A parent's guide to Destiny: violence, myth and storytelling

09 Sep 2014

Human players work together to fight the Vex on Venus


A common response to parents who inadvertently let children play violent games is to suggest all they need to do is read the box and obey the PEGI ratings. This is certainly a good start but conducting further research online can be tricky, with families that Google "games" being inundated with complex reviews aimed at avid players.

This works both ways -- not only are families sometimes blind-sided by unexpected content in games, but they may also be unaware of some great games they could play together.

Destiny is case in point here. Ask a parent what the game has going for it and most (if they have heard of it) will talk about an experience solely focused on shooting, drawing a blank on why gamers are so excited about it. Equally, the difference between

Destiny and games like Call of Duty in terms of violence can be lost behind the shared PEGI 16 rating.

If you know where to look, however, there is a lot of helpful information to flesh things out. Firstly the PEGI site itself provides details on the descriptors applied to each game. The Games Rating Authority expands on this in its excellent Additional Consumer Information. Finally, further afield, families can get useful information on a game by looking at details published for ESRB ratings in the US or sites like Common Sense Media.

Perhaps it's no surprise that time-poor parents struggle to keep up. Here's something that should help though: a two-minute video guide I helped produce that provides context around a game, why it is popular and enjoyable, how much it costs and how long it lasts along with this rating detail and extended advice.

My hope is that as well as enabling parents to make more informed decisions about the games their children play, this should also pique their own interest in the game. While most parents presume that their offspring aren't keen to play games together, most younger players I talk to are in fact keen to get mum and dad involved.

In the case of Destiny the ratings make for helpful reading. PEGI rates the game as appropriate for 16+ with content descriptors for Violence and Online play, stating that Destiny "contains frequent moderate violence". This is expanded upon in the Additional Consumer Information, where it states that although you mostly kill aliens, during multiplayer "it is possible to kill humans wearing futuristic armour", and "they react and die as you would expect in real life and their bodies can be seen on the ground before characters 're-spawn'".

The ESRB gives Destiny a rating of T for Teen, with content descriptors for Animated Blood and Violence, and an additional note that the game "includes online features that may expose players to unrated user-generated content". The description goes into detail on some of the combat methods, e.g. "pistols, shotguns, rocket launchers, and special powers", and "hand-to-hand combat and knife stabs", and points out that combat is accompanied by "cries of pain and realistic gunfire" and blood-like black or white liquid when taking on aliens.

In researching this Destiny Parent's Guide, Common Sense Media shared its early thoughts on Destiny as a "suggested target age of 14", stating that while "it's not nearly as gritty or gory as Call of Duty", it does feature "combat with guns and the occasional melee blow or stab and a bit of alien (not red) blood", although "it's not as visually intense as most shooters" and "the combat is sci-fi and mostly against aliens in co-op".

As a parent this is all very useful information, but only half of the story for me. I want to know what a game has to offer that warrants the content it contains. Here Destiny delivers some rich story themes, painting a bleak picture of one potential future of humanity in which we achieve the technological progress needed to colonise other planets in the Solar System, but are then nearly wiped out.

This is certainly an interesting and unique way to look at topics of survival and heroism. Along with this the game contains a call to be all you can be, or in its vernacular to "Become Legend".

This lends the experience a mythic or potentially religious theme with the mysterious magical protector called The Traveller.

Put it all together and parents can make an informed decision about whether their children should be playing Destiny.

Also, whether there's enough here to warrant them picking up the controller themselves.

Andy Robertson is a freelance family gaming expert for the BBC and runs Family Gamer TV on YouTube.