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Dandelion_Wine
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Anyone have this or a child that has this? My 12yr old hears all the kids at school in his 6th grade class talk about it and wants to get this.
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Ed_Silvia
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I don’t have it but I see 1000 reviews at amazon with 3 1/2 of 5 stars so not that good. Its all blood & guts, intergalactic/stellar war missions & roll playing. It’s rated teen so you may ask your son to wait a year. He will need a headset to play with his friends, although I guess that’s standard gear these days. At least you will know where he is.
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randomusername
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Ratings are stupid. They are designed to avoid parents getting angry, they aren’t really based off of how suitable the games are for different age groups.
As a 6 year old, my friends and I played some 16s games. Over the last few years I’ve played plenty of 18s games but I’m not close to 18. My friends have done the same. And seeing a bit of blood when you shoot people will not scar anyone. Destiny has nothing very graphic and even a 3 year old wouldn’t care about seeing a bit of blood when he shoots enemies.
The only problem with your son playing Destiny is that it’s boring as hell, but if he thinks he’ll like it and his friends like it, then there’s no reason that he shouldn’t be allowed to play it.
As a child and now as a teen, I’ve always really hated the knee-jerk “PROTECT THE CHILDREN” stuff in games and movies. No child will be scarred by seeing a bit of blood in a game or movie and no one I knew ever was. As a kid, my mates and I watched plenty of movies and shows considered well above our age rating and we all turned out fine. Even as 5 year olds we thought that the rating system was ridiculous and as we’ve grown older we’ve realised why. It’s just there so they don’t get sued. They make the ages for things ridiculously high so that there is no way they will get sued.
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ProdglArchitect
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As a teen, it is far too early for you to decide that you “turned out fine.” the rating systems exist for a reason, whether you want to accept it or not; and giving overly violent games to young children can negatively impact the way they act.
Keep in mind, I am no advocate for banning video games or anything like that, quite the opposite actually. I’m an avid gamer and have been my whole life. I think games have had a mixture of positive and negative affect on my life, but mostly they’ve just been my chosen form of entertainment.
Destiny is not a particularly violent game, no more so than Halo (which, despite shooting aliens, doesn’t really come off as all the violent compared to other FPSs on the market), but I also think it’s a pretty bland game. To get anything out of it you have to play online, and the main campaign is apparently too short to warrant the price tag attached to it. I’ve seen lots of people have fun with it though, so who knows. You might get on Youtube and watch some let’s plays of it. They show the game play, which would help you make a more informed decision about if your child is old enough to play it.
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randomusername
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It’s not far too early. Me and my mates would all be psychopaths if games did half of what some parents think they do. Violent games can affect you, but it depends on what kind of violence. Shooting soldiers in Star Wars Battlefront, Call of Duty Ghosts or Halo 4(well aliens in this one) will not affect a young child negatively. Fighting bandits sword-to-sword in Skyrim won’t make you a murderer or some weird psychopath.
Graphical violence might(I haven’t really played games with too much gore since most AAA titles won’t have much for obv reasons) but most games, like Destiny, just have some small and undetailed blood effects and that’s about as graphic as it goes.
A 12 year old would be fine playing Destiny. Don’t be overprotective. Now whether it’s a good game or not is something I’m unsure of since I only played a bit. You and him should both read some reviews(you first in case they contain spoilers) before getting it because I’ve heard it isn’t worth the cost and my friends said it was boring.
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ProdglArchitect
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It depends on the age they’re exposed to it. I’ve known at least two children who’s parents allowed them to play Call of Duty when they were far too young for it, and both showed substantial increases in their aggressiveness and anger.
I agree with this, I personally don’t think that Destiny would pose a problem to an average twelve year old, I also don’t think it’s worth the money based on what I’ve seen.
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randomusername
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Online games get very competitive and can make you very angry(like some sports can) while playing but I personally haven’t noticed any of my friends having anger issues when not playing. I’ll have to look that up.
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ProdglArchitect
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Yeah, this extended far beyond his game time. He became more aggressive and angry is almost every aspect of his life, to the point that it caused issues at school.
I’m not saying this is the norm, or that it’s reason enough to ban games; but the ratings system is not pointless, and should be adhered to to some extent.
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randomusername
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Well I’d say the important thing is to actually look up what the content of the game is like. Strictly adhering to ratings can lead to kids not being able to play games they should be and kids playing games they shouldn’t be playing. Looking up some of the stuff that’s in the game gives the parents a much better idea of whether this game is suitable for their child. Halo 3, for example, is rated mature for “extreme violence”. The violence consists of holding down the trigger button. You see them fall to the ground when they die but that’s about it. I can tell you first hand that as a six year old, I wouldn’t even notice the blood and there was no real gore. You’d see a corpse on the ground with no effects on it other than a tiny bit of blood. But many review sites say it has vivid scenes of gore which it really doesn’t. It wouldn’t scar even a toddler.
A fairly common habit in the Halo series is players going to extreme efforts to save the weaker human(your character is a genetically modified super-human) troops while simultaneously fight the aliens. You wouldn’t believe how hard I tried to keep all the troops in each level alive. So it does the opposite of making you a psychopath.
In Call of Duty games, you may be killing humans, but any child over the age of 4 can differentiate between a game and real life.
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ProdglArchitect
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I agree with almost all of this…
… I let them die so I could have their ammo and so that they would stop getting in the way of my shots…
… I would make a terrible soldier >_>
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Lost_Wanderer
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I think your problem is that you imply that adhering to a rating system as nothing but ‘strict.’ Just because ESRB isn’t perfect doesn’t mean you’ve got throw the baby out with the bath water. Keep in mind, not everyone has the time to actually go in-depth in search of objectionable material. At the risk of advocating a cheap shortcut mentality, seeing that one letter on the back of a game would at least kickstart any discernment.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to actually research Destiny. If memory serves me right, it made a lot of hype for some reason.
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ProdglArchitect
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It was Bungie’s first big non-Halo project. They were really hyping it, and I think it just hasn’t lived up to the hype. I know a lot of people have had fun with it, and aspects of it do look legitimately fun, but the majority of the game is online, and if you’re not willing to pay for an x-box gold account then all you can do is the single-player campaign which, by all accounts, isn’t worth the price tag of the game.Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to actually research Destiny. If memory serves me right, it made a lot of hype for some reason.
The game has also been pretty buggy, which is understandable for such large arenas, but still makes it difficult to play at times. They’re working through those issues though.
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Ed_Silvia
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You want to hear something funny? I started playing online with the DOS version of QUAKE I when a 28.8 dial-up modem was considered a high speed connection 
Nowadays poker on line (in NJ) is more my speed and do you know people get just as mad when they lose.
Nowadays poker on line (in NJ) is more my speed and do you know people get just as mad when they lose.
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styrgwillidar
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What’s the line-You want to hear something funny? I started playing online with the DOS version of QUAKE I when a 28.8 dial-up modem was considered a high speed connection
Nowadays poker on line (in NJ) is more my speed and do you know people get just as mad when they lose.
Games don’t make gamers violent. Lag does.
My kid (now 16) has been an avid gamer and is about the most gentle soul you’ll ever find. Very patient and considerate-- I always get complimented on his behavior. Still bummed I won’t let him play the GTA series or the western Red Dead something or other.
Now-- if the internet speed drops or the connection gets iffy and his game starts lagging, a whole different person emerges.
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ProdglArchitect
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Dandelion_Wine
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Thanks all. (and others still feel free to chime in). Since I’ve never seen it, all I can go by is what’s online. I didn’t read anything about nudity, etc. but wanted to make sure that there weren’t GTA5-type things in the game. I guess posting here was part of my research.
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styrgwillidar
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I think the best advice you got was to google youtube to see folks doing playthroughs. Any game which has been out any amount of time will have somebody posting walk-throughs etc.
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Lost_Wanderer
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This should be a sticky.
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Joe_5859
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Right. I know the system isn’t perfect. I think any game with a sword in it is automatically ineligible for the “E” rating, which is why a game like Kirby’s Return to Dreamland earned an E 10+ rating (I mean, this is Kirby the little pink puffball!I think your problem is that you imply that adhering to a rating system as nothing but ‘strict.’ Just because ESRB isn’t perfect doesn’t mean you’ve got throw the baby out with the bath water. Keep in mind, not everyone has the time to actually go in-depth in search of objectionable material. At the risk of advocating a cheap shortcut mentality, seeing that one letter on the back of a game would at least kickstart any discernment.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to actually research Destiny. If memory serves me right, it made a lot of hype for some reason.
). But it is a helpful starting point.Also, I wouldn’t presume that all kids handle things the same way. Different kids have different sensitivities. I certainly wouldn’t let my daughter play a FPS game at her age.
As for the OP, I’ve heard of the game Destiny, but I know nothing about it.
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Ed_Silvia
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Oh, you too 
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