Castle wolfenstein and mortal combat were 2 very popular games which followed when I was about 7~8. Mortal combat had no other purpose except for basically beating the shit out of your opponent and eventually finishing it with a “fatality”. For those who don’t know what a fatality is, it’s basically a special action in which by the right key combination you do stuff like rip someone’s head off, smash the opponent into spikes, whatever more.

As I grew up video games like that are something which kept part of my life at all times pretty much, you got quake and unreal following, grand theft auto I and II, unreal tournament, soldier of fortune and many other titles.

Did it have any negative effect on me? Not really, as a kid though you’ll tend to talk in terms of it though like saying weird stuff on as to how if this was “fill in game name” you’d simply “fill in action”, but heck, kids simply repeat whatever they say. If a kid hears something on television, hears it from a relative or someone around or simply reads it written in a bus or on a wall, they’ll say it as well.

As I became older though it’s not like that continues, except when talking to fellow gamers but then it’s more like normal.

The only thing I’d keep a kid away from till a higher age is playing mmo’s, the games itself might not be bad but the language and such which can go around in mmo’s simply ain’t suited for the young ones. Even mmo’s dedicated to kids have older guys playing which don’t hesitate from cursing here and there, although TV would probably teach them the same words people on the internet tend to have a great skill in bringing cursing up to a professional level .

Now having an 8 year old say he’s gonna frag somebody and it’d be like “cute” or “wtf? what’s fragging?” but when an 8 year old would copy some random text you see popping up in mmo’s at times it’s probably going to be one of those moments for you as a parent to drop by school .

D&D and the like will be a lot more educational as he grows up ’cause it helps with math/reading and imagination skills.

Blow up the school, yeesh. That reminds me of exactly what Erik was saying that their friend’s kid was doing. He was talking about using frag grenades on people and things like that. He would have been about four or five.