My uncle used to play the original GTA with me and my brothers when we'd go to visit him. He worked for IBM for years when the industry was first getting started, and although he'd been retired for a while and wasn't entirely up to speed on modern computing in the 90s, he still would help us figure out how to cobble together a small LAN out of his old spare machines lying around and get them all to cooperate over the CAT5, wonky Windows85 TCP/IP issues be damned.
He hadn't grown up on the NES and SNES like we had, so naturally he didn't have our youthful reflexes, so instead of trying to win fights directly, he'd set up elaborate traps to lure us into, parking vehicles all across a street and funneling us into the middle of them, then firing an RPG at a well placed fuel tanker and wait for us to get caught in the ensuing chain of explosions so large it'd make the entire network slow to a crawl.
If we survived, it became a mad dash rushing over and under the flaming debris, dashing around building corners or down narrow alleyways, and all the while he'd spray and pray with his machine gun until we either slipped away, tagged him with a well placed shot of our own, or fell pray to a lucky shot. And whether we won or lost, he'd always laugh his butt off and taunt us good naturedly about how we were such "goons".
Can't help but feel this is a slightly reactionary take on ratings and censorship. Parents also let their kids watch horrible movies on DVD, but that's their choice - the fact is that a ratings system gives a rough impression of whether a particular age group can handle a particular title - on any medium. It's not up to the games industry to decide whether or not ratings are good, it's up to society, and that's a good thing - a really good thing.
I totally agree with everything in this EP. Games are so much more fun when you share them with family, and they can be great for interacting with kids as well. It reminds me of an article I read a while back by Brainy Gamer about playing Skyrim with his 4 year old daughter. http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2012/07/skyrim-for-small-fry.html
Definitely worth a look!
I played RPGs WAYYYYYYY early. I remember being 6 and playing Earthbound for SNES and not understanding a lot of the words. My parents bought me a dictionary SPECIFICALLY to help me figure out words I didn't know. In order for me to understand the game, I needed to learn the vocabulary. That really helped me make that a learning experience.
When my children were learning their numbers, they would watch me play my MMOs and I would have them count the quickbar numbers and tell me which one I hit when I got in combat. Hearing them yell, "FIVE, TWO, TWO, ONE,..." and then cheer when I won my fight.
It was just something that happened. I didn't set out to do it. The flashing colors and cool music attracted them. I assumed that they were coming to take me OFF of the game, instead, they wanted to know what I was doing and they involved themselves with what I was doing.
Eventually my one son started pointing at the numbers and saying them, soon I had him and his brother start calling out the numbers as I hit them, finally they would call out my rotation and get excited when I won, especially if I leveled up. I'm hoping that we will soon get into the storyline. Their attention span is still barely enough to make it through a hard boss fight. I usually stick to low level toons as they level up easier.
Soon, I'm sure, I'll be lamenting the decision, as they will start hogging the computer so that they can play, but that's why there is a bed time.
Can't help but feel this is a slightly reactionary take on ratings and censorship. Parents also let their kids watch horrible movies on DVD, but that's their choice - the fact is that a ratings system gives a rough impression of whether a particular age group can handle a particular title - on any medium. It's not up to the games industry to decide whether or not ratings are good, it's up to society, and that's a good thing - a really good thing.
We already have a ratings system, one that is enforced far more reliably than the movie ratings system.
While I'm not a parent, I am a writer of game guides on GameFAQs, many for the LEGO adaptation series of games, and it makes me so proud and fulfilled to receive an e-mail from a parent describing how my guide helped them and their children connect and play the game successfully together, whether it was to watch them and guide them, or to pick up the controller in the drop-in/drop-out and play along. These are the parents (and sometimes grandparents) I celebrate.
If you see your child playing League of Legends, you should A) be with them as often as possible while they play it so that you can help prevent its toxic community from psychologically damaging and/or corrupting them forever, or more preferably stop them from playing League of Legends.
"Not understanding is totally okay." <--- THIS is why Extra Credits and Penny Arcade have the following beyond "the baddest of the bad" game crowd. Not all of those out there who listen are gamers. Some of us are just interested in knowing what's out there. Some of us love someone who loves gaming. People like myself can appreciate the art and work that goes into the new things coming out because we know programmers but maybe we only play Castle Crashers ourselves...
The research mention is one I hope you guys squirrel away for its own episode. There's a value in helping your kids learn how to find the credible answers to their questions, but the mention here sounds like you're assuming everyone knows where to go to start - and I know you all know that isn't the case.
This is something I wished for my parents to do many times while I was growing up. My dad was the one that originally got my brothers and I into gaming, but very quickly he stopped paying much attention to what we were playing. Over the years we tried to get him to play same games with us. He almost never did. He could understand our desire to play, but I think he lost his confidence in his ability to learn somewhere along the way. My mom abhors video games to this day and hates it when we talk about them with her nearby. She dismisses them as children's toys and meaningless no matter how much we tried to show her the intricacies that games have. I don't think less of either of my parents because of this, but I feel like I missed great chances to bond with my parents in the way that I ended up bonding with my brothers.
@Mnementh818: You just described my parents almost exactly, except Dad played the hell out of Abadox early on. After that, though, he lost interest. Every once in a while he'd watch what we were playing just for kicks, but he didn't try to get back in.
The closest I ever got my mom to respecting video games was when she watched me play Arkham Asylum. She said it was like a movie to her. And she and Dad also enjoyed the flying game in Wii Sports Resort, as it turns out.
At least she doesn't hate them vidja games anymore, I guess. I'll call that a win.
I still remember when Dad got me and my sister an N64 and Pokemon Snap one year for Christmas. We started playing video games together almost all the time. Mom has never a big gamer, but she would join in on Diddy Kong Racing and Mario Party 8. These days, I'm the only one who really games seriously, in a sense. Sis lost interest, Mom never got into it, and Dad had to step back from serious gaming after some repetitive stress injuries caught up with him (though he still plays tablet games). But I'm still close with my dad because of gaming. Because he's a computer programmer, he's even offered to help me learn how to mod Minecraft. I love my dad ^_^
I love my mom too, I just can't play Borderlands 2 around her. She's uncomfortable around games over a T rating or games that feature a lot of violence, though she would still let me play them so long as I either muted the sound on less graphic games like the Soul Calibur series if she was around. Both my parents are awesome, and I couldn't imagine life without them. ^_^
This was nice episode. Most of the time, you could substitute "game" for any activity a child might be interested in and the message would remain intact.
I usually really like EC, but I have to say I had a very strong reaction against this episode. It oversimplifies the issue of appropriate content into "constantly try to involve yourself in your kid's gaming", and fails to address the vast majority of the 1-player sector.
Genres like puzzle games and ultra-hard trial and error action games (like N, VVVVVV, etc) are generally not fun when played around other people. Helicopter parenting is not the right way to manage a child's media, and spending time with your kids is really a separate issue entirely.
Video games are the same as any other content - parents should check the ratings, but they don't have to go farther than that. Combining these two topics really left a bad taste in my mouth, and had me saying "nope" repeatedly...
I'm surprised he managed to get around Liberty City obeying the laws. The AI is pretty dumb, and will frequently merge or attempt to change lanes when it's dangerously inappropriate, invariably causing jams and eventually, chaos. I watched a pile up, that blocked all four lanes of the bridge, develop from nothing. Fire, chaos, burning civilians. Hell, they'll jump in front of your car with little provocation.
I used to game with my dad. Or rather, he used to game, and I'd watch and suggest strategies. We played through Final DOOM and some old shoot em up that I haven't been able to find since, and the movie tie-in game to Tomorrow Never Dies was maybe the first game I completed on my PS1, with him taking a back seat. Good memories. We gamed less together after that, and nowadays he's very technophobic. My mum never took part, though these days she and my dad will play the Wii with my sister on occasion.
Going to your child's soccer games isn't helicopter parenting. Going to their choir concerts and school plays isn't helicopter parenting. Being at their graduation isn't helicopter parenting. Passing a ball in the backyard isn't helicopter parenting.
I must live in a place with the exact opposite sentiment of the type of parenting detailed in this video and a lot of the commenters before me: Everywhere I go, I see parents with so little care about what their kids are doing. It's not just books, TV, and games being babysitters. I often see locations used as babysitters: Malls, toy stores, libraries, museums--as long as children are allowed in, I see tons of completely unsupervised children making a mess of the place with the people working there powerless to do anything because either the parents are completely absent or are somewhere else in the establishment, doing their own thing, and will deny that they have any kids.
It must also say something when the standard of mine for "good parent" based on my experiences is one who doesn't see his or her kids as a burden. These people...talking about ANY topic with their kids is out of the question. They are clearly more interested in spending as much time away from them as possible.
As for my own household, my father, due to his job, was more interested in a game's content as in "electronic components, processors, and chips" than a game's content as in "gameplay, story, and polishedness." He was more wont to make snarky comments whenever I played because it turned out I was more interested in the latter. As for my mom, she has always kept her distance from me as far as interests go--if I am interested in something, she will have nothing to do with it. (For instance, she loves watching James Bond but will not watch Skyfall because I saw it.) This behavior makes it hard to impossible to talk with her in any meaningful way.
P.S. In other words, I frequently find parents who will not only NOT spend time with their kids, but will try to find ways to avoid them throughout the day without having to pay for a babysitter. How do you deal with them, who clearly have no interest in their children's enrichment?
Man, what a better world it would be if more (any?) parents did what was suggested in this. From the couple of years I managed at GameStop I can tell you for certain that #1, parents just drop their kids off like it's our job to babysit every day and #2, for some reason no one considers the ESRB rating. The rating is there, but some how it's invisible. On any number of occasions over the years I was shouted at by parents when they themselves had bought the game and ignored my "Are you sure? This may not be appropriate for a 6 year old" schtick when they discovered what could be done in a GTA type game or God of War or whatever. On particularly frustrating days I just starting telling people to assume certain games were actually titled "Let's Rape a Carebear" or "Hooker Death Factory 7". At least that made them pay attention enough to ask why.
Perhaps the most misguided episode to date. It's not that good parents with time on their hands are dropping their kids in front video games like babysitters. Parents with no time, or perhaps just worse parents are.
Video games and comics were my only friends and role models for perhaps 15 years. My parents were a mix of bad and busy.
I could go on forever and I don't want to. Just remember for just about every random "Aloof" parent getting their kids a game they shouldn't be playing. Is a kid who nagged their parent for ONE thing for months. Because they played a game to escape. To have role models, to feel like they had friends, or a mom, or a dad.
Looking back, Aeris getting stabbed was WAAAAAY awkward. And though I laude the episode for encouraging better parenting. The use casing is a bit off. Most kids doing this, myself included once upon a time, tried very hard to get their hands on these games. It was no fault of the parent, the kids were self-medicating to use games as a "Babysitter". Because it was literally all we had.
TLDR: Good parents aren't using games as babysitters and need to get involved. People need to be better parents because if they aren't kids like me and so many others sought out Video games to try and obtain things from it parents didn't give us.
@Piggie I think you missed my point entirely. Playing /a/ video game with your kids is fine, but this video promotes playing/involving with /all/ games they play, as if that is the only way to protect them. My reaction was towards this oversimplification, which left out vast genres of games that this strategy cannot include, and implies a complete lack of trust.
Good video. I have fond memories of watching my dad play Doom as a kid. I used to call the demons "Balrogs" because I was reading Lord of the Rings and we didn't know the proper names for the monsters initially. I loooved watching him take on cyberdemons in various Doom mods.
Can't say he involves himself in my games, but I have tried to get him to play Iji . It's harder to sit by and watch someone play when you're a PC gamer on a laptop
Good video. I have fond memories of watching my dad play Doom as a kid. I used to call the demons "Balrogs" because I was reading Lord of the Rings and we didn't know the proper names for the monsters initially. I loooved watching him take on cyberdemons in various Doom mods.
Can't say he involves himself in my games, but I have tried to get him to play Iji . It's harder to sit by and watch someone play when you're a PC gamer on a laptop
As a teenager, I love that my Dad enjoys learning about the games I play. For years my brothers and I have explained what is going on to him and he has listened with interest. We have shown him Zelda, Warcraft, Mario, Pokemon, League of Legends, Magic the Gathering, and countless more games. He even makes an attempt at playing some of them. If you are a parent, there is a good chance that your children would love having you involved in their games.
My uncle used to play the original GTA with me and my brothers when we'd go to visit him. He worked for IBM for years when the industry was first getting started, and although he'd been retired for a while and wasn't entirely up to speed on modern computing in the 90s, he still would help us figure out how to cobble together a small LAN out of his old spare machines lying around and get them all to cooperate over the CAT5, wonky Windows85 TCP/IP issues be damned.
He hadn't grown up on the NES and SNES like we had, so naturally he didn't have our youthful reflexes, so instead of trying to win fights directly, he'd set up elaborate traps to lure us into, parking vehicles all across a street and funneling us into the middle of them, then firing an RPG at a well placed fuel tanker and wait for us to get caught in the ensuing chain of explosions so large it'd make the entire network slow to a crawl.
If we survived, it became a mad dash rushing over and under the flaming debris, dashing around building corners or down narrow alleyways, and all the while he'd spray and pray with his machine gun until we either slipped away, tagged him with a well placed shot of our own, or fell pray to a lucky shot. And whether we won or lost, he'd always laugh his butt off and taunt us good naturedly about how we were such "goons".
Those are some of my fondest summertime memories.
Praise be unto the troglodytes.
Good old gamers. Use brains instead of muscle.
I really appreciate the nod to research habits. As a software engineering student nearing graduation, it's becoming increasingly clear that the internships I've gotten and any future jobs I get will be based around ability to adapt and learn much more than current experience. It's so important to be able to research and learn effectively nowadays.
And from the side of being that-guy-who-knows-how-to-work-computers in some friend groups and family settings, I've found that anyone who I can teach to effectively use Google and to be both responsible and confident about what they click and download becomes vastly more self-sufficient with resolving technological issues.
Ability to research is HUGELY valuable and I'm glad you guys took the time to highlight that.
Posts
He hadn't grown up on the NES and SNES like we had, so naturally he didn't have our youthful reflexes, so instead of trying to win fights directly, he'd set up elaborate traps to lure us into, parking vehicles all across a street and funneling us into the middle of them, then firing an RPG at a well placed fuel tanker and wait for us to get caught in the ensuing chain of explosions so large it'd make the entire network slow to a crawl.
If we survived, it became a mad dash rushing over and under the flaming debris, dashing around building corners or down narrow alleyways, and all the while he'd spray and pray with his machine gun until we either slipped away, tagged him with a well placed shot of our own, or fell pray to a lucky shot. And whether we won or lost, he'd always laugh his butt off and taunt us good naturedly about how we were such "goons".
Those are some of my fondest summertime memories.
Definitely worth a look!
It was just something that happened. I didn't set out to do it. The flashing colors and cool music attracted them. I assumed that they were coming to take me OFF of the game, instead, they wanted to know what I was doing and they involved themselves with what I was doing.
Eventually my one son started pointing at the numbers and saying them, soon I had him and his brother start calling out the numbers as I hit them, finally they would call out my rotation and get excited when I won, especially if I leveled up. I'm hoping that we will soon get into the storyline. Their attention span is still barely enough to make it through a hard boss fight. I usually stick to low level toons as they level up easier.
Soon, I'm sure, I'll be lamenting the decision, as they will start hogging the computer so that they can play, but that's why there is a bed time.
We already have a ratings system, one that is enforced far more reliably than the movie ratings system.
The research mention is one I hope you guys squirrel away for its own episode. There's a value in helping your kids learn how to find the credible answers to their questions, but the mention here sounds like you're assuming everyone knows where to go to start - and I know you all know that isn't the case.
The closest I ever got my mom to respecting video games was when she watched me play Arkham Asylum. She said it was like a movie to her. And she and Dad also enjoyed the flying game in Wii Sports Resort, as it turns out.
At least she doesn't hate them vidja games anymore, I guess. I'll call that a win.
I love my mom too, I just can't play Borderlands 2 around her. She's uncomfortable around games over a T rating or games that feature a lot of violence, though she would still let me play them so long as I either muted the sound on less graphic games like the Soul Calibur series if she was around. Both my parents are awesome, and I couldn't imagine life without them. ^_^
Genres like puzzle games and ultra-hard trial and error action games (like N, VVVVVV, etc) are generally not fun when played around other people. Helicopter parenting is not the right way to manage a child's media, and spending time with your kids is really a separate issue entirely.
Video games are the same as any other content - parents should check the ratings, but they don't have to go farther than that. Combining these two topics really left a bad taste in my mouth, and had me saying "nope" repeatedly...
I used to game with my dad. Or rather, he used to game, and I'd watch and suggest strategies. We played through Final DOOM and some old shoot em up that I haven't been able to find since, and the movie tie-in game to Tomorrow Never Dies was maybe the first game I completed on my PS1, with him taking a back seat. Good memories. We gamed less together after that, and nowadays he's very technophobic. My mum never took part, though these days she and my dad will play the Wii with my sister on occasion.
Going to your child's soccer games isn't helicopter parenting. Going to their choir concerts and school plays isn't helicopter parenting. Being at their graduation isn't helicopter parenting. Passing a ball in the backyard isn't helicopter parenting.
Neither is playing a video game with your kids.
It must also say something when the standard of mine for "good parent" based on my experiences is one who doesn't see his or her kids as a burden. These people...talking about ANY topic with their kids is out of the question. They are clearly more interested in spending as much time away from them as possible.
As for my own household, my father, due to his job, was more interested in a game's content as in "electronic components, processors, and chips" than a game's content as in "gameplay, story, and polishedness." He was more wont to make snarky comments whenever I played because it turned out I was more interested in the latter. As for my mom, she has always kept her distance from me as far as interests go--if I am interested in something, she will have nothing to do with it. (For instance, she loves watching James Bond but will not watch Skyfall because I saw it.) This behavior makes it hard to impossible to talk with her in any meaningful way.
Video games and comics were my only friends and role models for perhaps 15 years. My parents were a mix of bad and busy.
I could go on forever and I don't want to. Just remember for just about every random "Aloof" parent getting their kids a game they shouldn't be playing. Is a kid who nagged their parent for ONE thing for months. Because they played a game to escape. To have role models, to feel like they had friends, or a mom, or a dad.
Looking back, Aeris getting stabbed was WAAAAAY awkward. And though I laude the episode for encouraging better parenting. The use casing is a bit off. Most kids doing this, myself included once upon a time, tried very hard to get their hands on these games. It was no fault of the parent, the kids were self-medicating to use games as a "Babysitter". Because it was literally all we had.
TLDR: Good parents aren't using games as babysitters and need to get involved. People need to be better parents because if they aren't kids like me and so many others sought out Video games to try and obtain things from it parents didn't give us.
Can't say he involves himself in my games, but I have tried to get him to play Iji
Can't say he involves himself in my games, but I have tried to get him to play Iji
Praise be unto the troglodytes.
Good old gamers. Use brains instead of muscle.
...
What? It was funny during the Cata beta! Don't judge me!
And from the side of being that-guy-who-knows-how-to-work-computers in some friend groups and family settings, I've found that anyone who I can teach to effectively use Google and to be both responsible and confident about what they click and download becomes vastly more self-sufficient with resolving technological issues.
Ability to research is HUGELY valuable and I'm glad you guys took the time to highlight that.