Too much blood!

Sensitive-Kid: Wow, I did it. Dad, look how I killed that beast.

Anti-Guy: What’s that? That’s horrible so much violence and blood everywhere. I don’t want you to play such a violent game.

Calming-Wife: Dear, there is so much violence in the movies, on TV, in the books. Beside, this is just a game.

A.G.: In the game the kid feels that he is doing the actual killing, the next step is to do it in real life.

C.W.: Kids have been playing pretend game for thousands of years. They pretend to be baseball players, little parents and also knights and warriors. They know that this is a game. All the psychological researches didn’t find any relation between playing video games and actual violence.

A.G.: But, look at all the blood and the bodies all over, this is not a sight for kids. They don’t have this in a pretending game.

Tech-Kid: Most of the games allow the tuning of the gore. You can set the level to the minimum and the bodies will disappear once you kill the beast, and there will also be no blood.

A.G.: Really, I didn’t know that. But still why the games are centered on killing all the time.

T.K.: Beside the pretending side of the game, that mom knows much more from being a psycholo-therapist, the killing of enemies is just the symbol of solving the puzzles in most games. The games are usually a combination of puzzles that some of them reward you with needed items, but some others of killing bosses. It is just a way to make the game more interesting and surprising.

C.W.: Don’t just take a short look at the screen and say it is too violent. Try to sit with us, and play a while, and you can see if you think that it is really so bad as it seems at first glance.

The music drives me nuts!

Anti-Guy: If I hear that music piece one more time I’ll break the machine!

Calming-Wife: Another bad day at the office, dear?

Anti-Guy: What does that has to do with that horrible music?

Calming-Wife: You always pick on the video games when you have a bad day.

Anti-Guy: No, I’m not, I’m picking on the games all the time, but that is beside the point. I’ve been hearing the same annoying song for an hour now, and it drives me crazy.

Tech-Kid: Dad, they have only a very limited memory capacity on these games. They can’t put a lot of music or dialogues in it. This is the reason that the dialogues are always written with captions, and you hear the same song all the time.

Anti-Guy: How can you listen to it, so loudly, for so long?

Tech-Kid: This is real improvement from the old games where they could only play with beeps, now at least it is real music.

Anti-Guy: But why so loud?

Calming-Wife: When they started the game, it was so cute, and we make it loud to enjoy it. I didn’t even notice that it is still that loud, I’ll make it lower.

Anti-Guy: I’m sorry, if I’ll hear even with low volume, I’ll scream.

Calming-Wife: From the side it is always annoying because you don’t see the game. We can’t turn it down, it is part of the game.

Tech-Kid: No mom, you can turn the music down, and keep the sound effects, that we need for the game. They have a different controller usually.

Calming-Wife: OK, we’ll turn the music down and put some of your favorite songs instead. Please come and join us, we’ll listen to it, and play together.

Tech-Kid: Yes, dad, we really need you help here.

Sensitive Kid: Yes, dad, it will be fun playing when you around supporting and guiding.

Anti-Guy: If you’ll keep telling me that, I’ll start enjoying it.

Most of the games come with build-in music which can be played during the game. Usually this music is sweet and fun for the first 10 minutes, but eventually it becomes repetitive and annoying, especially for the people around the player. The shouting of “stop playing this awful game”, usually starts from the other room, where they can’t see if this game is really stupid and awful, but they know that its music is awful, after hearing it over and over in the last 30 minutes (and sometime 5 hours . . . ).

The solution for that problem is easy: Shut the music down, and put on your favorite music instead. Most games allow control over the level of the music, thud let you set it to zero (after 10 minutes that is enough to enjoy the original game music) while the level of the narrative or the sound effects can stay in the middle. Now you can put your preferred music from Opera to hard rock, and let you and your kids enjoy good music while you’re are playing together.