YouTube Age Restrictions in Gaming, and SJW Trash!
For those who weren’t aware, in more recent times Google has resulted to age restricting a large majority of gaming videos within the YouTube platform. The move to age restrict violent themes in video games appears to be the result of parents whining about what types of content show up on the YouTube kids app (which by the way hasn’t jack shit to do with the main YouTube platform at all), as well as a long and drawn out battle from SJW’s and video game critics that violent themes in gaming shouldn’t be accessible to children. Well, I’m here to tell you this is all horse shit folks,and Google should know better than to give into social justice trash and video game critics who’ve never played a single god damn game in their pathetic lives, and have nothing better to do with their time than make the lives of others as miserable as possible.
For starters, the argument over censorship of violent themes in video games is beyond stupid. I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, and I can assure you parents went out and bought games depicting extreme violence for their kids on a mass scale during that era. Whether it was kids playing violent themed games at the arcades, or at home on their consoles, every 12 year old in existence played titles like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and photo-realistic shooters like Konami’s Lethal Enforcer series.
In fact, I not only played Lethal Enforcers for the first time when I was just 12 years old, but my parents happily went out and bought me the game when it first launched on the Sega genesis.
There were other arcade shooters that also focused on violent shooting themes, such as Taito’s “Under Fire”, an arcade rail shooter that made use of digitized images of real human actors in a similar fashion to Konami’s Lethal Enforcers. Under Fire even depicted a shootout against criminals at a crack house, the use of machine guns, and was considerably more violently themed than Lethal Enforcers ever was. Yet, every 12 year old was playing this game at the local arcades back in the day. The game came out in 1993, just one year after Konami’s light-gun shooter did.
To be perfectly honest, games such as Lethal Enforcers and Under Fire widely violent at best, and depicted nowhere near the level of violent themes we see in modern games today. But the principals remain the same, its all just fiction.
If parents were so concerned about violence in video games, then why were millions of kids playing these games in arcades all across the U.S? Why were millions of kids playing violent themed games on their home gaming consoles? When Mortal Kombat first hit home consoles back in the early 90’s, virtually my entire 7th grade class of over 1,250 students was playing this game. Were parents concerned then too? Apparently not.
But, Google definitely wasn’t the first to age restrict content, nor video games. Long before the days of YouTube, the gaming industry gave into critics by implementing a system of ratings that often defined what types of games were suitable for which audiences depending on age. By 1994 the gaming industry had moved to adopt a new set of standards in game ratings developed by the ESRB (Entertainment Software Board), that had been established the Entertainment Software Association.
During this time, retailers adhered to the ratings by implementing strict enforcement of age verification for games labeled as MA-17 (Mature Audience). This meant you were carded when attempting to purchase a game from your local gaming retailers, and if you weren’t 17 years of age, the sale was declined.
Despite this system of ratings and the enormous backlash from critics over violence in gaming, parents continued to buy their kids every violent themed game in existence, and arcades continued to stock the latest shooters and fighting games in mass. Back in the 80’s and 90’s, it also wasn’t unusual for kids to watch violent themed movies. I first watched the Texas Chainsaw Massacre when I was just 8 years old, and am not sure their isn’t an 80’s horror flick I hadn’t seen by the time I was 12.
YouTube’s Mass Censorship of Gaming Videos:
In more recent times, it appears Google has gone as far as to age restrict even the most subtle of violent themed gaming videos, including titles such as Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, and the long beloved zombie FPS title Left4Dead.
Sorry to tell Google, but whether or not you were aware, more than half of the Left4Dead player base on PC’s is under the age of 18, and many are as young as 12 years old. The facts speak for themselves, parents are buying games like Left4Dead for their kids whether Google or anyone else likes it or not.
Being we often work to produce Left4Dead videos for Gamers Bay’s channel on YouTube, often the players in the Left4Dead community like to go an watch the videos after the matches have ended. More often than not I’m met with complaints that Google has age restricted the videos, and players state they have to use their parents accounts or set up a whole new account on YouTube and lie about their age in order to watch a stupid zombie game, or even a Street Fighter video.
Drawing The Line:
Its definitely true that some not so savvy YouTuber’s have poured fuel on the gaming censorship fire by producing videos depicting what are typically harmless children’s characters in scenarios involving extremely grotesque violence and disgusting themes.
I totally get why Google would want to age restrict this stuff or remove it from the platform, as a lot of it definitely goes far beyond what would be deemed fictional violence in gaming. I would also agree that no parent wants their 6 year old watching a video of Sonic The Hedgehog smoking crack, or My Little Pony shooting up and being whored out on some street corner.
However, there’s clearly a huge difference between videos that depict what are often demeaning depictions of characters in an awful light, vs. every day video games that often depict fictional violence without the intent to offend anyone or paint characters in a bad light.
Although, it appears Google can’t tell the difference between these scenarios.
Too bad we’re not talking about censorship in the kids app, but rather upon the main YouTube platform itself. Right now, a 15 year old can’t even watch a video of a game that depicts any sort of blood or violence, because Google’s moron decision makers assume it isn’t appropriate. Yet, as I stated before, every kid in existence has already played these violent games, and parents in general have no problem buying them for their kids.
Do the moron critics really believe that parents don’t buy their kids violent games like GTA? I honestly can’t count how many times I’ve seen parents buying their kids this title from Walmart alone. Its an every day occurrence.
As for those parents who try and argue that they don’t want their kids watching violent themed gaming videos, well, then you shouldn’t allow your kids to go online at all, its really that simple. Besides, you can try and hide every horror themed film or game from kids, but no matter what they’re going to see them eventually anyway.
The argument from critics is often that violent themes are mentally damaging to children. I call horse shit! Regardless of age, any human who can’t tell the difference between real life and pure fiction is already mentally deranged to begin with. Its kind of like those girls who committed murders and then tried to blame the horror themed gaming character Slender Man for their violent tendencies. Slender Man, Freddy Krueger, and Jason Vorhees don’t cause people to become violent, nor will I ever buy the argument that such characters could even influence violence.
I grew up playing violent games and watching the most violent of horror flicks, and I’m definitely not violent in any way, shape, or form.
The fact is, mentally deranged people don’t need a horror themed film or video game to make them violent, they just naturally are. Trying to put the blame on a fictional character is often the easy route for mentally broken humans to hide behind the facts; people make their own decisions, and humans are definitely smart enough to know what they’re doing. Anyone who says otherwise is full of crap.
Conclusion:
My argument is sound, content on the main YouTube platform should never be age restricted as its the responsibility of parents to decide what their kids have access to online, not Google. If parents don’t want their kids viewing what they deem to be mature themed content, then restrict your kids to the YouTube kids app and stop whining.
As for the other critics, including all the SJW’s who argue that violence in gaming is so awful, apparently these people are as mentally deranged as the girls who blamed Slender Man for their murderous spree, and cannot tell the difference between pure fiction and reality.
Paint it however you like, there’s millions of kids running around in games today like Left4Dead slashing off zombie heads with a machete, and titles like GTA where they’re mowing down people with a sports car while engaging in rolling gun battles with the cops. In the end its all just fiction, and if people can’t tell the difference, that’s their own damn problem.
Written and published by Daniel Imbellino, co-founder of Gamers Bay! Connect with us across the web to stay up to date with honest gaming news and reviews! Connect with me on Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DanielImbellino
Connect With Gamers Bay across the web:
Gamers Bay on YouTube:
Gamers Bay’s official brand page on Google+:
Gamers Bay on Community Google+:
Gamers Bay on Twitter:
