An Open Letter To Parents, Teachers, Councilors An

An Open Letter To Parents, Teachers, Councilors and Mentors

I am not an administrator of this forum and not presenting forum policy or speaking on behalf of forum administrators. I am however a 54 year old graphics and online game enthusiast. I thought it might be helpful if you started here if you are trying to understand what your son, daughter, student or client does when they participate in this forum.

I am writing this letter due to a recent event where a teacher was disturbed by some graphic images called “Sigs” (short for signatures) that a student created at home, printed at home and took to school to show his fellow students. The teacher was disturbed by images of a game character wielding a gun. The image also contained text similar to text found in the game representing the number of “Kills” by the player. This led to police being called to the school and involvement of the local school board. For this student it all turned out well and the decision of the school board was basically as follows:

• The characters portrayed were fictional and game related
• Neither the image or text presented a threat of violence toward anyone
• The students only intention of showing the images to fellow students was to present them with what he had learned to do using graphics programs.

The job of parenting, teaching and guiding young people is an arduous task and in today’s society we often see tragedies and hear how people have blamed games, television, chat rooms and other forms of media for the violent or disturbing events in the news. There are several things I feel you may be interested in from the view of a online gamer and graphic enthusiast who is also a parent and grandparent:

1) This forum regulates the age of it’s participants to 13 or older.
2) This forum is moderated extensively by forum administrators who can be contacted easily (usually found in the header of each forum or at the bottom of each page with a link to “Moderators” or “Admins) if you see something you perceive as inappropriate.
3) Pornography is not permitted.
4) Anything deemed as “Adult” on these forums you will note that they fit in the category of film ratings such as “PG”, “M” and possibly “R” due to partial nudity or content, but you will also find that the content is always presented artistically.
5) The portrayal of soldiers, villains, witches, superheros, vampires, etc. are always intended to capture the nature of the games the person or friends play.

With these things in mind it does not mean that the forum/game participant has no responsibility to regulate his or her time spent on games, graphics or forums. Indeed it remains the duty of responsible adults to set limits where young people may be disregarding their family, school, social, religious, etc. responsibilities. As a matter of fact I have read and heard comments from dozens of adults who have had to reevaluate the time they spend on games and other computer hobbies to bring balance to their “real lives”.

In summary I’d just like to say that in many ways participating in forums such as “Game Renders” and playing online in “Multiplayer” games there are countless ways to learn and grow from others. In both online games and forums the participants are very self regulating and inappropriate behavior is rarely tolerated by online peers and when that fails most game server and forum administrators take their responsibilities very seriously when it comes to controlling situations and when necessary ‘kicking’ or ‘banning’ people who will not conform appropriately.

This letter is not intended to tell the reader what to think, but my opinion about some issues of importance to concerned individuals. I hope it may be useful.

Blaine Billings
Game and forum name: Intrepid1

 

:unsure:

 

nice, il show that to my parents if they ever ask what im doing.... that would be cool in the terms of service... or notice or sumtin

 

Very good job on the letter, if I'm ever in that sort of situation.."again".....this letter will come in handy.

 

You can also add that one of the moderators of this beautifull forum is indeed a teacher on a secundairy school Maybe that helps a bit more

Bratzer

 

SCREW PARENTS & TEACHERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i do what i want...

 

Thanks dude, appriciate that!

Making friends uh? Read one post up!

<_< <_< <_< <_< <_<

 

Extremely right thing to say




<_<

 

Thanks dude, appriciate that!

Making friends uh? Read one post up!

<_< <_< <_< <_< <_< [/b][/quote]
awwwww!
i dont like the idea though <_<

 

*Pinned*

Nice letter Intrepid.

 

Very well spoken I don't think anyone could have put or said that any better than the way you did good job on writing that. I now hope other people will understand us a little more...

 

Very nice letter. I agree 100%.

 

*brings a tear to my eye* very heart felt speech there Intrepid, i believe this should be used as a disclaimer, so no blame can be shifted to owners/admins/moderators...

 

Thanks for the comments I was concerned about how it would be received.

I personally believe the admins and mods have about as clean a forum (total package) here as I've seen and a lot of the thanks imo goes to the caliber of people on this forum, who for the most part, conduct themselves maturely.

My hope in writing it was that if people come to see guns and things they believe to be harmful to young people they might take the time to see the art and understand the nature of cyber game characters and the artistry and friendship of this group and leave a lot less concerned.

 

People who blame school shootings and violence on violent video games are stupid. THERE IS A LINE BETWEEN REALITY AND FICTION HERE, people. I think their arguement is that kids nowadays are too stupid to notice that line. Personally, I think that movies are the most violent form of entertainment. Just last night, I watched Man On Fire. That was quite disturbing. The main character taped a mans hands to the steering wheel of his car, then proceeded to interrogate him by cutting off his fingers. Very bloody. Thats a LOT more likely to make someone turn into a rampaging psycho than something like CS.