Call of Duty, Modern Warfare. Is it a Game or a Plot?

As a parent, I never planned to need to educate myself about video games, specifically Call of Duty, Modern Warfare.  Admittedly, I don’t understand much about this game.  I tried to play it once or twice with my son, but ended up bleeding more than anything else.  It was not fun for me.  But I gave him the benefit of the doubt because my son finds lots of things enjoyable that I have no desire to do (snowboarding, guitar playing, engineering robotic arms, sling shots, catapults and other creative things) and I thought this was just another one of those activities.  However,  this is a game where the objective is to kill others (dressed as soldiers) over and over again.  If you have the Xbox live connection, you can kill other people in the comfort of their own homes.  If you are playing with older people in the live community, you might come across someone who makes their character squat up and down over a dead body.  Imagine my shock when my 10 year old taught us what this practice actually is?  He told us it was “tea bagging and it’s sort of inappropriate, Mom”.  This, of course, prompted more research.  My husband and I  began with Wickipedia ...and then on to find this video:

The Lyrics in this video have a very graphic and gross way of laughing at the characters quest for domination. 

On the gamespot bulletin board someone asks the question what is teabagging in CODMW4? 

And one person responds:

“When one kills the remaining players in search and destroy after they plant the bomb, one must establish one's dominance over the enemy team by rubbing one's balls in their faces, then proceed to defuse the bomb. Haven't you read the COD4 manual? It's all in there. “

Another person posts…"it’s on page 12 of the manual."

After we did our research, we talked to our son and explained that it was a rude act of domination.  You kill someone, and then make him lick your genitals.  We asked him if he thought that was correct behavior under any circumstances.  He responded appropriately, “no”.  We asked him if he thought men in a real war would have the time to waste doing such things on the battlefield, and he again replied, “no”. 

He asked repeatedly, if we could purchase the newest version of the game until we told him our final answer is no.  I continue to remind him to practice guitar, read books and play outside.

We don’t think that our young innocent children could grow to be aggressive agitators.  We don’t believe it’s possible that they want to dominate others.  It’s simply not what we imagine of our beautiful children, but then they grow up and start to be exposed to these things and they get ideas we never thought possible.  These games are clearly rated "M" for mature audiences and so they are inappropriate for 10 year old boys.  Yet, if one 10 year old boy has it, the rest of them want it too.  In our house we have a new rule, the first time a new game is played, a parent must play it with my son to insure that it is appropriate for a person his age.  This really limits which games my son even asks to buy these days.

Updated: 2/6/11

Just last week my tiny town was in the news because two high school boys held down middle school boys and touched them in an inappropriate way.  I have heard bits and pieces of the story from a few who know those involved and apparently many of the issues I discussed in my blog may have influenced the choices made on that day.  Parent's I beg you to better monitor your child's screen time.  This includes, television, movies, computer and video games.