I've been playing through the Quest for Glory series again, thanks to the almighty GOG. These were some of my absolute favorite games growing up, and they were a big influence on me in my formative years. They were instrumental in building the mental world that I inhabited through most of my childhood and well into my teens.
Playing them again, after all this time, is of course a joy to me. I never got a chance to play the fifth game, so now I am playing through the entire series from beginning to end, importing my character from one game to the next. I'm going pure Wizard, since I think the Wizard gets to see some of the most impressive stuff in the games (such as WIT in QfG2, Kreesha's Magic Staff ritual in QfG3, and the battle with the Faeries in QfG4). I am also not using cheat codes, something I did a lot when I played the games as a kid. It is a challenge, of course, but I can appreciate that challenge now in a way that I never could when I was younger. I can also better appreciate the writing, the characterization, the humor, and of course the horrible, horrible puns. Even some of the music is revealing more about itself to me now that I'm listening to it with an adult ear; for instance, I never knew as a child that Salim's theme in Quest for Glory III is a mixture of the main theme song and "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane.
Speaking of Salim, that brings me to the main reason I'm writing this post. There are a significant number of references to drugs, alcohol, and sex in the games. (Of course, there's quite a lot of violence, too, but none of it is particularly graphic; the most you see is some blood.) You can eat magic mushrooms in QfG1. You can smoke a hookah in QfG3. In QfG1 and 2, there are bars where you can order and drink booze. There are several female NPCs with which you have the option of flirting, and they usually respond in kind (in fact, there's a sequence in QfG2 where a room full of beautiful, scantily-clad women make aggressive passes at the hero). One female NPC makes a subtle reference to having sex with her husband. There are at least two counts of more-or-less full female nudity. Multiple NPCs, both male and female, make sexist remarks or engage in sexist behavior. One female NPC has a backstory that involves her intentionally having a baby out of wedlock. There's a veiled reference to rape as part of another female NPC's backstory.
I'm painting a harsher picture of the games than perhaps they deserve. These "questionable" instances are usually fairly subtle; most of them eluded me as a kid, or I just didn't see anything wrong with what was going on. And I think one of the main reasons for that is that nobody told me I was supposed to find something wrong with them. I was allowed to draw my own conclusions and make my own decisions. I also frequently played the games with family members, usually my dad or my brother; as much as I love the Quest for Glory series itself, I think a big reason why I love it so much, and why it was so influential on me, is that I subconsciously equate it with "family time".
Nowadays, games with that sort of stuff would get a Mature rating slapped on them and kids would be forbidden from buying them. No matter how fantastic a game is, as soon as you throw a glass of beer or a bare breast in there, it's automatically "unsuitable for minors". This is the sort of knee-jerk reaction that comes from panicky idiots insisting that children should be protected against everything forever, or from lazy parents who can't be bothered to make their own decisions about the media that their children absorb. And that means that kids miss out on what might otherwise be a well-constructed story with deep characters and an engaging plot that asks the important questions about life. Of course, that's not to say that all games that contain "adult" content are works of underappreciated genius--some of them (a lot of them, probably) just throw it in for the spectacle, or are just plain bad. But that is exactly the sort of decision that needs to be left in the hands of the individual parent.
Game ratings are not a substitute for parenting. Neither are games themselves. Do not throw your kid in front of the computer or the TV and forget about them. Play the game WITH your kid. Engage with the game. Engage with your kid. I'm not saying you should force-feed your kid "adult" material--far from it--but don't hide it from them and don't insist that they should feel a certain way about it. Don't repress your kid's desire to learn. Don't avoid your kid's questions. Use common sense. Look at the context in which a piece of "questionable" content appears. Don't be so obsessed with keeping your kid "innocent" that you lose sight of what they will eventually become.
As a tangential addendum (ooh, look at me using big words!), games are capable of so much more now than they were when I was a kid, and yet, paradoxically, we keep trying to put more and more restrictions on them. It's as if we're afraid of our own innovation getting out of our control. I think, if anything, this is a point in favor of the "games are art" argument. Art is constantly evolving, whether the audience likes it or not.
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