There's blood and gore..? I didn't realize...

And what's a constitutes a "teenager?" 13..? 14..? By time a child is that age, they should be able to define right and wrong for themselves. Graphic violence in TES:V, or the lack thereof, should be of no concern to you unless you have no faith in his decision making skills.

Alright how ever you want to parent your kid you can, let me just say this, once your kid hits puberty, please give him some freedom.

Excuse the double post;

If it was for advlts it would be rated AO in the United States.

M for Mature is generalized for the sake of generalizing what constitutes a mature person; I'm sorry that you don't consider your 13 year-old mature enough to decypher that you don't hack somebody with a sword in reality.

No, truly. I'm sorry you have no faith in your child's cognative reasoning.

i agree with talest Skyrim is well mild to say the least if your kid sees any kind of tv he will be exposed to alot more graphic and mature content than the one presented to him in Skyrim, parents this days worry way to much about what they expose theyr kids and way to lil in making then understand the values of responsability i was 10 years old when my father tougth me how to shoot, by 13 i was hunting and skining wild boars and that was for sure alot bloodier than skyrim but that is just my personal opinion

We're also assuming here that the OP is American. As I understand it, in some European countries, violence is frowned upon, however they are not quite as sensitive to sixual themes. Quite the opposite of America.

And I'm sure many of us could provide our own stories about gaming and upbringing.

I've been playing games since I was... 4... 5..? It's been so long it seems like it's been forever.

I've never shot, stabbed, assaulted, robbed, etc, etc in my entire 21 years. My parents had more influence in the way I make rational decisions moreso than any videogame ever could.

Did I want to LARP Solid Snake when I was 11..? Link..? A powerful wizzard..? Hell yeah. But that doesn't mean I ever replicated anything that a character did to the point of harming another human being. My parents taught me the proper way to treat others, otherwise.

There are worse games out there, some of which have already been mentioned, and speaking from experience if you restrict your child too much it tends to create problems( usually big problems) later on down the road. I know because I was one of those kids, and I lashed out by not being the most model citizen, I have 2 boys now and I don't shield them from everything and what does come up ( be it a six related question,or something to do with violence) or I try my best to shield them from the really horrible things, but I try to be there and that way I can explain it or explain how to work around it.Besides I'm sure he has been to a friends house and have seen/played a game that you might not have agreed with, I grew up with a single mother there was no stash of playboy's but that doesn't mean that one of my friends couldn't get to his dad's stash.
Point is IMO you are better off to be there with him to experience the questionable things together rather then him be alone or with another adolescent and end up confused or have the wrong idea of how to handle it.

let him see it, theres nothing wrong with entering reality.

THIS! Thank you some one is intelligent on this forum!

And in case he hasn't noticed, HIS SON IS 13! God dam, he is probably watching porm for all we know!

Exactly, video games is meant for releasing that stress. I remember I used to love the movie godzilla, and I used to walk around pretending be a good old lizard from the American film. Does that mean I try to drink radiation to turn into a giant lizard?

ratings mean little to begin with

especially with american standards where a man/woman looking at eachother smiling is already labeled as a suggestive theme


if you're not sure, get it, see for yourself then decide if you wanna give it to your kids.

There lies the problem

When I was a kid I played Asteroids and Space Invader at arcades, 7-11's, and pizza places. It completely ruined my life. I got arrested so many times for shooting aliens out of the sky and for destroying space rocks. At age 42 I'm still recovering. Likewise, if I was kid and played Skyrim, I'd probably go out and kill zombies and dragons. My trade knowledge of metallurgy wouldn't help as I'd be imprisoned for my various crimes against nature. PETA would publicize my massacres of frost trolls and cave bears.

Yep.

OP, just to summarize the dangers of your kid playing Skyrim in one, simple post, let me say that seeing any commercial with reference to "Snookie," the Kardashians, or Paris Hilton is infinitely more damaging to your child's development. As said above, there is a minimal amount of blood and the killcams can be taken off.

As someone else stated above, "helicopter parenting" is not healthy for your child to develop good morals, attitudes, reasoning skills, etc. My dad used this term as well to describe how my mom used to hover over everything I did and until I exclusively lived with my dad did I not become dependent on someone to tell me right and wrong (around 12). Your son, I guarantee, has been exposed to far worse things in his 8th grade class room

Most of the kids who I grew up with that were protected too much by their parents went crazy when they turned 18.

Call me immature but I would love it if the next TES on next gen consoles/graphics cards were to be T rated. I enjoy games without mature subject manner. Morrowind was rated T and I much prefered "N'wah". It seemed logical that Morrowind would have it's own swear words. I think I would quite enjoy a less blood and less gore. sixual inuendos are quite nice and work well in a T rated game.

*flamebait removed
This is a game intended for mature audiences (American-grade mature, but what the hell). If your 13-year-old kid is not among the "mature audiences", then he can bloody well wait to play it until he grows up a bit. Find him something more age-appropriate. I don't know, like My Little Pony Princess Funtime or World of Warcraft. Just turn off the Trade channel.

or he could go play outside or learn to do something.

Why not rent the game for yourself first, then if you decide its ok for your son to play then buy it. I dont see anything bad about the game morality wise or anything. Sure there are some "graphic" kill cams (swords going through stomachs, slicing at peoples necks, etc). There are decapitations (but you dont have to get the perk for it if you dont want to). The only sixual references Ive seen are in books, hardly any of them you come across if you dont read the books. Personally I would have rated the game at Teen, Ive seen some far far far worse games out there than Skyrim, CoD, Gears (if your talking gore), Saints Row, GTA. I think your pretty safe letting your son play Skyrim. Its not a game where it will affect his moral standard. If anything RPGs should HELP your morality. They give you the choice of doing something without real life consequences, so your son would be able to tell and feel out what he thinks would be right or wrong....

Yup. I remember hearing that when Duke Nukem 3D was released, europeans were disgusted by the violence while american were disgusted that you give money to the strippers

And i played Mortal Kombat 2 when i was 10 years old Unfortunately the only fatality i could do back then was with one of the women, the one where she turns into gas or something, goes inside the opponent and rips him apart from the inside. Some years later i got Killer Instinct, and with that i was much more succesfull in tearing the enemies new ones And the result? I hate real world violence.

I am fortunate enough to have a dad that doesn't care about mature content in video games. I played Doom with him when I was five and it never messed me up. Even then, we both understood that it was just a game, and if I went and pounded on my brother in real life, he would give me something else.

Also:
I completely agree with this. One of the major consequences of being an over protective parent is that your kid will develop ways to circumvent your attempts to control him and he will begin discovering stuff like this on his own, and this could take a toll on his character.

Really, what you should do is talk with your kid about violence/six/language, and then selectively indulge him in some media that makes use of these things. In other words, let him play and watch stuff with questionable content in it, and maybe even enjoy it with him. If you take it away from him altogether and refuse to talk about it, he'll just want it more, and that will drive him to get it from other sources - and as I said, that's dangerous.

I rarely post, but I must call shenanigans on that! I built myself a new PC specifically for Skyrim, including going as far as a big solid state drive for Windows and the game to live on (to reduce load times) and I spent *just* over a grand. I play with all settings maxed, the Hi-Res texture DLC, and around 10 mods that further improve the graphics... and it is as smooth as butter at 1680x1050. Still more than a new console - but SO much nicer looking, and with the ability to use mods/CK/console. Worth it!

Skyrim wouldn't be rated M if common sense rather than checklists assembled by bureaucrats and politicians had any say in the matter.

This.

I'm not meaning to insult your style of parenthood, whatsoever. But I know that sheltering a child can potentially be more damaging than talking with a child about the mature subject matter and explaining to them that it is nothing you should replicate in real life.

just let him play, its not like it has anything worse than what he has seen in his science class (what, he is in 8th grade? thats when i got to cut up parts of a cow for my science lab and saw all kinds of "mature" stuff in my history and science classes)