We are under great pressure to get Halo for Twang Jr for Christmas – my instincts are fairly negative as it seems violent to me, though probably no less than some of the Minecraft games if I’m honest. Any views out there? He’s 11 going on 12. And “all” his friends already have it (cue “if they all put their fingers in the fire would you?” speech). Any thoughts?
ATM – X-Box gamers – Halo?
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Well there are two separate questions to answer here:
Is it suitable for an 11/12 year old? Well the ‘certificate’ on games like these is either 16 or 18. We run a ‘cert ahead’ here in an effort to balance ‘no you cant until you’re x yrs old’ with ‘all my friends already have it.’ So Moles aged 14 and 12 are able to play 16 certs. 12 corresponding with the certs for cinema, so they can watch 15 films but not 18. But you’ve got to decide what works for you. Certainly 12-year olds the world over are playing Halo and Destiny. There are endless clips on Youtube so you can ask your son to show you some sample gameplay.
The violence in Halo is more then ‘men fall over’ and endless guns, men falling over and bullets. It’s sci-fi so its nothing like as traumatic as say The Last of Us.
Is Halo any good? The answer within the world of FPS on XBOX is yes. The biggest FPS are Call of Duty (much more violent and realistic than Halo, he shouldn’t get these) and Destiny (again, refer to the first question). – similar to Halo in sci-fi stylings.
And the third question is should he get it now? Only if you’re getting a bundle console. Or it’s his money. If he can wait then games drop in price steeply after launch and of course CEX will have acres of second-hand copies.
But it’s nothing like Minecraft. You can mod Minecraft to do some violent activities, but it’s basically a construction game. Halo is just shooting. Or drive and shoot. Or fly and shoot. But it is all about the shooting. Just the shooting.
‘fraid I don’t know Halo at all. I have played a lot of games over the years, and it’s true that many of the most exciting ones are also extremely violent (the Far Cry series, the Half Life series, the Quake/Doom axis, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty and so on etc etc). All of these are of course huge, ginormous, megatastic, gibulous fun.
If you want a series of games to point him at that are massively fun, genuinely puzzling and intriguingly designed, see if you can get him into the Portal series (there are only 2 of them. So far.) These are intelligent, superbly designed first-person puzzlers with a great sense of humour that stretch your imagination and manage to deliver boss-levels that are tense and dynamic. The only violence is towards robots that have gone bananas, and you don’t get to shoot any guns yourself; only to punch “portals” through surfaces allowing you, or anything you bung, to move from one “portal” to another seamlessly and, crucially, with momentum conserved….
Not much help vis-a-vis Halo I’m afraid, but do try to steer the Portal games into view, they are superb.
The Halo series has been going on for quite a while. Since 2001 in fact
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(series)
is enormously successful and has very devoted fans. It’s a real top-of-the-range First Person Shooter.
As mentioned, it’s a sci-fi game and you are shooting at aliens which softens the impact of the violence a little.
Here’s a video review that will give you some idea of what it’s all about and what it looks like.
There’s no need for him to start with the latest game. You should have no problem finding the previous versions second hand in a game shop. Mosely is right on the money about how the price of games rapidly goes down after release. I’ve managed to explain this to my son and he realises the wisdom of waiting a month or two.
I just asked him if he could recommend a FPS game that wasn’t violent and he very helpfully commented that there aren’t any! Great!
I do think though that the level of realism does vary a lot. And if you are shooting robots or clones, for example, it’s a little easier to accept.
well, FPS does stand for First Person SHOOTER…
Halo is about as mild as FPSes come – as others have said, the violence is all directed against aliens, and there is next to no gore (disclaimer: I haven’t played Halo 5, the newest one). If you were ever happy with the little one having a toy gun or playing war then there shouldn’t be anything there to frighten you, as long as you enforce limits on play time, and monitor any online multiplayer, where he may well hear some words you’d rather he didn’t.
Foxy’s suggestion of Portal is an excellent one. Are you playing on an Xbox 360 or an Xbox One? There’s no Portal game on the newer console, but there is some backwards compatibility that you’d have to investigate.
Thanks all. I know all about Minecraft BTW, and it does have some nice construction dimensions plus a FPS shooter thingy he plays endlessly. He’s after Halo 4 “because all my friends have it” which is available as a bundle for the X-Box One with a few others preceding the current one (5).
Ta for the tip on Portal VV. Sounds great.
I suspect we are going to buckle and give in with some feeble caveat of the “if we don’t like it it goes in the cupboard” variety. I’ve watched some of the YT clips and TBH the voice overs by the gamers are worse than the game, ripe with vile language from start to end. Lovely.
True that. Don’t look at KSI on FIFA then.
Halo will be fine for a 12 yo. It’s mild and scifi based. No worse than the Star Wars/Trek franchises and significantly less worrying than the Hunger Games etc.
It’s also very very good. Have often sneaked a go on Six Pup’s
I don’t think there’s anything in the Halo games that should be too traumatic for a 12 year old. It’s “happy” violence of the action movie type.
I would second the warning about online play though. If his mates have it, he will 100% want to deathmatch with them, and that will potentially leave him exposed to the most foul mouthed, disagreeable gaming community I’ve ever come across. Maybe have a look at the chat settings and limit them to people on his friends list? He won’t miss much, beyond the opportunity to be called a faggot and a newb every thirty seconds.
I get the sense that Halo is the choice because of the social aspect, but if you’re in the market for a more kid friendly FPS, I’d suggest Team Fortress 2:
http://youtu.be/h_c3iQImXZg
It has a superb, Tex Avery art style, it’s all based around teamwork and cooperation and, most importantly, it’s both beautifully balanced and enormous fun. Before I had kids I sunk several hundred hours into this thing and it’s some of the best times I’ve had on a console alongside my buds.
It’s available dirt cheap on PC or as part of the same game package as the first Portal game (The Orange Box). Also comes with Half Life 2, which is an FPS you won’t want him playing (too scary) but that he won’t be interested in anyway because it’s too old.
Another vote for Team Fortress which was very popular here.
The question of online gaming (which is hard to get away from these days) for this age group is probably as great an object of concern for parents as the actual content of the games.
It is enormous fun. But one really needs to keep up to speed about who one’s kids are inter-acting with.
Everything from bullying by schoolmates to grooming by some very unsavoury individuals.
Another vote in support of Halo. The best FPS I’ve ever played – roommate and I literally wore our controllers out playing the 1.0 version – I can’t begin to imagine how awesome it is now – and even then, I would have said it’d be grand for a 12 year old. I wish Twang Junior well. And grenades. Lots and lots of grenades.
A general point — not directed at anyone here, but why is there such a great hurry to let kids play and watch things that are aimed at an older audience? If Little Joey’s friends are playing 15-certificate games and watching horror movies then surely we should be thinking that Little Joey’s parents are letting-the-side-down fuckwits, not falling over ourselves to emulate them?
You have got to the core of modern parenting. When the only ‘certificate’ entertainment was the cinema parents could let the cinema be in charge of keeping 12-year olds out of AA movies. From the first videotape onwards we have to act now as our own censors.
So, as I said in my earlier replies each family has to decide on where you draw the line @poppy-succeeds. We don’t actively encourage them to play these games, but when they say ‘Can I…everyone else is….’ we have to decide for ourselves what our response is. Would be easier I agree if everyone had to go to a government-authorised entertainment zone to watch DVDs and play games. Kids in general want to fit in, and be part of the peer group. Games are a part of that.
And there is Youtube of course and the internet in general with (pretty well) zero certification. Again, was maybe easier when your local newsagent decided whether you were old enough for Razzle or not.
The most useful lines in modern parenting I find to be ‘ I am not saying another word until your mother gets home and she can listen to what you’ve just asked for’
Of course Joey’s parents may not be doing that at all. Kids are great fibbers.
Things are further complicated if Joey has an older sibling. Then he’s likely to be getting exposed to stuff that older kids are interested in.
I don’t think most parents are in a hurry to expose their kids to stuff. But peer group pressure is absolutely enormous.
They are. It’s a constant on ‘mum’ forums: ‘should I let my 10-year-old play this 16-certificate game?’ The clue is in the question.
And as I say, unless you expect your kid to suddenly die in the day of their 16th birthday and thus miss out on the delights of FPS shooters early then why not wait?
As you say: peer pressure. But there’s sort of weary can’t-beat-them-might-as-well-join-them thing going on here. How parents have caved and bitterly regretted it, I wonder? A lot of kids change when they play games. They become over-adrenalised; they get disproportionately angry when they don’t progress; they become aggressive when the game is taken away. The certificates are there for a reason. Mad idea: if everybody just abided by them then maybe this whole peer-pressure thing would be less prevalent. You don’t buy fags for your children, why let them play 16-certificate videogames? Again, what’s rush? Let ’em wait.
The behaviours you describe above are as much a function of gameplay as they are violent content – I’ve a colleague who right now is going through this with her teenage son. His game of choice? FIFA 16. Age certificate? 3+. I’ve seen adults the same way on Candy Crush.
In our experience this is true. How long they play is far more important in the behavioural issues that can arise than what they play. Son is obsessed with city-building game City Skylines (think Sim City) but 2 hours of that can leave him as wired up as playing Destiny. We try and limit to 45 mins a day in the week, and an hour in the morning, hour in the afternoon at weekends. No gaming after dinner is an absolute.
I don’t think it’s about hurrying your kids into it. It’s just about recognising that they’re at an age when you don’t have total control over their environment any more, and rationalising that it may be preferable to give them a little rope to explore their boundaries under your own watchful eye than to maintain their innocence and hope the rest of the world (and I’m thinking friends with older siblings here, way more than parents) abides by age certification. Generally, there’s a balance to be struck.
I can’t think of anyone I knew growing up whose parents stuck ridigly to age certs, for games or movies, so it’s really a question of where on the spectrum you fall.
Incidentally, the reverse is also true.
My daughter currently wants to watch Star Wars (A New Hope). It’s a “U”, so theoretically she should be fine, right?
Except I’m not sure she’s ready for the chopped off arm, the sand person jumping out of nowhere or the death of Luke’s family, let alone the sight of Vader, so she’ll be waiting a little longer yet.
Age certificates are a guide. Parents should think hard and make their own decisions.
But there would be no need for striking a balance (which really is a lot of needless tying ourselves in knots) if we all just abided by the certificates. And there’s no reason to do it because there’s no great rush for kids to play/view above their recommended age, given they’ve got the rest of their lives to do it.
I’m a hypocrite. I used to love going round to my friend’s house because her mum let us watch video nasties.
I don’t see it as a massive chore and I’d far rather make these decisions for my own kids than palm the whole thing off to the BBFC.
What do we do about PG movies? Literally the first proper age rating the kids butt up against? If you have a 14 year old and a 16 year old, does the 14 year old have to leave the room when you stick a 15 on?
The age ratings aren’t an enforced limitation on parents, they’re just a form of suggested guidance. My girl’s current favourite movie is School of Rock. It’s a PG because Jack Black plays rock music and says “crapola”. I’m ok with her being exposed to both those things. Some of the Harry Potter movies are also PGs and would scare the shit out of her right now. So she’s not watching them yet.
I was the same as you (as we’ve discussed before). Within reason, I think it’s all part of growing up.
All part of growing up. Exactly. Kids are always going to smoke, drink, watch inappropriate films when they’re not supposed to.
What I’m uncomfortable with is parents enabling it — and in doing so making life marginally more difficult for the rest of us. At some point in the future when I want to put my foot down I won’t be as ‘cool’ as someone else’s mum; my kid will be accusing me of contributing to their being ostracised, etc., etc. Repeat till fade.
Certificates are a useful guideline and a helpful starting point for stressed out parents to get some idea what kind of content there is.
In Sweden Straight outta Compton got a certificate saying it was suitable for 11 and above. I went with my 12 year old. He enjoyed it enormously but, with a big smirk on his face , he said as we left the cinema “That was inappropriate for 11 year olds, wasn’t it?”
Then again, when we saw Coraline, he was really scared.
You have to know your own child and what they will react strongly too. Witches are a complete no-go zone. No Macbeth for him.
Exactly. All kids are different hence my question. I do find the laissez faire anything goes parents quite tiresome, but that’s reality. I have no problem saying no, but there’s a fairness dimension too. My mother wouldn’t let me watch Batman back in the day because it was “violent”. To make sure I couldn’t watch it at a friend’s she kept me in while it was on. Consequently at school the next day I was completely excluded from the excitement of talking about it, and I thought then (and now) it was unfair and I resented it. So I’m conscious of the need for proper information before deciding.
Some of the other suggestions made here sound great anyway BTW.
It is an endless topic of family conversation. Everything from ‘Can I have Assassins Creed X’ to quizzing of who all these people are you are talking with on your headset. Actually that’s not Everything.
Interesting are two are utterly uninterested in the 18 films on the DVD shelf, but would like to be playing games in series they like that are 18. They are quite happy to rip characters limb from limb in the games, but seeing (say) John Hurt come down with a bad case of alien tummy ache is too scary to contemplate.
Our two even
I guess I’m just dreading the future and venting a bit. I mean, I was horrified when the children went from CBeebies (informative, educational, A Good Thing) to CBBC (moronic shite). And now I’m having trouble coming to terms with the fact that they’ll soon want to go from the similarly enriching Little Big Planet and Minecraft to fucking Halo and Call Of Duty. Personally I’d like to delay that day for as long as possible, and it gets more difficult the more parents sign up to the ‘Giving In To Peer Pressure’ charter.
The longer you resist giving them screens, the better, IMO. Mine don’t have a computer or phones or iPads or a DS or a console. We recently got them iPod touches on a very strictly rationed basis. They don’t seem to be suffering and certainly aren’t ostracised.
Thread creep here because this has nothing to do with twang’s OP and is more a reply/agreement to @poppy-succeeds, but I don’t think there’s a class of people in the world for whom I harbour a more visceral and poisonous contempt than the Cool Anything-Goes Parent brigade. (Ok, maybe ISIS. But only just.)
Parents aren’t supposed to be their kids’ fucking BEZZIES. You can be a loving and relaxed parent without pandering and surrendering the whole bloody time.
But I do quite like CBBC 😉
Amen to that @disappointmentbob. The biggest problem for us is the X,Y and Z already play it, in fact I have when I went to their house. But I don’t think because some government busybody said there’s an age limit on it I can abrogate responsibility – do I also ban trips to that kid’s house? See also (warming to the theme) shit they feed them when they go round for tea. We never have Coke and similar poisons. But some of his friends do, every day, and when he goes there it would be positively knobbish to send a note stipulating what they can and can’t provide grub wise. Of course you could, but your kid would quite rightly think you’re being a tosser and find some other way around it as a matter of principle. I do think, though, that what they do at XYZ’s house doesn’t mean they, by default, do it at home. Coke and crap like that the decision is made and irreversible. Games etc…dunno. Time rationing is key though. Interestingly what TJ hasn’t clocked is because of the way Microsoft Family safety now works, X-Box time will automatically come into the time slots/time allowance regime, so it will immediately reduce time spent gazing at Minecraft videos or whatever. Which is a good thing. Based on this thread I think the plan is to allow him to have it, to get a couple of the other ones suggested (if they run on One) and underline the “if I don’t like it it’s going in the cupboard” rule. I need to investigate how to control the online play though – presumably you can control who they play with?
I’m reminded of the PJ O’Rourke quote “everyone is an expert in bringing up children except those who have them”. Or words to that effect.
PS I rue the day we got him an iPod Touch….
Yeah of course you can only legislate for what goes on under your own roof. But my own response to “but X’s mum lets her” is a suitably redacted version of “Give a fuck?” 😉
Bob’s conversations with kids: rated “15”.
Yeah, exactly: I stop swearing when they reach 15. That’s right, right?
Quite right. With all the quality movies they’ll suddenly have access to, it’ll be a buyer’s market for swearing. Except for the “c” word. You need to keep using that one until they’re 18. Educashun ; )
Thanks to all the gaming reviews and Let’s Plays, not to mention film trailers on the Tube, you hopefully won’t need to use that cupboard too much.
When kids are young one tends to know the other parents rather well as you meet them in the playground or in the school run. At that age, if my son tried to tell me some outrageous porky about how much pocket money his pals got, I could easily ask the mum or dad.
But as we parents rarely go to school nowadays, I know fewer and fewer of the parents. A closed parents group on Facebook has become rather useful for making sure we stay in touch. Needs must…
The Afterword goes Mumsnet! Who’d have thought it?
I’ve got this all to come, I suppose. My eldest is 11 and I’m lucky because at the moment it’s all Lego, Scouts and Minecraft. Halo is not on the horizon. Yet. I work in the games industry so maybe it doesn’t have quite the allure for him that it does for other kids, but even so I wince when I hear of parents wrestling with the FPS question.
Coooool – are we allowed to ask what you do?
Seriously: when the time comes, Team Fortress 2. Godammit, that game is good.
Oh, it’s nothing technical, and certainly nothing that requires me to play a lot of games (and in fact I’m pretty useless at them). It’s more story ideas, narrative stuff. But I do get given t-shirts, which are passed on to my son, so there’s a certain amount of reflected glory.
That sounds like an awesome job. Kudos!
Thanks! I work on an M-rated franchise. We don’t write for children. Our work is not intended for them. Sigh.
Can you give me a job please?
If only I had the clout. I am but a tiny, outlying cog in huge wheel.
aren’t we all, aren’t we all
One thing I would like to know — and this is a genuine question coming from an ‘I’ve got all this to look forward to’ perspective — if you let your child play adult videogames, do the things that are age-appropriate (Minecraft, Skylanders etc.) suddenly become old hat and babyish? Or do they co-exist?
TJ lurches back to childish things – books, TV etc, periodically. I think he’s subconsciously hanging onto his childhood. No idea whether this is true. He wouldn’t want to play adult games though, or see adult films. He kind of accepts is a limit – in gaming, shooting aliens is OK, people isn’t.
Yup they veer between scarily adult and deeply child-like, as they are of course some ever-evolving shape-shifting combo of both. So lego sits alongside Destiny, soft toys alongside Instagram.
Awesome job indeed. When I tell my son that someone I “know” on the AW works in the games industry, this site will suddenly achieve major cred in his eyes. Actually, it already had it: Tiggerlion digs Kendrick Lamar.
And the answer to your question, Poppy, is a definite yes. It’s a strange two steps forward, one step backwards process. Last week my son was playing Black Ops. This week he’s playing Skylanders which is for a younger age group than him.
Same thing with TV shows. When his little sister watches something like Rainbow ( we are a seriously retro household and still love Zippy), he’ll happily sit and watch it too for a while. He knows the words to all the songs and sings along.
He wants to try new stuff that is more edgy and dangerous, but then likes to retreat and take a breathing space in safer, more child-like things.
School life is a jungle.There is so much macho posturing among a group of 12 year old boys. He’s well aware of the term Alpha Male and very clear as to who the Alphas are in his schoolyard.
Interesting and heartening. Thanks, both!
One thing you can be certain about. Just when you reach a point where you think you know how things work and where you have them, the little horrors will pull the carpet from under your feet and radically re-position the goalposts.
Parents must constantly be on their toes.
My son’s schoolmates are on the cusp of adolescence (some of them are already taller than me).
In 2016 they will become teenagers. Aaaaaargh!
Never mind video games, a girl likes my boy. He is six. She follows him around and occasionally kicks him. See, I think my daughter is tough enough to handle boys when she gets bigger, but he, bless him, is going to be eaten alive. So, I’d rather he stayed inside and watched video games. It’s safer. Meanwhile my daughter wants to join the army when she grows up. She is three. I suspect she will win wars all by herself.
Yes for this very reason I was happy when he went to a boys only senior school. On a rugby pitch he is fearless, but I suspect faced with the teenage girl hobby of choice, i.e. fucking around with the heads of teenage boys, he wouldn’t stand a chance.
Hilarious Simon. I bet she’ll need to do no more than look at them and they’ll be waving the white flag.
Halo 5 is currently £30 in Tesco, as are a number of other Xbox one games, Fifa 16 etc.