How old should you be before you play GTA?

[grandtheftautovideogamer]

I started playing when I was 12 years old now I am now 16. Now that it's becoming more realistic, I think you should be able to play it at age 14 or 15.

[Toup]

 

I started playing when I was 12 years old now I am now 16. Now that it's becoming more realistic, I think you should be able to play it at age 14 or 15.

Realism won't interfer with the age limit, each person has different personalities, for example, there are those kids that kill a person ( ingame :> ) and say "ok, i killed him" and the other kind of kids are "omfg i blasted his f*cking mind against the wall, tomorrow at school i'm going to threaten somebody" but they will never kill someone or react realy bad, insulting his black classmate using the word ni**er due to playing too much SA is rare, i bet 1 in 20 kids do that and 1 in 1 million kill or comit a crime because games like GTA.

 

Most people i know started playing realy young, something between 8 years old and 12 ( including me of course :> ). Actually i started at the age of 6 when my father bought GTA III and told me there was a rat inside the sack where the game came, oh many i was so happy. My brother started spanking a civillian with a baseball bat for at least 5 minutes straight, my first view of GTA, good old times... :>. Anyway on topic, since i was 6 years old i havn't stop playing, and i'm pretty concient that it's just a game and it's ment to be fun. The education is a crucial point. I think it is better buying a (lets say) "violent" game and

explaining we shouldn't do it in real life and that it's just a game (just like horror movies) when we're younger than saying it's bad for us and that we will start killing people even if we don't want to.

 

Let's say this is all up to the children parents, and how they educate him. If i have kids someday i won't hexitate (exitate, esitate?) to do to them what my father did to me.

 

Hope you understood it, because my english isn't the best.

 

Thanks

 

Toup

 

Ps:To below, i was a normal kid too, no need to worry :>

Edited April 2, 2011 by Toup

[Rhoda]

Just a little off the beaten track but I'm always amazed at kids that started playing the more complex games at 6 years old. At 6, I was interested in food shaped like dinosaurs and pretending to be a robot, not hotwiring a forklift truck or taking cover behind a crate in a disused hangar.

[AnthMUFC-Champs]

Old enough to hold the controller.

HAHAHA get that one from Superbad also yeah i think its down to the parents who allow their kids to play the games.

[Magic_Al]

The youngest age GTA is rated for in any country is 15.

 

The content of GTA, not just the violence but the humor and worldview, is really designed by and for guys in their 30s. By the time you're as old as the people who make these games, you've heard about most of the sick stuff there is in the world, so it's fun for GTA to joke about it. My feeling is, if any of the sick stuff in GTA is educational to anyone, then that person is too young to play it.

 

As for OP's idea about the age it's OK to have sex, it's legal at 16 in most (not all) of the U.S., and in many cases that means it's legal for an older adult to have sex with a 16-year-old. Many states laws have close-in-age exceptions that make sex legal for younger teens in certain age ranges too. Laws don't agree what age is right because people don't agree.

 

I would disagree that being old enough for sex necessarily means being old enough to not be screwed up at all by some of the stereotypes in GTA.

 

The idea of a kid playing GTA's dating mini-games before dating in real life is kind of scary. God help whoever goes out with him.

[grandtheftautovideogamer]

Old enough to hold the controller.

Enough said.

[JasonAW]

I'd say when you are mature enough and can understand the kind of stuff in the game.

[Kratos2000]

So much bullsh*t.

I started playing at nine, it does nothing.

GTA isn't a special game, I played it and got bored after a few days. AT NINE.

Instead, I don't even get the point of playing video games when you're older than 22, it's completly useless.

[TommyMufc-Champs]

Any age. Come on kids start playing 18 rated games at about 7.

 

 

[Josh]

As has probably been stated above it is not about age at all, but rather about all round maturity, intelligence and the ability to differentiate between what it real and what is not.

 

The age guidelines are just a catch-all based on what you are likely to have experienced by that age, which is why games with higher age ratings have more explicit content. However since most people have developed the ability to know what is and isn't right from an early age, the age ratings are more the regulators trying to control people's gaming habits rather than trying to protect said people.

 

The dangerous people are not the people who started playing GTA at age 5 or 15 or 25 who have the common sense to know that murder is wrong, they are the people who started playing GTA at any age but never developed that sense of a moral compass. This warping of the moral compass is much more likely to be to blame for any violent acts that somebody commits than a violent video game or death metal music, or anything else which has been brought up in lawsuits before. And that is in spite of what Jack Thompson and others would have you believe.

 

As for me, I started to play GTA at the age of either 11 or 12, with first Vice City Stories and then San Andreas. And (touch wood) I'm not going to become a serial killer who works for the mob.

[CakePicnic]

Everything I have to say has pretty much been said already. It takes a sick f*ck to kill people, a game can not directly cause this. Maybe it can turn the switch, but then it was just an 'accident' waiting to happen.

As for myself, I started playing GTA when I was 4 (The first GTA) And I've never even been in a fight.

[devilrock28]

It usually depends on the parents' point of view. If they don't want the child to play the game then the child shouldn't be playing the game. I started at about 10 years old. Being exposed to the violence in Vice City sort of scared me into being a good kid. I'll admit that I got into an occasional fight, but GTA didn't inspire me to fight people. Unless you can't tell fiction from real life, the games that you play when you're underage aren't going to lead you to the criminal life.

[Magic_Al]

So much bullsh*t.

I started playing at nine, it does nothing.

GTA isn't a special game, I played it and got bored after a few days. AT NINE.

Instead, I don't even get the point of playing video games when you're older than 22, it's completly useless.

Boredom is a sign you were too young for GTA. Not knowing why anyone over 22 would play it is a sign you're still too young for it. I don't mean that as a slam. Kids and people in their 30s have different tastes.

[Josh]

Boredom is a sign you were too young for GTA. Not knowing why anyone over 22 would play it is a sign you're still too young for it.

Boredom is a sign that you should probably move on to something else; being bored has no relationship with proficiency in that area, or age. If I was bored in an exam would you suggest that I be kept back a year?

 

Saying that I do agree with your statement to some degree. If you can't show any understanding of why another person might play a certain game then you do need to look at yourself.

[twannie1997]

I first played VCS when i was 10, at my cousins which was only 11 back then. Ah... car stealing... until the battery was empty.

Now i'm 13, and haven't been crime, and every week i find out new stuff to do in GTA.

[MrcTOtheJ]

I started playing when I was 11-12, which was a few years ago, and i've turned out relatively well, anything screwed up in my head didn't come from GTA (or any other game) as I knew the difference between it and reality. (Well I first played when I was 10, didn't really heavily play until I was 11-12)

 

So I say the 10-12 area should be fine, but in the end it's up to the parent or guardian.

[VC Over LC]

For an ESRB rating, I'd say 18+ due to the language, violence, nudity and use of drugs and alcohol.

[ViceDiaz]

Hell i've been playing GTA since I was 7 years old,and I haven't turned out bad.

[ryan_J]

Its pretty ridiculous that you can join the army before your the recomended minumum age to play gta but there are some pretty sick people who will be badly influenced by games like gta im 15 and im one of the majoroty that games like gta have no effect on but some kids are badly influenced by simulated violence so its hard to put a precise age limit on gta. Is 18 to high for the recomended minumum age of gta? Its hard to say because of different maturity stages for example im very mature for my age where as other people my age are like 7 year olds.

 

Ive been playing gta since the first ever one.

Edited April 13, 2011 by ryan_J

[norva]

Age really isn't an issue to me. Up to an extant anyways, I would say 10 or so but really it's not age so much as it is bad parenting. Parents often refuse to accept when that they aren't raising their own kids right, they expect the media to do it. So if their kid does something naughty it must be GTA's fault. I played GTA from a very young age and not once did it even cross my mind to do anything in that game for real, and lets be honest, unless they are mentally unstable to begin with I doubt any kid really would.

[King Mystery]

I honestly don't care how old they are, as long as they're mature enough. I started playing GTA when I was 11 or so, and I knew way more than I should've back then.

Plus, studies show that violent video games don't affect your mind. I mean, I could cut up some random hookers all day in GTA, but I honestly would never be able to do something like that in real life. As Mokrie Dela said earlier, it takes a real sick f*ck to kill people, video games or not.

I think around 11-13 is a good age to start, depending on their maturity level. But under about 9 or 10 seems too young to me.

Edited June 26, 2011 by King Mystery

[GTA_stu]

"There are prostitutes in GTA, so if a nine year old plays GTA and the character that he's controlling has sex with one of the prostitutes, isn't that almost like the nine year old is having sex?"

Yup it's the exact same in fact. I remember my first time, I was about 12-13 playing SA. Her name was Cindy and I took her round the back of my garage in my red pick up truck. I was nervous, but she was real gentle with me. I bumped my head a couple of times on her polygon boobs, and she gave me some extra health. Apparently it increased my life expectancy by 25 years. Then, when she got out the car I drove over the bitch and took my money back, I then took my sniper out and looked up her skirt with the scope. It was a good day.

[King Mystery]

 

"There are prostitutes in GTA, so if a nine year old plays GTA and the character that he's controlling has sex with one of the prostitutes, isn't that almost like the nine year old is having sex?"

Yup it's the exact same in fact. I remember my first time, I was about 12-13 playing SA. Her name was Cindy and I took her round the back of my garage in my red pick up truck. I was nervous, but she was real gentle with me. I bumped my head a couple of times on her polygon boobs, and she gave me some extra health. Apparently it increased my life expectancy by 25 years. Then, when she got out the car I drove over the bitch and took my money back, I then took my sniper out and looked up her skirt with the scope. It was a good day.

+1 internets

[vertical limit]

Games have never influenced me to do f*cked up things.

 

The first GTA I played was GTA SA in 2004.

I was 9 years old.

[ChossenOne]

I started playing GTA (Vice City) when I was 10-11. I was plenty mature by then. My parents were pretty laid back and reasonable. They were on the level with me. They aloud me to watch M15+ rated content when I was about 8, so long as they were around of course. They were always ready to explain adult themes and jokes I may not understand and put them into context for me. 'Didn't mind me hearing "f*ck" or "c*nt" or watching someone being cut up with a chainsaw (see Scarface). So GTA didn't affect me. But that's just me. Can't speak for the less than mature ten-year olds whose parents didn't give a f*ck. Who knows how f*cked up they are. But I don't think that's the case Anyone who plays GTA and automatically wants to run down hookers and take a baseball bat to someone's head was probably f*cked in the head at birth anyway.

[Cheat]

16+.

 

Because it is legal for a person under the age of 16 to buy a 16+ rated game, but on the other hand, if their gaming was strictly supervised by their parents, it would be difficult to own and play a 16+ rated game.

 

Kids, as in children under the age of, say, 12 years should not play the game, because honestly guys, even though it hasn't affected you, you can't say it could not possibly affect someone. However, a game being rated M for Mature is plain bullsh*t, why? Because it's a cruel world and it's immoral and ignorant to try and blind a child from the cruel things in the world, and over-protecting parenting like this is what leads to social and mental problems.

 

16+ makes a great compromise between these two extremities.

[SchizNitz]

id say what lots of people have which is around 10.

[LuisBellic]

Old enough to hold the controller.

This. I started playing when I was 7 or 8.

[Banks.]

As long as your matture then I see nothing wrong with playing GTA at around 10.

[hugh750]

i would say 16