As Jack and I finish the game level, the word "victory" flashes on-screen. We have captured the command post or conquered the planet or whatever. No thanks to Mom, observes 10-year-old Cy, from the sidelines.

"What," I say defensively. "I killed a couple of people."

"We did pretty bad, Mom, sad to say," Jack reports. "I only killed one person. Well, and R2D2, but I don't think he really counts."

Our cheerful conversation about killing might horrify an eavesdropper. But, to me, wasting robots in a "Star Wars" game is closer to shooting rubber ducks at a midway concession stand, and not only because we're destroying something inanimate. It just doesn't feel like violence. It's as if the impulse springs from a whole different part of the brain, not from the primitive depths that drive acts of murderous rage or "take that, sucker" sadism, but from some more composed and civilized lobe that relishes a challenge and a bit of friendly sparring.

Over the years I've read enough about media violence to know that it's hard to tell whether it makes kids more aggressive. Research is inconclusive, and common-sense assumptions come with equally logical flip sides. Maybe our bloodless, comic-bookish "Star Wars" killing is actually worse than graphic carnage, because it obscures bloodshed's real consequences. Or maybe combat games discourage aggression by providing a benign release valve. British media expert David Gauntlett notes that one study found that a group of young violent offenders actually watched less violent entertainment than average. And as Johnson points out, the most recent Justice Department figures show violent crime is at a recorded low, despite rising media violence.

Even so, I'm not about to fling open the door to an ultra-violent game such as the best-selling "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas." "From the sick insinuations ... to the sexually deviant threats ... you'll hear things said in San Andreas that will curl your toes ... don't buy this game for your kids unless they're thirty," writes one critic. Parenting expert? Right-wing ideologue? Nope, a game-site reviewer who considers the best-selling "GTA" "a masterpiece." I don't necessarily believe my children will mimic brutal acts, but that's not the only reason to shield them, when I can, from humanity's uglier side.

So I don't let them buy games rated M for "mature" (defined by the Entertainment Software Rating Board as suitable for ages 17 or older). And they can't have games whose box features somebody wielding a giant weapon. Together, these eliminate about half the titles in the store. A nice middle ground, I try to reassure myself. But a lot of good it does I find out as we sit together playing. When I ask Jack what he thinks about violent games, he informs me he has played gory, M-rated games in other kids' homes. He claims to have no interest in them -- "All they are is blowing people's heads off and doing drugs and S-E-X and stuff. They're just stupid" -- but maybe he's saying that just to placate me. Or he'd change his mind if tempted by a particularly cool game.

In any case, he makes little effort to set my mind at ease when the topic turns to addiction. He readily admits to being something of a game junkie. "It's really hard to stop playing -- it's like a cigarette," he says cheerfully. Though at 9 he has never smoked, the comparison is, of course, unsettling. What if Jack's obsession, like my own former cigarette habit, goes on for years and years, choking out healthy activities the way tobacco smoke blackens pink lung tissue? Better tighten those time limits, I think, disconcerted.

Tonight, though, I reach my own limit first.

"This is such a tight game!" Cy exclaims, watching us.

"Yeah, I know," Jack says. "This is a game you want to just stay up all night and play!"

I hand my controller to Cy. Personally, I don't feel in much danger of getting hooked or staying up all night. After an hour or so of watching a pixelated droid bound across a TV screen, I'm ready for something more, well, three-dimensional. On the other hand, I don't feel any smarter, either -- at least not about the benefits and risks of video games. Johnson's book is appealing, and it's hard to argue after reading it that, content and addiction questions aside, video games are inherently more harmful than other sedentary activities: drawing, building with Legos, playing chess. Still, I'd be much more comfortable seeing my sons do those time-tested things.

Yet I want to respect their choices. I don't want to condemn their tastes just because I don't share them. How can I expect them to appreciate my cultural interests -- to check out the books, movies, museums, Web sites and music that I recommend -- if I reflexively scoff at theirs?

These days, I know, parents are supposed to have vehement child-rearing opinions and to stick to them with droidlike consistency. But with video games, as with so many parenting matters, I wind up thinking that almost all the positions -- even diametrically opposed ones -- make a little bit of sense. And that none offers any guarantees.

So the PS2 stays in the living room.

Which is fine because, unless I'm willing to window-peep at sleepovers, to put households that allow video games in the off-limits category normally reserved for those that store loaded guns in unlocked cabinets, I can't keep my sons from being exposed to, and tempted by, video games. In the end, I can't shelter my kids from the modern world.

"We start talking about the challenges of parenting today," said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in a recent speech about video games, "and all of a sudden people are exchanging their deep concerns about losing control over the raising of their own children, ceding the responsibility of implicating values and behaviors to a multidimensional media marketplace that they have no control over and most of us don't even really understand because it is moving so fast we can't keep up with it."

As politicians do, Clinton issues proposals -- clearer ratings, more research, public-service announcements, industry self-policing -- public measures that, for all I know, might help. But meanwhile, parents face a dilemma, and in that one run-on sentence, she captures it. The mass entertainment media are powerful, enormously profitable, pretty close to uncontainable, and constantly shifting. Maybe I am drawn to books like Steven Johnson's partly because they offer some comfort against the inevitable.

After all, he claims video games can teach my sons to navigate a complex and baffling environment where circumstances change quickly, rules aren't clear and they'll have to figure things out, as best they can, along the way.

I sure hope he's right, because we're already there.

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