Should 7-year-olds play Uncharted?

Videogames can make excellent babysitters, since they keep children occupied and entertained for long stretches of time. Of course, not every videogame is appropriate for chidren. Samuel Sattin at The Weeklings writes about trying to let a visiting 7-year-old play Uncharted 2. The child’s mother protested that playing a videogame with guns was off-limits.

For a while afterwards I went between feeling culpable and self-righteous. When not indignant, I couldn’t keep from thinking, in retrospect, it had been my onus to protect Charlie from harm. We live in the age of Columbine, Springfield, Aurora. And I was the adult. The arbiter of good sense. I was, some might say, part of the village. And now, when I’d had my chance to embark some knowledge, as opposed to teaching an already volatile child how to play chess, I’d taught him how to gun down smugglers in the Tibetan frost in the aftermath of a train crash.  What type of asshole was I?

Sattin reflects on how videogames have become more realistic, and how maybe Uncharted 2 wasn’t the best selection for a child, but that videogames can help children have make-believe worlds.