First off I'm not a parent, But I was playing resident evil 5 w/ my gf's 9 year old brother and I caught myself thinkin, "is this game too mature for him?"

Then I got to wondering what games I would and wouldn't let me kids play, IF I had kids that is.

So I pose the question: "What games would you think are to mature for kids to play?" And to define kid, let's say 12 and under.

13 year olds get to play what they want, in my book at least.

There are plenty of games I wouldn't let them play, depending on their age. I certainly wouldn't let an under 12 play Resi or GTA.

Anything online. Online people are weirdos and creeps (present company included excluded).

All videogames. They'd get sports equipment and books.

I would feel kind of like a hypocrite playing games that I wouldn't let my kids play, but I understand the reasoning behind it. I played many a violent game as a child and even "played" some as a very young child (think ages 3-6). I turned out fine, but I always knew there was a big gap between what is real and what is not, so all I really wished was that I would have some of the powerups and such in games, not so much the killing ability. I think I would personally let my kids play things that aren't too crazily violent as long as I explain to them that it's not real life and that it's a virtual environment that is completely separate to that. It's hard because a lot of kids get really attached to games and obsessed. Not to the point of killing, because that's usually helped by a major psychological problem, but they just want nothing more than to play it all day. I was never like that; I just enjoyed the game. And I know it's not too common, but I've seen it happen a lot with kids I know.

As far as other 'gaming rules' set forth when I have children, I do know that I will not go and cover the full cost of consoles or games (games for birthdays and whatnot, I can do). I want my kids to value them and I would like it if they saved part of the money for it so they could take ownership of it in a way. I'm so sick of seeing kids throwing their controllers at their current-generation consoles and just saying that they know their parents will buy them a new one if it breaks. I also need to find a way to make the whole sharing-a-console-and-PC-between-multiple-children-without-them-killing-each-other thing work. There were five of us kids in my household and we shared two PCs (one older and one newer) and an SNES, NES, and Atari. We made it work most of the time since local two-player was common and we'd enjoy just watching my brother play. But once the Internet came around... oh boy.

EDIT: Also, I want to do what my parents did--limit major game time to Summer vacation and only allow it in the morning and at night. It sounds really regulated, but it wasn't even when I was a kid. It gave us the change to run around and play outside. And we had to read to earn game time one Summer. Every half-hour of reading gave us an hour of playtime.

The ones still in the box.

It depends on if I think they are mentally mature enough, so cant say exactly. Probablly Boyonetta because the game seemed like nothing but fan service.

Awesome, I'd be in credit all the time.

If I had kids, I wouldn't let them play...

WoW. (I'm not going to pay monthly, or any other annual fees for video games, nor let the youngsters ruin their social lifes.)

That, and anything that has a rating above the age my kids (unless my judgement gives the go).

This was shortly after I got The Sims 1 for my twelfth birthday and was 'out' about my love of reading (I was teased by siblings about how I love reading growing up), so you can imagine who came out on top with twelve hours accumulated at times. After a while it fizzled out and we were told we just needed to have daily chores done first.

I'd let my kids play whatever they wanted, but I'd limit the time they were allowed to play. This is what my parents did for me, and it works. When they're older, they can make their own decision about how much time they spend gaming, but I'd ensure as young kids they got a lot of phyisical activity and some sort of mental stimulation so that they can separate reality and gaming. I was playing the first Grand Theft Auto, I was only like 9, and I'm the least violent person I know. It's just a matter of balance, and with stuff like violence and all that, I understand that in gaming you control the violence, but in real life the kids are surrounded by horrific violence daily, there's little point trying to shield children from it but rather to help them understand it and understand that it;s a bad thing. Without traumatising them, of course.

As 3-26 said, definitely nothing online, not until they're in their later teens at least. Xbox Live is a parent's worst nightmare, or at least it should be. Other than that, I'd just keep them away from all of the obvious things, you know, no Manhunt, no games where you can drive on sidewalks and kill people, etc etc, but I wouldn't be too strict. I also wouldn't shy away from guns, depending on the circumstances. Gears of War, for example, would be a definite banned game, but not every game with a gun in it is a tool of Satan designed to turn our children into murderers, or whatever Fox News' newest theory is...

I got my first GTA-esque game (True Crime: Streets of L.A.) when I was 12 (thanks to a lazy Gamestop employee), and I played it like I would any normal game, i.e. I actually played it, and didn't run people over like parent's worry their kids will be doing. It really depends on the kid, and the parent should know their kid well enough to know if they can handle it. My brother's, for example, totally couldn't, and I'm sure a lot of kids couldn't either.

This is a good start, there are aspects of net culture that treat some pretty horrible examples of social behaviour as an acceptable norm, (flaming people for being bad, raging at a loss etc...) I wouldn't want to introduce it to anyone to this who's impressionable enough that they might apply these values to real life.

Swearing, violence, nudity etc etc are arguably detrimental to someone's wellbeing but I seriously doubt that its somethign that would have much long term effect.

What undeniably has an effect on the way people conduct themselves are the social paradigms with which they grow up (This is why different civilisations in different times have held different values to modern day western society.) The paradigms associated with the internet and especially online gaming would make for a pretty repulsive person in real life. I'd want my children to have some grounding in basic social interaction before I let them near Xbox live,

I could debate this

Hmm my parents werent restrictive at all with games and I grew up fine. But if I had kids I wouldnt let my 8 year old play something hyperviolent or anything like that. As for online games (Like CoD) Id make them turn their mic off and make sure they couldnt here other people either. As for MMOs no MMOs till I think they are mature enough to ignore weirdos. But once they hit 15 or so they can play whatever games they want and stuff.

Before the age of nine, no videogames were played. My kids had books, board games, sporting equipment, outdoor recreational toys, puzzles, legos, kinex, rokenbox, both had easy bake ovens and tools. I wanted learning patterns well established.
Around ages nine and ten, video games such as Shadwos of the Empire, Battle for Naboo, Morrowind, Kotor, and Prince of Persia were played. I preferred the kids to play the latter three over the previous two. I liked games that involved a fair amount of reading comprehension in order to correctly achieve a goal. I used Morrowind's barter system as a real world example of how correct multiplication/division skills were necessary. I used the ingame books as an example of how those who do their research. gain an advantage. Same for KOTOR.
By the time they were in early teens, it was more challenging, darker, more mature themes. My kids have have experienced familial terminal illness, loss, familial mental illness, have seen their father hospitalized mutliple times for serious health complications. They have had to mature at a rate other kids have not, and they have handled it well.
Video games were and still are, a healthy outlet for them, as well as sports and extracurricular activities that they are involved in.
The majority of the games in my house are mature themed, very few are rated teen or lower.
As far as I know, my two have never killed anyone. The assertation that video games cause violence is hogwash.
Unstable people are violent, the issue was there before the video games were played.

You could certainly give it a stab but picking out nudity is kind of a strange choice considering how widely social stigmas vary.

Around 13, I would pretty much give them free reign on whatever they wanted to play. Until then nothing Mature. Otherwise have at it.

I certainly wouldn't let my children play online and/or M rated games until they were at least 13-15. I never want to hear any child of mine speaking like people on Xbox Live or PSN.

Seeing as any children I have right now, would be non-existent, no.

But assuming I had children, I'd have to say GoW, GTA, Saints Row, and some more that I'm too tired to think of.

I'd make them play Dead Space 2, though. "You see those little guys, ' The Pack ' ? Yeah. That's what happens to kids who don't eat their vegetables."

Also, I don't see why some people get so up in arms over nudity in video games. You mean, it's OK for our youth to chain-saw someone in half, crush their skull with their boot, but throw a pair of boobies on the screen and suddenly we're breaching some kind of morality door? C'mon. Let's be real, if anything was going to impact them in a negative way, it'd be the violence. People don't grow up and become serial killers because they played a game with nudity in it as children (or because of violence in video games, I'm just saying: If anything WAS going to warp their minds, it wouldn't be that).

Also, if you're that opposed to your kids seeing the human anatomy, get cracking on your computer. Once they hit puberty, nudity in video games will be the least of your problems.

It's not necessarily the nudity, but the sixualisation that usually goes with it can skew a child's grip on reality and lead to self control issues later on. It's why if you show a seven year old pormography you're going to go to jail for quite a while.

I kind of do the "parental guidance" thing for my little sister (she's 11yrs younger than me). I talk to her a lot, and she knows the difference between fiction and real life. The say I have is whether something may be too graphic and scary for her - I have no doubt that she knows the difference between computer generated and real-life violence, so it's just in terms of how scary I deem a game, and whether she can handle it (which includes underlying themes). I know some parents may see this as an irresponsibility, but considering she shared a room with me when she was growing up, she was subject to films above her age certificate, along with the "making of" documentaries (I know that still seems a bit horrible, but I was young at the time too ).
I know those are pretty loose guidelines by most people's standards, but I wouldn't suggest anything I think she would find distressing, and I'm with her when she plays any game which would be above her age level. Plus, whether the actual content makes a difference, the complexity of the game also stops me from suggesting games above her age level.
I know people on here may still see it as irresponsible, but my Mum isn't a gamer, so I convinced her that I could make sure that the littlest sib would be ok. I think we've done a good job - she's set the guidelines, and I've stuck to them.

That depends on the kid and how well I knew his/her personality.

I played GTA 1-3 at the age of 9-12 along with Diablo 1&2 that has some gory images.
As for GTA me ad my friends olnly thought of it as "This is exciting, we're not really supposed to play this." as opposed to "Wow, shooting guns is fun".
(I'm not saying shooting people here because I honestly think most kids thinks the actual shooting of the guns is more fun than what you're shootin it at.)

In the DIablo games we played them for the Co-Op experience, the gameplay and the collection of gear. We payed little to no attention to the more gory images we saw, but I can probably say that it did change my gaming preference towards the grittyer (sp?) style of fantasy games.
I know I enjoyed the setting of Diablo a lot more than that of Warcraft as a kid, and I played them both a lot, all of them. I liked them both because of their different gameplay but I deffenatley liked Diablos setting more than warcrafts, even though I didn't conciously think about the gore in the setting that much, it deffenatley got to me.

And I've turned out quite good I think. I pretty much hate violence and have a hard time seeing it justified. But that doesn't mean I don't like violence and dark themes in my games.

When they hit 13, I don't really care what they play. But until then, nothing Mature rated and no playing online. Obviously because of nudity, profanity and gore, and I don't think they should hear the [censored] people say in online games.

Exactamungo. Plus, I'm a closeted feminist when it comes to games and I find it highly unfair how women are normally portrayed as submissive things with insane proportions, yet it's horrendous to show male sixual organs. But I'll spare you all the rant. I don't want to see either the male or female anatomy in my games intended for fun. I'm not very interested if it's just a random person and most of the time, it's outrageously out of context (six scene in Fahrenheit, anyone? six minigame in God of War?) that I get annoyed.

But yeah, I don't want to taboo nudity with my kids, because they'll act like morons or get obsessed if it's considered a banned thing, but I'm not about to shove it in their faces with sixualized depictions of the human form.

I know a lot of people will disagree with me, but I have very good reasons for my beliefs and I command the same respect for how I plan to raise my kids that I give to others who show their kids those things. I know I don't want my kids being the perverted kid we all knew at school.