Do Mature games have a right to exist? (Part I)

I think this is THE most debated subject I personally have had with people who play games and on both sides of the argument concerning it. It's probably the biggest talked about issue when games have come under fire from the mainstream media. When games make it in the headlines you'll always have MPs and/or parents shouting to get mature rated video games banned using any excuse they can.

“They're too violent!”
“They're corrupting our kids”
Etc etc.

I think the first thing I want to talk about is the whole “they're too violent for our children” aspect of this argument, because I find it fundamentally flawed in it's premise. The basic argument seems to be the aforementioned, that video games contain a lot of violence and shouldn't be allowed to be seen because of that, and yeah, I can see where they're coming from. A majority of games come down to basic violence. Look at any mainstream title, be it Halo, Call of Duty, Gears of War, Team Fortress etc. All those games do appear (and in some cases are) very violent. There is no denying that fact. You can't shoot various alien races in Halo or chainsaw humanoids in Gears of War and then say these games are not violent with a straight face. Well you could, but you would be lying, and an idiot. But any game that comes under scrutiny in the mainstream media has one thing in common with every other game which has suffered the same fate, and that is their age rating. All these games (with the exception of Team Fortess 2) has an 18+ (or Mature if you happen to be in the US) rating.

Seriously, it's not hard to miss that. Unless you're Stevie Wonder.

So when it comes back down to the “video games are too violent for our kids”, well yes, I agree with that, but that is why they have AN AGE RATING OF EIGHTEEN AND OVER. I don't understand how this seems to slip past people, ESPECIALLY parents. I mean, hop onto any game of Call of Duty or Halo, and it wont be long before you start encountering people who are obviously under 18. (A lot easier on Xbox live because every Xbox comes with a little headset as standard, this isn't the case with PC or PS3's)

This kid should not be playing Call of Duty.

This means that someone over the age of 18 has to, by law, bought the game for the sole purpose of giving it to their child. There's no way to say it politely so I'll be blunt with it: This is bad parenting. If you don't want your kids playing overly violent video games then you as a parent must take some responsibility and do your research before you buy your kid anything. You wouldn't buy your 12 year old kid an 18+ grindhouse movie, so why buy him/her an 18+ game. It completely destroys that argument of “games are too violent for our kids”.

Since this is becoming long I'm going to post this as a two parter. In the next part I will talk about the need for some games to be Mature in order to tackle adult themes.