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Originally Posted by Daoust
No matter how you say it, I can't picture a scenario where I'm sitting my kid down and teaching him to know the difference, and appreciate the difference between real and fictional violence. I'm not saying I'd shelter my child; they're going to be exposed to it eventually.
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I think you're right. Trying to split hairs on why it's "ok" to hurt people in a fictional situation and not "ok" to do it in real life isn't the way to go, especially if you're talking to a younger kid. I think the better tact is to shy away from ideas about "right" and "wrong" and talk about what effect violence has on a situation. Take, for example, GTA: if you kill someone for their money, there's a chance you'll get a star. The more people you kill, the more people want to kill you. You always die in the end. That seems like a good example of violence never working out to me.
IMO, there are too many examples in our world (not just video games, but movies and books as well) where characters use violence for "good" to just tell kids that violence is never the answer. We, as a society, have proved that we sometimes believe violence is necessary. I think it's better not to go after if killing/attacking/hurting people is right or wrong, but what the alternatives are and how they're better (because they usually are).