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.
> 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.
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.