Parents of teenagers need not fear the latest war videogame ? and stopping them playing it could lead to some classic tantrums
The annual pop-culture juggernaut which is Call of Duty has again rolled into town: this year's iteration, Black Ops, is in the shops today. Given that it's a much better game than was perhaps anticipated, that is good news for gamers. But its arrival will induce a certain amount of consternation among parents, especially of teenage boys, worried that that's the last they will see of their offspring until they emerge, all but zombified, at some unspecified point in the future. Such fears are understandable but, I would contend, fallacious.
Call of Duty is not a particularly unique game ? there are hundreds of other similar first-person shooters, in which the player takes on the role of a soldier in startlingly realistic combat situations ? but CoD is one of the highest-quality games money can buy. Despite being developed by a different company to its standards-setting predecessor, Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops has turned out to be at least as good.
A strong part of CoD's appeal lies in playing it online, allowing people to team up and take on random opposition from around the world, which can lead to overenthusiastic devotees playing it obsessively, at all hours. That prospect scares parents, and particularly those with offspring in their mid-teens.
The first debate is whether to allow your 15-year-old to play it, given that it is 18-rated. In fact, I'm always surprised that publisher Activision doesn't push harder to achieve a lower-age certificate for it. The 18 rating derives from violence, which is a tad inexplicable: if your teenager is particularly impressionable and has an unhealthy obsession with the military, then, fair enough, letting him have the game might not be advisable. But you could say that about any game that involves shooting. Black Ops is set in the 1960s cold war, and provides a considerably sanitised version of conflicts such as Vietnam ? there isn't a drop of napalm to be seen it, for example. Your son should surely be able to cope with that.
Denying your offspring the chance to play Black Ops could lead to some classic tantrums ? it's a game which is as much a part of modern teenage life as Twitter and Facebook. Played online, it gives its players a feeling of community and, you could argue, allows them to flex competitive muscles which might not be allowed out in the 21st century non-competitive schools culture. Modern teenagers see playing games such as Black Ops as akin to playing rugby or football.
However, like everything else in life, games are best played in moderation, and opuses like Black Ops are so seductive that the susceptible can pretty much develop addictions to them. Having inserted his pristine copy of Black Ops into his Xbox 360 or PS3, the average teenager may well be doing a passable impression of Lord Lucan. That's understandable with a new game. The single-player game will take up to 10 hours to complete, and most players will then ramp up the difficulty level and start again. But if, after a couple of weeks, the game seems to have taken over your precious one's life, you might want to think about the many ways you can ration their play. It is possible to set up parental controls which dictate when anyone will be able to use it.
Ultimately, it's for parents to decide whether their offspring can cope with being exposed to a game in which they run around and play at being soldiers, albeit in a realistic-looking environment, without developing psychological problems. Teenagers can be famously impenetrable, but I'd advise communicating with them in as rational a way as possible, making sure guidelines are set before the game has even been played. And if parents tried playing the games themselves, they would soon realise it's all about high-quality escapism, and probably wonder what all the fuss was about.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/09/call-of-duty-black-ops
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