Son frustrated by his own special interest

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Which game is it

I don't want to post too much personal information about my son here - but suffice it to say it is a standard, M-rated console game that is slightly less violent than the games his friends play regularly. It isn't an MMORPG or anything like that: there's no community behind it or anything. There's nothing inherently addictive about this particular game.

Okay.

I would guess that it's probably going to be a game from a series such as Call of Duty, Battlefield or Gears of War.

Particularly in the case of the Call of Duty games, I would say that many (probably most) of the people who play it as a multiplayer game are not the sort of people who you would want a 12 year old child to 'mingle' with socially at all.

We do restrict his ability to play multiplayer to just kids his age that he knows IRL. Sadly, many of those kids are still jerks. (But I totally agree with you)

Well the thing about those other kids is.... a lot of them won't have restricted access for multiplayer games.
A lot of them will often be playing in a game environment designed for adults, playing with adults.

Those adults have no responsibility whatsoever to communicate with others in the game as though they are children, even if they know that they're a child.
Indeed, what tends to happen instead (at least for COD) is that adult players will deliberately start discussing wildly inappropriate subjects when it becomes apparent that a child in in the game.... on the basis that it's a game for over-18s and parents who don't want kids to be exposed to that shouldn't be letting them play the game in the first place. The same goes for antisocial comments , swearing and so forth.

So, even if your own child isn't playing in that sort of environment.... I can only imagine what sort of effect that might have had on his playmates if they do.

This is true. I do appreciate all the parental controls available now, but the problem is that they have to be implemented - and most parents just don't implement them.

I do kind of take the view that at the moment, there is no protection for kids, and I talk with DS a LOT about stuff he might see or hear, both from his friends and otherwise. This doesn't mean that I don't wish for a time when kids weren't playing games that involve ripping other game players' screaming avatars into realistically-bleeding pieces.

I think that many parents just buy expensive things for their children without any real idea of how the equipment functions, or the implication of that.
For example, I think that very few children would be able to get the sort of jobs they would need in order to afford things like Xbox 360... which is well known to have a lot of very violent games (especially compared to consoles such as the Wii or DS) and yet just look how many parents buy their children such equipment.... which amazes me, even without also considering how many of them make little or no effort to understand how the system functions online.

In fairness to violent computer games.... kids have always been quite violent (at least in my experience) .... playing games like 'British Bulldog', 'Squash the pea' , 'Warhammer' etc - or making toys out of paper, in order to try and tear one another's toys into screaming, not-very-realistic pieces.

It's not the games themselves which I think could be a problem, so much as children being exposed to adult-grade trash-talking, inappropriate conversations, or "friendship" via networks such as Xbox Live.

Yeah that xbox live thing freaked me out when I first heard about it. I found out about it one night when I got up to go to the bathroom and heard my son in his room yelling at somebody about killing them. I went in to see what was going on and he had on this headset and was playing a game and telling the other people in the game he was going to kill them. He meant his character was going to kill theirs. He actually got killed though, he wasn't that good at that particular game. It was some army game.

I miss the old school video games. The big console ones that you put a quarter in. I would seriously love to play a Donkey Kong game if I ever ran across one.

heh... it was probably COD. That sort of thing is actually quite tame for COD.
For example my mum and I have a running joke about her being a total slapper and having a fetish for 14 year olds, because of the sheer number of kids on XBL who play COD and assert that they've 'banged my mum'.

I imagine that would be quite startling though, to hear your son shouting about killing somebody - especially if you didn't know what he was hollering about.

They never had arcades anywhere near where I grew up, but I've played a lot of retro games (most of them before they became 'retro') and some of them really are good.
For example, recently I got (and have now just finished) the old Gamegear versions of 'Shining Force' and 'Mean Bean Machine' - because you can buy them for the 3DS for next to nothing, from the Nintendo store.

Ha ha !

One of my charming young XBox Live "friends" has just said that said that he'd like to (and I quote) "fold [my] mum like a wallet."
That's a new one. I had never heard it put like that before.

I told my mum about it, and she's rather bemused.
She says that none of her friends want to "fold her like a wallet" and is astounded that any of my friends do.

LOL ! !!

Having a hard time understanding what that means, usually when the term folding is used with a money related term like wallet often is it reffers to some sort of bankruptcy. I just don't see the humor.

Ah, such innocence. Clearly you do not play COD. Very wise.

If you think about how a wallet folds..... and consider how that might relate to a woman in a sexual sense... then you can probably see what he was getting at.

I think he was trying to upset and offend me.
To which I say... haha ! Good luck with that, kid.
He was VERY put out when I laughed my ass off at him, then told my mum so that she could have a laugh too.

Your right I don't play COD or any other video game made at the moment, I used to have a really strong obsessive intrest in playing auto racing games online(this is one of the intrests I made reference to in an eariler post) and off topic talking was mostly forbidden when we finally got microphones to aid communaction, that was all I ever really played and when I got a real race car to drive and work on that pretty much killed what was left of that intrest, the thrill just could not compare anymore, that and the the leagues were always very frusterating to play with as they were always very inconsistant. I began playing online at age 12 by the way, always on open servers, 2002 was a very different(and better) time in the social world of online games, all typed text so people tended to have stay on topic. I sure would not let a kid that age play online like that, I wouldn't even play a game like COD myself if its that bad.

I still don't understand that joke, I know I never will, darn Aspergers!

I don't understand it either, and it bothered me and I had to have my husband explain it to me. It still does not make any sense to me, for what it is worth.

I don't understand the joke either. If I could surmise a guess it is probably a quote from what one of the characters says in a particular scene.

addendum I googled the quote and couldn't find anything on it.

Oh, it wasn't intended as a joke.
It's just a variant on the classic "I'd bang your mum" phrase.

And I don't get it either.
What I mean is.... why on earth do young folk keep asserting that they've banged my mum, or else inform me of their desire to bang her ?
They seem to be hoping that it offends or annoys me. Do most people get offended or annoyed by that sort of thing ?

I just find it very funny how much it seems to bother whippersnappers, when I laugh my ass off at them saying it and jovially agree with them (or tease them about fancying somebody as old as my mum) , instead of becoming upset or offended (which they seem to expect).

I haven't played COD multiplayer for months, because it's almost impossible to play a decent team game because any effort to discuss group tactics tends to get drowned out by assorted little brats calling each other "campers" , "gay" , or asserting their secret wish to bang one anothers' mothers (or revealing that they seemingly have already done this, which I find most unlikely ).