First of all, :joker-troll:

Second of all, I’d like some videogame recommendations

Here’s some background info. My kid downloaded School Simulator 2017, which is kind of like a pared down Yandere Simulator, except it’s more sandboxy, has no story, and the violence is more cartoony. But the way they described it to me, it basically just sounded like a school shooter simulator. I knew that they didn’t see it that way, but kids have been punished more for less and I don’t wanna set them up for failure and act like this isn’t a taboo subject.

So here’s the deal. I’m a firm believer that contradicting kids’ immediate lived experiences is awful for their self-confidence and erodes their trust with you. Also, shooting things in video games is really fun. Also, it’s funny when the cops run scared instead of helping in the anime mass shooter video game. I’m not sure it’s funny to both of us for the same reasons, but I needed to find a way to get my worry across without literally telling them that their enjoyment of this thing was fake, actually.

I told them that when I was little, people said that playing violent video games makes you violent. They said that doesn’t make sense and I said I know. So to try and explain why it might be bad for them to go to school and talk about this game, I had to first explain what a school shooting was, that it was frequent, but not frequent enough for them to be afraid of going to their school. Probably an exaggeration, but the alternative is that they are terrified and start refusing to go to school, which will get CPS called on me. I don’t want my kid to be the victim of a state-sanctioned kidnapping for not attending government-mandated daycare, so I downplayed school shootings to my 10yo. Sue me.

Needless to say, :amerikkka:

And from there I explained that people often enjoy violence in movies and games and think it’s funny because they’ve never experienced that kind of violence. And then if they ever do experience that kind of violence, those same video games or movies can make them upset now. So for the adults who know about mass shootings, they’ll get upset if they hear about this one kind of violence, but not necessarily another.

So I think they get it… but also playing as an anime schoolgirl with a katana and a pistol genuinely does look pretty fun. So are there any games which could potentially replace this one but wouldn’t sound so mass-murderer-y if they talk about them to other people? Maybe a shooter that isn’t super fashy and isn’t US propaganda?

Edit: they said they want cute demons, if that’s checkbox anyone knows how to check. Anything resembling anime would be good too. They originally found this game by searching “anime games”