Parent Gamer

                Make believe was a game I played as a child. With siblings, friends, or even by myself, I would imagine epic battles and fantastical adventures. My siblings and I battled fierce enemies with our martial skills. My friends and I started a Jedi temple and fought to uphold the noble traditions of the Jedi ways. When on my own I would explore untamed and dangerous wilds, armed only with my wits and trusty plastic sword.                 As an adult, social norms dictate that I am not permitted to spend hours in my backyard or a nearby park with a plastic sword or lightsaber, battling invisible enemies or stalking dangerous predators. There is still a part of me that wants to though. There is a desire to conquer, to explore, and to adventure.                 I believe that there are many others who feel this same way. It’s part of why video games are so popular, I think. I also believe this has given rise to the recent popularity of Dungeons and Dragons. And with t

    A basic principle of parenting, that I’m sure everyone understands, is protecting your kids from dangerous or harmful media. We don’t let our kids watch scary movies until we think they’re old enough. We don’t give them unsupervised access to the internet until we trust them, at least a little. And (in theory) we don’t buy them violent video games until they reach the appropriate age.    Now what is the appropriate age? For movies, we have the MPAA to tell us how old a person must be before they are allowed to purchase it. For the internet, we have to be more hands on, providing direct guidance on what is and isn’t safe internet browsing. And for video games we have the ESRB. Many parents I talked to while working in a game store, had never heard of the ESRB.    I highly recommend that parents of gamers check out ESRB.org when considering what games they might want to buy for their kids. The Entertainment Software Rating Board has ratings for almost every video game a

                It’s been almost six years since I last posted on this blog. At the time I worked in a local video game store, a brick and mortal location where I sold video games and accessories, often to parent’s who knew little of the video gaming world. At the time I was frustrated by the ignorance of the parents who would buy the most violent and disturbing of games for their children. Some as young as six years old.                 I would discuss the game, warn them, suggest other titles, but to no avail. “It’s fine,” they would brush me off. “They play Call of Duty or whatever.”                 I created this site with the intention of informing the parents in need, but after only a few posts and dozens upon dozens of conversations, I became discouraged and stopped writing. In November of 2013, I accepted another job but kept in touch with the store and the friends I had made there for a while. I continued playing games of course but my attitude towards the culture