lumped
into a category, and then the media parade the most extreme examples from that
category in front of us.

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Adam503
Thanks. Now Glenn Beck's gonna have "Call of Duty" up on his blackboard
screaming "Islamic terrorists groups are now recruiting American children!"

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scythe
I'm a case of this. I met these motherfuckers from Turkey and Bahrain through
the community surrounding that little flash game "n". Also several (?) people
from Finland, a guy from Bulgaria, and another from Singapore.

~~~
billybob
Odd. The context of the article and the rest of what you wrote, I would have
expected a word like "friends" or phrase like "cool guys" in place of the
vulgarity.

Did you dislike these people?

~~~
sliverstorm
perhaps it is subculture-appropriate slang for 'cool guys'?

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TheSwede75
Having played my fair share of COD, MW2 and Black Ops I would unfortunately
say that the 'Make a friend outside of the US' vs. 'Screw you towel-head'
ratio in general does NOT provide a base for improved foreign relations or
'bridge building'.

Glad that it does happen though.

~~~
maukdaddy
Ugh not to mention the constant stream of gay slurs and swastika emblems.

~~~
malkia
What's the problem with swastika emblems?

Do you live in Germany?

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dhughes
It's not a swastika emblem which is quite common it's the red, black and white
Nazi Swastika which symbolizes extreme hatred and violence.

You don't have to live in Germany to be affected by it, I'm sure quite a few
of us have grandfathers who are no longer here because they fought against the
hatred and violence which the Nazi Swastika now symbolizes.

~~~
tomjen3
I don't know how to say this nicely, but nobody seems to care about displaying
the Soviet flag, though they killed a lot more. Maybe it's just time to bury
the hatchet.

~~~
bluekeybox
Although I would typically be the first to attack any positive mention of the
Soviet system, the number of people who died under Soviet regime (yes, it was
probably larger as you mentioned) is mostly due to the extreme power wielded
by Stalin during his time at the helm. After Stalin's death, the communist
party tried to distance itself from the crimes committed by him. So it's a bit
unfair to compare fascism to communism -- you should compare fascism to
stalinism instead. In addition, even if you compare fascism to stalinism (both
very scary systems), fascism looks a bit worse, not because of the number of
people who died, but because unlike stalinism which was mostly a culture of
fear, fascism was really a culture of hate all the way down the hierarchy.

~~~
malkia
Yes... Also this "road" can lead us to US slavery period... Should we prohibit
from display all flags, emblems from that era?

~~~
bluekeybox
Not sure how you can draw that conclusion from what I said. The USSR flag,
while it is a flag of an oppressive totalitarian regime, does not carry the
symbol of hate meaning as much as the Nazi flag does (and probably not even as
much as the confederate flag is). My argument was to say that even though a
lot of people died during the Stalinist era, I do not consider the USSR flag
to be at the save level as the Nazi flag, and I would not treat the two in the
same way.

