Everyone knows about Schrodinger’s Cat (if you don’t, read the wikipedia article about it). Basically the idea is to have a cat in a box whose life depends on a 50/50 chance. However, while you don’t open the box, you won’t know if the cat is still alive, or not. The point is the cat’s status is neither alive nor dead until you look at it and define its state.

Thinking back at the time when I was playing GTA IV on XBox 360 I noticed a similar property in the environment. For example let’s take an empty street in this game, look somewhere else, then look at the street again. It might, during the time we weren’t looking at it, be suddently populated with a great amount of cars. Accidents might even happen the second you look in the direction.
While you weren’t looking, the street had no status, it was full and empty at the same time. Then looking at it defined its status, sometimes with an explosive effect. It is effectively the same as Schrödinger’s Cat’s theory. As long as you don’t look, there is no status.

Mh… Anyway I might better sleep a bit before I start coding weird things… and be more careful when skipping a night, it might have unexpected results, such as this post.

Well, more recently, BBC reported about videogames rating, and how rating of video-games should be changed…

So, before anyone tries to tie the two stories together I’ll clarify some parts (okay, I’m probably already too late). Anyway…

As you may also have noticed, the two articles are both speaking about how parental control may be the original cause of both problems.

Parental control, this is one important subject people don’t like to talk about. Why? Because most parents, who are supposed to be role models for their children are less and less apt to act as supposed.

Most people think it’s because of video-games’ influence on the children. They become violent, don’t care about other people, and may end doing some really bad things (like kick-killing a poor goth girl).

Well, I don’t have any scientific analysis of the problem, however I’ll give you a piece of my mind, something I just imagined.

Video-games are not only played by youngsters, you know. Did anyone do a survey on what is the influence of video-games parents are playing on their children?

What if…

Let’s assume a few facts.

Children are initially a lot like a blank book. They learn by understanding their surrounding and reproducing. Now how is a young boy supposed to understand that his dad playing a game like GTA is different from his in-game dad?
The boy will most likely misunderstand his dad saying “Today I killed 30 people while driving, I was trying to finish this mission as fast as possible”…

Now, let’s suppose the next day, the young boy want to be the best one in class, if he remembered, he might end saying something close to “My dad is so cool, he killed 30 people yesterday”. He’ll be proud of something he doesn’t really nor care about.

Now let’s see see what might think a boy who just heared that…

“Hey, that’s so cool, I wish my dad could kill a dozen of people too so I can brag about it”

Of course I’m talking about this kind of example, but anything else might end up causing the same kind of problem. For example TV news where you see black people fighting and killing each other in Africa, arab people from Gaza getting killed…
Basically anything can be misunderstood by a child…

Now the main problem is not the child braging about his dad, or the child misunderstanding stuff, it’s more about how immature parents are.

As I see things, game ratings should also apply to parents who have children this age, or people who live with children this age. Playing games is a way to escape reality, and helps you care less about it. However there’s just no way you’re supposed to escape your duty of educating your children.

So, forget about games, and look at what’s in front of you. Even if your children seems OK, there’s always stuff you won’t see, and when you see something because it’s not possible to ignore it anymore, it’s usually too late.

Children will test you, to see how far a real human may go. A child shouting to his father “Yeah! Kill him!! KILL HIM!!!” while he’s playing a game is usually a child who’s still missing the understanding of some limits in life.

Life is not easy. If your children don’t understand that and takes everything for granted, you’ll end with problems like recent ones.

Just a final note : I saw my first porn movie while I was 11, at a friend’s place whose father didn’t care a bit (he was watching too). I found it to be quite boring, however I envied a bit his freedom I didn’t have.
I grew without the “freedom” others may had, however today I work daily, get enough money to buy whatever I want, and live quite happily. I’ve been able to go through hard times thanks to the education I got.

Oh, and don’t blame your problems on games, blame it on yourself.