by mark on May 13, 2010
Imam worries about effect of PC games on children.
An imam here expressed concern over the impact of computer games on children, saying the portrayal of gods as well as heaven and hell in these games could potentially confuse them about the concept of the hereafter.
Chief Imam of the Usamah bin Zahid Mosque in Wangsa Maju, Ustaz Murshidi Abdul Hamid, said although these were merely games, if left unchecked, it could negatively impact the minds of the young people.
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“Parents should prohibit their children from playing certain games if they contain elements which are against or derogatory to Islam,” he told Bernama.
While the rest of us are concerned about excessive gaming and it’s affects on our children, Imam Hamid is apparently mainly concerned about offense to Islam.
Meanwhile, a lecturer at Universiti Putra Malaysia’s Communications and Media Studies Faculty, Ishak Abdul Hamid [A different "Abdul Hamid" than the Imam mentioned above], said exposure to negative elements in computer games could also affect the children’s psychological development.
“They become obsessed with playing computer games to the point of neglecting their studies,” he said.
Good thing they are taking these steps, because we wouldn’t want Muslim kids being exposed to anything that would affect their psychological development in a negative way!
by mark on March 23, 2010
Attempting to buy children’s affection with TVs and computer games… not a good idea.
Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said increasing numbers of children failed to respect authority or consider the needs of other pupils after leading “isolated lives” at home.
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“Often it’s the well-off middle classes that buy off their children through the computer and the TV,” she said. “That then isolates them within the home, and then they’re surprised when their child isn’t coming to school ready to learn.”
Last year, Dr Bousted raised concerns that families were leading separate lives under one roof instead of sitting down to dinner together, with youngsters spending hours watching TV alone in their rooms.
The Whole Story.
by mark on February 27, 2009
by mark on December 28, 2008
by mark on August 19, 2008
The Wii has been great from my own perspective. All of the games I’ve played with my kids (or at least watched them play) have all been in the realm of fantasy, action, sports… or just clean fun.
Innocence will be lost soon, as Sega is planning to release an “ultra-violent” game for the Wii.
From Sega’s website, you get a sense that a total immersion in violence is the primary goal.
In this age of 1080p resolution, the best [way to] stress the idea of “blood” was to immerse users in a game wrapped in black and white.
MadWorld revolves around the themes of brutality and exhilaration. To give MadWorld the graphical edge to match its brutal theme, we tried removing all color from the world except for blood. As a result, we decided the best way to convey blood, and thus brutality, was against this black and white backdrop. Knowing that there are no other action games with this sort of avant-garde graphical style, our course was set.
Often times, brutality is expressed in a spiteful nature. There are already plenty of games out there that hit this mark; however, we decided that MADWORLD’s brutality should be aimed at providing the user with a sense of exhilaration during play.
To give you an example from gameplay, we have a scene where you can pull a street sign from the ground and shove it into a enemy’s head.
I really don’t know if and/or how this is affecting people, especially the younger generations. Still waiting for that definitive study on how violent games affect brains, but in the meantime, I plan to continue to keep things “safe” and stick with the non-violent games.
by mark on January 2, 2008
Apparently this world that we live in isn’t big enough, and so the large corporations and marketeers are busy creating new virtual worlds for our kids to inhabit, and they’re teaching them valuable lessons that they can take back to the real world as they grow up.
Like, “spend, spend, spend!”
Brett at DadTalk tells us that these virtual worlds are on the rise.
My kids went through the Webkinz phase. I think there was something before that, but I can’t remember. It’s been a while. Now my son is into Runescape, which as best as I can tell isn’t overloaded with marketing. But there was MapleStory, which he was eager to part with his money to get ahead in that game. Apparently, you could take Dad’s hard-earned money and turn it into play MapleStory cash and buy accessories in the virtual world. Uh… no…
But he did come up with $10 that he received from Grandma as a gift… So he handed over the money, and put through the transaction on my PayPal account. Just a couple of days later, he burned through his virtual cash, and showed up with another $10 in cash that he wanted to give to me to transfer another $10 into his MapleStory account. Uh… no…
“Earning” virtual cash in the game to spend in the game is one thing, but when these games start requiring monthly subscriptions or drum up the desire in the kids to convert their real cash into “play money”, forget it.
Go read Brett’s post. He’s got some great quotes and he elaborates more on the impending assault be the huge corporate marketing machines on our kids.
And naturally, I’m going to plug ComputerTime for parents who would like a little help keeping their kids in the real world. We get a lot of compliments on how it eliminates the fighting. If you struggle with the endless “Just five more minutes! Please!” arguments, give it a try!
which has gotten great reviews.
