I grew up with gaming on a DOS PC, Atari, and original NES. My parents didn’t regulate my use, but refused to spend money on consoles or the games themselves. I supported my gaming interests with summer jobs, skipping lunch and saving the lunch money instead. Both of my parents were also addicts, so I could usually steal 5-10$ once in a while when they were high without being noticed. Not sure when the ESRB rating system rolled out, but it’s something I paid attention to when buying games for myself, and eventually my kids.

When I had my own stepchildren, they were free to game as much as they wanted when chores and homework were done, and adhered to a 10 pm lights out to get 8 hrs of sleep. As my stepson grew more interested in mature titles, I often played those titles to see what the content was like before deciding if I would allow him to play it. His bio mom was clueless about games, and tended to be more restrictive than me. I played OG halo before deciding it was a game he could play as a 14 year old. I played some of the GTA games before deciding he had to be 16 before we would let him play those. (My issue was picking up a prostitute and then being able to beat her after to get the $ back.) I started playing WOW because my stepson wanted to play. After some exploring I thought it was a safe title for him. Gaming was something that brought us closer together, and I spent so much time gaming with him. If I had the chance to give birth to my own kids, I would wish for a biological son like my stepson.

<13 it was pg 13 or less, not that I really cared about anything else tbh.

By about 13-15 it was anything except porn (ex. doom eternal was allowed) this is also when I was allowed unrestricted Internet, so I was being sent photos of decapitated heads on discord anyways lol

at 16 I got a debit card and no rules

I generally wasn’t allowed to play video games because they were a waste of time. Eventually I was allowed to play dexterity-based games like DDR and Guitar Hero, but not often.

Most of the games I’ve played were after I moved out, and I never really got into them.

I had rules until I started getting an allowance and could guy my own games. That was around the time of GameCast.

Rules

• Nothing M rated
• Only 1 new game per year, so choose wisely
• We could rent from blockbuster, but I couldn’t rent the same game more than once, so I better finish that game in 3days, 5 days if they were feeling generous that week.
• I was allowed to borrow games between friends, but since I had like 4 games to trade, they never wanted to let me borrow their games.

I must say, great thread for a gamer that is now a parent.

In my childhood I could play anything, but graphics were not good enough to leave much marks.

Now my 11 year old worked his way up from GTA San Andreas to playing GTA5 and RDR2. He was watching the cut scenes anyway on YouTube (crappy moderation for violence there). Trying to avoid sex as much as possible, worried about GTA6 (we’ll probably play it together). Anyway, the greatest shock for him was the choice in GTA4 (kill your friend or the rich guy).

I was playing mortal Kombat when I was 9-10. They didn’t do due diligence, and if I thought they’d have a problem with it, I would just lie about it. I’m still playing mortal Kombat but compared to everyone else in the world, I suck ass now. Same with call of duty. From 19- 28 or so, I was awesome. Quit playing when they announced advanced warfare because it was getting too corny and the maps kept getting worse and worse for making plans, and all about chaos and random encounters. Got MW2 with my PS5 for nostalgia, and I again found that I wasn’t as good as I used to be. Oh and all the stupid skins like santa running around in a warzone was fucking stupid. They should’ve left that to fortnight. These days I mostly play racing sims (thankfully I’m still really good at GT7) and RPGs which is funny that as I got older I wound up playing more family friendly stuff.

The rules place were a bit odd to say the least.

Both my parents saw video games as literally rotting my brain, and I mean any video games at all. This, coming from my parents that would sit on the couch watching TV for 5+ hours a day after work.

They bought games for my sibling and I when we were young and I think they regretted that we enjoyed playing them so much. I thought was a bit odd since video games are the reason I wanted to learn to read so much and are why I devoured books.

If they saw us having fun playing video games in any common area, we were told to shut our games off and do something else and lectured that we were rotting our brains. If they didn’t physically see us playing games, they didn’t tend to care that much if we played them or not.

If we ever did bad in a class, the first thing that would be blamed would be the video games and they would be taken away or hidden for awhile.

Playing online games with friends? “Not healthy, video games are rotting your brain.” We occasionally be told we needed to stop the game right now to do X thing that could have waited, even online games which you can’t pause. Not even for something like dinner or chores, but just cause my parents would say so.

Tl;dr: “Video games bad”, quit having fun, if I see you smiling playing games then there is something more productive you could be doing with your time.

My mom was really against cursing and of course anything sexual, but the rest was pretty much fair game.

An exception would be Manhunt, but I even got to play MGS3 as a kid (which ended up being my favorite game of all time.)

The only thing it could get an m rating for and still be allowed was government approved violence, like if it was a war game or sports fighting.

We had no consoles, I saved all my money to buy a Gameboy color and Pokémon crystal.

Which mother then said I had to key my twin use as well

Annoyed as fuck over that. They could have bought their own damnit

Mother looked at the games I bought for the color but I only really played crystal, donkey kong, that sort of thing.

The computer was edutainment games only, but me and twin liked Oregon trail 2 and Amazon trail and the like.

Once the internet arrived they didn’t realize I found a place to download like rpg maker games.

Not exactly rules on content (though they were in charge of buying me games until I was old enough that it no longer mattered, so they stuck to family friendly games for the most part.)

However they initially refused to buy me another console other than the NES that I was gifted when I was very little. Some years later, my older brother took pity on me and got me a Genesis (they did not appreciate it.) The only other time I was bought a console was my mom got me a Nintendo 64 as a pity gift for a lot of terrible things that happened to me that year.

I remember them saying they didn’t want to have to buy another console every year, with new games, etc. In hindsight, they were definitely predicting the future market haha.

Computer games and handheld games were allowed, but no video game consoles ever until we were adults.

I made a PowerPoint presentation to convince them to let me play monster hunter when I was 13.

They let me.

None, before my mom saw me play Soldier of Fortune and shoot a dudes’ ball off. After that she bought me an “educational, age appropriate game”, The Logical Journey of the Zoombini. I wasn’t supposed to play violent games, and instead play this game I was supposed to get bored of because it’s educational, and go play outside.

Jokes on her, I loved that game, and played it a ton.

Of course I ignored the rule of violent games and just learned to alt+tab as a reflex if I heard someone open my door. Useful skill in other parts of life as well…

They tried, but I don’t think they did a great job.

I was limited by time and duration. I wasn’t allowed to start playing games until like 3pm, and wasn’t allowed to play after dinner. (If I went to someone else’s house, the rule didn’t apply. If someone came to my place, video games were also allowed, but my parents didn’t like people coming over). I also had to finish all my homework first. I remember just watching the clock on the weekends waiting for it to tick over to 3pm, then dashing up the stairs to the games.

For some reason, I was allowed to watch as my TV as I wanted. I’m old and tv was limited, and we didn’t have all the channels.

What ended up happening is I would lie. I would say I had finished my homework when I hadn’t to get that sweet, limited video game time. I would say I was watching TV in the basement but I was playing games with the sound down.

This trashed my school habits. I was doing all my homework the morning it was due. I was a smart kid so everything was still getting done well enough for me to get B’s, but this wasn’t great. When I got to college I had no study habits or learning stamina.

To this day I kind of find tv and other passive watching unsatisfying. I never watch anything on my own. Only with someone else.

I don’t know what would have worked better. The clock based limit felt terrible though. Really hated that. Maybe if they had explained “if you put all your stat points in video games now, when skill ups are cheap, you’re going to be underpowered later” it would have landed.