Thanksgiving in my family is just a huge gathering of relatives at my sister's house. Her husband and she have three children. The two boys are age 14 and 10. I brought Call of Duty MW3 and Black Ops to the house for some four way multiplayer battles with my other nephew (17) and those two boys.

Time for some background. My sister's family is hugely Christian. I'm talking about born again, fire and brimstone, three times a week at church, and prayer groups on other days. They lead services and are extremely acitive in the church. These are serious Christians. In saying that you can imagine that she is absolutely against games with a mature rating.

During the entire visit my nephews all played Black Ops and MW3 constantly from sun up to bed time. And they are good. They didn't get good when I brought the game over. They were already good. Somewhere along the line they learned to play these games and get better than average skill levels. Where did this happen? A friend's house out of the watchful eye of the parents? I believe so.

I'm a parent myself. I have two little boys and I perfectly understand that everyone's style is different. I also firmly believe in the fact that a parent has the right to raise their children in any way they see fit. If you want to raise your children in a strict Christian home then you certainly have that right. I'm not going to argue your rights here.

My question is just that they are playing these games anyway. At least I know that by playing the multiplayer games at home with their uncle offline then are they really being subjected to the mature content of the game at all? I really don't think so. You don't have the language or the disturbing scenes. You don't have the multiplayer element that uses language inappropriate for a 10 year old. You just have competition. It's fun.

Anyway, I tried to get my 14 year old nephew a copy for Christmas but was completely shot down. Instead I bought him a game that I know he won't like as much but is a more appropriate rating. I stand by my sister's choice as I don't think it's necessarily a bad one. However, I'm a little irritated...

Hello everyone out there. I've been playing games for a long time. My first video game system was the Atari 2600. I had an old 8088 IBM compatible computer with a 20MB hard drive. I was the only person I knew who had a hard drive at all. The first computer game I owned was Kings Quest IV. I had the original Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master System. After those went out of style I had the newer systems all the way up to the first XBOX. However, before the launch of the current generation consoles and after power gaming in Everquest and Everquest II I gave it all up. I got married, had kids, bought a house, worked really long days and played at the game of life. Last February I bought a Playstation 3 after a great deal of deliberation. First we were going to get a Wii. That quickly dissolved. Next was the XBOX 360 but I didn't like the fact that I had to pay for Live Gold to do anything I wanted to do. Finally, I decided on the PS3. I bought one and haven't looked back since. I started out with Killzone 3, bought all of the Move stuff (that wasn't cheap), and haven't stopped. We really enjoy our PS3. I do believe the Move is quite a bit better than the Kinect as far as from a pure hardware perspective. I played Killzone 3 with a tuned in Sharp Shooter and it was outstanding. I really liked the precision and how you get all of the functionality of a controller with the motion gaming. I truly wish more developers would get behind this tech. This Christmas I' broke down and purchased an XBOX 360 with Kinect. It's mainly for the pure lack of children's games on the PS3 Move. Yes, they exist. There aren't many of them and I have to let the kids whirl around controllers that cost me $50 each and have a squishy ball on the end. The kids love the squishy ball. Some games use two motion controllers. Double the fun! I got the Sesame Street, Dance Central 2, Fruit Ninja, and a couple of other Kinect games and can't wait to see the kids play them. The Kinect is purely for the kids...no doubt about it. I can't imagine playing a shooter without some sort of controller and the Star Wars Kinect game looks absolutely ridiculous to me. What are they thinking with that? I do have to say that I took the opportunity to purchase Gears of War III for myself. We'll see how it goes.