GDR – Holiday Horrors
Believe it or not, this isn’t a post about Black Friday. Don’t get me started on that terror. No, the issues here have little to do with the incoming aftermath of turkey day, but dabble heavily in its known traits: insanity, gore, and generally poor decision making. Yes, blood runs through the streets once a year in the US, as insane mothers wait outside of department stores for the doors to open at 4 am, all to get that choice item at some incredibly low cost, and curses upon all who stand in their way. All the same, so we want to see the streets run with blood in our games, too?
Maybe we do?
Now, don’t get me wrong on my intentions here. This isn’t going to be a rant about censorship or any of the predictable junk you’d think “streets paved with blood” entails. This is about a rather unfortunate issue that is really standing out this year, the neglect of an entire chunk of the gaming market. We’re talking about teenagers, peeps.
In a world where it seems to be increasingly uncool to be a 10-year-old who doesn’t watch R-rated movies every chance they get, maybe people have just quit caring, but I’ve a hard time believing it. This holiday season, the biggest runners in the gaming market are pretty much all M-rated. And why do I care? Shopping for a 13-year-old, my brother, has resulted in me playing devil’s advocate and shooting down most of his Christmas list because of F-bombs, gratuitous violence, and even some implied beastiality. Sorry if I’m not the most liberal being in the world, but he’s thirteen. Where’s the games for people in his age group?
Modern Warfare 2 sounded possible until the language factor crept in. I get chewed out for having Drake drop the occasional s-bomb on the first Uncharted, I’m pretty sure the kid won’t have it any better with frequent f-bombs, never mind the information I’ve been handed where there’s something like a POV stab-to-death scene or something. Cute?
Assassin’s Creed has quickly become one of the lad’s favorites only to have the sequel contain “much more profanity and sexual content than the first game,” something I’m amazed he gets away with playing as it is.
And of course the game’s he’s been begging for since launch, Dragon Age, has a topless demon and the ability to sleep in a brothel and wake up not only next to women, but a chance of popping up in bed next to assorted animals as well. My apologies to the super-furries, but… no. That’s saying nothing about the constant blood splatter and my fears of how mom would react to him having women in the game parade about in their undergarments all the time. The lad would probably like to live a few more years.
And, yes, we’ve a very conservative mother, but, I stress, he’s thirteen. The only thing really rolling anywhere near his age group right now is Ratchet & Clank’s latest entry, a series he has no desire to touch with a ten foot pole (he also has no taste in all things good). Everything else is either too kiddy to be cool, to adult to be appropriate, or shovelwared garbage. It’s the holidays, why is an entire age group being cast aside?
The movie industry has long had the ability to make something appealing to a wide range of age groups and general audiences. Look at the success of superhero movies as of late – they appeal to adults, but more often than not (sorry, Watchmen) are at least teen safe. The absence of a few F-bombs and buckets of blood don’t make them worse movies (at least in my opinion), and viewers on either end of the spectrum won’t get heckled for watching something too “kiddy” or whatever else. Comics are typically good at marketing to the pubescent crowd as well, doing their best to flaunt sex appeal without rubbing parents the wrong way, all while trying to keep a good story thrown in there somewhere (exception: Archie, who throws away any decent plotline he gets. Jughead’s Time Police? Sorely missed). I personally try to keep HP somewhere in the preteen-appropriate category, which results in difficult moments like making Zenith seem remotely cool without begin able to use profanity when he’s cheesed off (ever been called a wussy for using “dang”?). The point is, every other form of media has a considerable amount of options for, if not a fair amount of focus on, this crowd.
The big booming wonderland of the game genres presently is the first-person shooter, and yet these tend to sway almost exclusively M-rated. The entire console generation seems to be suffering the same syndrome the 64-bit era did with everything trying to be more realistic than ever, which somehow equates to gritty, gorey sepia tone bloodbaths. Sure, there are some decent all-ages games out there (he doesn’t like LittleBigPlanet, either), but they’re spread a bit thin, and hard to sort from the crap.
So here’s my question, as if it’s not obvious enough already: Why aren’t there more teen-friendly games? Surely the age group wants more than JRPGs and franchise tie-ins. Kids are taking on M-rated FPS titles at stupidly early ages, and grade-schoolers and plugging their time into GTA. There’s obviously demand from a younger crowd for games that are being served almost specifically to the older one. Why does every moral choice have to result in some horrible problem? Why can’t there be an all-ages FPS or (decent) sandbox title? Or, rather, if the demand is out there, why haven’t publishers noticed yet?
If you make a game good, people will buy it. All of Sackboy’s exploits take place in an E-rated environment and everyone I know old enough to drink that’s tried the game finds something to enjoy in it. The rating isn’t bringing its sales down any. But LBP also offers a considerably open experience via level creation and sharing. You’re not restricted to doing any one thing – I’ve seen some creative little worlds built with the tools provided by the developers I never would have thought of – you jut have to keep it kid-safe.
And really, I can’t think of a lot of non-linear or particularly creative kids’ games, and what few come to mind are for handhelds like the DS’s Scribblenauts. There’s a chance the LittleBigPlanet has leaned more towards the “big” side of things because it appeals without belittling. Your morals are never called to question, you don’t have to spill the blood of a million men to advance, you just get to be creative if you feel like it and otherwise have fun however you want. It’s a simple and so far very successful premise, especially since parents of all manner of kids can feel safe with it due to a supportive community that can quickly catch the sort of things we wish were taken off of Newgrounds every day.
Granted, this year is where the problem is specifically highlighted. Most holidays we have something that can appeal – some new RPG or at least something not totally drowned in adult-only situations. Maybe this year I just set myself up the bomb by buying the only thing I see being of any interest to the kid. And who wouldn’t be? Batman is always awesome.
If you need a Teen-friendly game this year and don’t have it yet, licensed or not Arkham Asylum pulled through. So hey, at least you next-genners have something. There’s also Disgaea 3 and Prince of Persia in the back-catalog that aren’t too utterly risqué, but I still can’t help but feel, looking at the console generation as a whole, that this group is being neglected.
FPS has been around since Wolfenstein introduced the idea back in ’92, and the mid-70′s even had some early attempts at the genre. Why is it developed so strictly for adults? One of the most praised titles in the genre is the deviant love child of Half-Life and puzzle games, Portal. I can’t think of much about that game that’s particularly offputting for kids of any age, give or take slight panic when the computer “pretends” to try to kill you. That doesn’t mean you have to make an FPS sans enemies to take on if you want it all-ages, mind, or even teen-inclusive. You just have to ease off of the blood fountains and graphical depictions of breaking skulls in. It’s not that hard.
But, yes, I understand. Kids think gore and such is cool, even funny. Kids also think flatulence is the most hilarious thing ever and some of them never grow out of that, either. But parents are all over the map on what is and is not allowed in their respective homes, and it seems a bit unfair that a 13-year-old’s best prospect this year is the new Mario Bros. on Wii (which I’m pretty sure he also would not like, right next to mint and ice cream). Teens want to feel like there’s something separating their tastes from what they had when they were six, and, in this house anyway, there’s not a lot appealing to that crowd this season.
When the heavy-hitters of the season are all rated M, what’s out there for the kids who aren’t in college? Wasn’t this the most common game rating on the PS2? Get back on the ball, developers. Not everyone in charge of what a kid can play is content with preteens rampaging about as Kratos.
