I’m “a bit” older than Wumpus (my kid’s in college) and so the games which were verboten back in the day were quite different. That said, having been a single parent I often painfully went through the decision process you’re dealing with. The approach I settled on and learned to live with used this kind of logic:
- I decided my kid is not a social experiment nor a statement to be made about the absurdity of cultural morays, so I separated my distaste for American prudishness from the situation.
- I wanted him to be able to relate to others his age, and not be the kid that other parents declined to invite to birthday parties, etc…
- I worked on video games back in the day (yeah, long, long time ago) and I didn’t want him to feel any shame toward them.
So I listened to his interests and picked up games to play which mirrored them. You liked Star Wars? Let’s get some Star Wars or other space games, even if a gazillion people get killed on screen. You liked Jurrasic Park? Dinosaur time! Lego toys are cool? Boy, are there some fun Lego games … You like Pirates? Time to grab that copy of Sid Meier’s.
Some of these games seemed way too difficult for his age, and often dealt with complexities he couldn’t quite grasp, but I found that gave him a sense of continuity and challenge both conceptually and in skill. During difficult or boring moments, he handed the controller/keyboard & mouse over to me, but that happened less and less with time - giving him a sense of pride. When he hung out with friends, there would normally be at least one or two that had played any of the games and they could connect through the shared experience.
If he brought up a game to me that had questionable content, I always said “Sure - as long as you’re comfortable playing it with me, we’ll play anything you’d like.” If he did want something particularly gory, sexy, or whatever, I wanted to be there to blunt the impact. At the same time, I didn’t want to restrain his natural curiosity. It turns out those moments were few and far between, as his interests tended to follow closer to his age group rather than mine.
This all seems to have worked out okay, although by no means would I hold myself up as an example of perfect parenting. We’re all individuals, kids and parents, and therefore come with unique sets of abilities and coping mechanisms. One thing I RE-learned along the way was that those same abilities and coping mechanisms help defend our kids against our own stupidity as parents every now and then. Ever remember thinking how irrational/dumb/whatever your parents were when you were a kid? Yeah, sometimes that was actually the case, and as parents we need to come to grips with the fact that we’ll find our own ways of being doofuses and learn to look for the hallmarks of such moments.
In line with that, the final rule I had about games was if I ever got to a point where I felt too uncomfortable discussing something in depth, I made him promise me to push for the answer as to why. I’d say about 95% of the time, I was able to explain pretty well without going too far into any hair-pulling details, and the other moments I came to realize it was just something that I had to get over.
PS - as an aside, Teiman is right about mods; those were also a great boon for my kid. They helped shape games more into what he wanted rather than what the developers originally intended