So I gave my son a crash course in video game history, compressing 25 years of gaming history into about four years.
At this point, you’re probably either thinking I’m a monster or a pretty awesome dad. Maybe a little of both.
That’s okay with me. My son is amazing, he loves video games, and more than anything, he loves playing them with me.
Ready, player two?
Amazing story.
I sometimes wonder if I ever have kids (god forbid), how would I introduce them to the world of computers? Just hand them a dumb, locked, experimentation-hostile box like a modern smartphone or tablet and be done with it, or hook him up with a textual, CLI-based computer that I grew up with? I’m convinced that the latter would instill a far greater appreciation and understanding of technology than the former.
Isn’t that really what the original goal of Raspberry Pi project is ?
Yes, give the kid a Raspberry. If he or she is so inclined motivationally and genetically, things will either happen or they will not happen.
I tried introducing my nephew and niece to some classic video games. Their reaction? In a nutshell, ‘These games are too hard!’ Kids today have gotten soft
“Too hard” isn’t such bad criticism.
It actually means they somehow rate them above what they’re used to !
When they’ll be looking for gaming challenges, they might end up coming back to those oldies.
Hard ? Haaaard ?
Get your Dreamcast out, and…
Zero Gunner 2
Bang! Gunship Elite
On arcade :
Raiden
Terra Force
Kochise
A lot of old games masqueraded by hardness their poor design and shortness…
Tetris…
What about it? (and FYI, Tetris DX for Game Boy Color (well, played on Game Boy Advance) is pretty much the only video game I play regularly; too bad it’s too much luck-based, especially felt on higher levels, where I play)
I’m going to be a father soon, within a couple of weeks… and I’m going to get a son. I’ve been planning doing this to him. Starting out with old games (just like the ones I grew up with) and moving on to newer games at a later age.
I’m really, really looking forward to playing Mario Card (SNES) with him when he turns 6 or 7.
What I’ve done is: give him a scratch ( scratch.mit.edu) tablet. And no other tablets, phones, consoles…
He started with 7 years, now he is 8 and invents his own games in scratch :-). I’m very, very proud.
Needed tutoring at first, and also a book[1], but now he only seeks help when he encounters an inexplicable bug –normally races because of concurrency in scratch programs.
The details: The selected hardware was an inexpensive samsung q1 ultra with an embedded linux that boots directly to scratch (X is launched in inittab, xinitrc launches ratpoison and scratch). To power down you flip the power switch and it shutdowns normally. The screen is very dim by today standards, but he doesn’t seem to care… he prefers that to the Galaxy Note 10.1 (with OpenSGN and scratch) that his little sister uses, because of the keyboard.
Toying with the idea of “upgrading” the tablet to something capable of godot engine, but godot doesn’t have a sprite editor and then the single-purpose-computer illusion fades… also the lack of integrated physical keyboard in the surface pro I’m experimenting with is somewhat cumbersome.
[1] The book he used is “Super Scratch Programming Adventures”.
Edited 2014-12-11 21:48 UTC
Anybody notice the tagline towards the bottom of the article?
“It’s about ethics in video game parenting.”
I LOL’d.
Like an Atari 2600? Or a classic Nintendo?
Most kids in the US of A, grew up with a locked down video game system.
Edited 2014-12-11 22:02 UTC
True. But those systems had amazing games, and that’s all that mattered.
If I had a kid I would go the history lesson route; start out with the best games of the recent decades, beginning with earlier generations and finally ending with newer stuff. He/she wouldn’t graduate to seventh-generation games (late 2005 and newer) until at least 15 or so years old. Maybe use newer ones as a “treat” every once in a while leading up to there if he or she really seems to be appreciating gaming for what it is and for the right reasons.
If you buy the crap they sell today the kid wouldn’t get the true meaning of gaming, you’d quickly end up with yet another FPS-loving graphics whore who just gets cheap thrills shooting guns because he can’t get a real one.
As for computers… I would probably whip something up with a CLI… maybe triple-boot with FreeDOS just for nostalgia (no real intent to use), some CLI-only Linux or BSD, and some more “familiar” distribution with a GUI. Windows? Eh… maybe on a separate computer with restrictions on use, intended to be used only when absolutely required for a task.
Your comment made so sense… Thom didn’t even mention game consoles. You do realize games can be played on devices that are NOT game consoles? My generation had plenty of choices of non-locked down devices to play games on.
Edited 2014-12-12 02:17 UTC
Thom was comparing modern gaming platforms in a very negative light with the litany of pejorative adjectives. The good old days weren’t any better for gaming than they are now by those metrics.
All generations have had plenty of choices of non-locked down devices to play on.
Uh, no. I was comparing modern smartphone and tablets to older computers.
I don’t mean to be putting words into your mouth, but that was my interpretation of the above wording.
You could also just give him/her a modern computer with access to modern oss games. If you wanted an experimental platform. It doesn’t have to be a choice between old open platforms and new locked down platforms. As there were old locked platforms, and there are new open platforms.
You must be relatively young because in the good old days I remember we had to type the code in first to play the game. š
No, I was just trying to describe the most common experience of gaming for people my age. I did go through a “here’s the source code for the game, have fun typing it in every time you want to play it!” phase.
Nintendo wasn’t fully locked. You always had the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Genie“>Game which let you hack about if you were so inclined.
Edited 2014-12-12 14:22 UTC
Well, everything is hackable to some extent. Nintendo did its best to prevent game genie from existing.
I cured myself of this when I downloaded a VM called Nostalgia. Or something like that. It was FreeDOS with a couple of games like commander keen, etc.
Boy, was I disappointed. All the magic of imagining myself playing these games as if it was 1990 went poof! when I had a go.
I’m much happier to see my kids paint, read or play with lego than see them with a tablet or on Ouya which we own and is used rarely.
Yeah, I know, I’m not preparing them for robot realities and everybody’s-a-programmer jobs of 2050, but my strategy for them to be above average is to become well developed and capable human beings, rather than railroad them into the digital dementia.
I know I probably sound like a fanatic, but although games have a lot of good in them (hand-eye coordination, problem solving, failure is the path to success, etc) they also train our brains to respond to treat distractions. In order to shoot down a baddie in Galaga you have to watch everything at once. Rarely a computer game really trains patience and focus. (inb4: chess, checkers). I thought that was a good thing when I was a teen or 20-something. Being 35, being able to reflect, I’m not so sure now. I’m pretty sure some of my gaming time was stupid, to the point where it stopped being a pleasure.
Yes, games opened me to programming, and I probably wouldn’t have my code in the Linux kernel if it wasn’t for typing LOAD “” on ZX-81 when I was 5 to load a game. But it wasn’t my father who told me to play games or to code. He just experimented and have bought us many things: computers, synthesizers, electronic sets, legos, skis and airplane models. We chose what we liked without being pushed.
I think I much more respect this story where there was a kid in the UK who started tinkering in computers by watching his dad and asking questions than being lead the path of games. You might not ever leave it and just be a gamer. And that’s a bad thing, because you’re entering the economics of popularity, i.e. 1 in a million gets to be a Starcraft champion. A more steady distribution of a general geek is more appealing.
Sorry if this is too much or like a loose thread of thoughts. Just wanted to weigh in with a counter point.
Cheers!
Maciej
Edited 2014-12-11 22:22 UTC
You don’t sound like a fanatic, you sound very sane to me. I take the same approach with my kids. I try to show them the options, they can cherrypick what suits them. I don’t mind if they become dancers, surfers, coders, mcjob workers. It’s their life, all I can do is set a stage. And trying to force my kids in a certain direction isn’t what I want for them. Feels too much like this skating dad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxOI8OWdec0
My dad was a soldier, and he wanted me to join the german Bundeswehr as well. Back then he was sure that it was the right thing and futureproof. Turns out he’s pretty happy I went my own way in hindsight.
I want to share with my kids what inspired me when I was a kid and some games might be part of that. But there are also music-instruments, bikes and skateboards, boardgames, books, records, and that scary concept we call “the outside”.
That said, I am looking forward (re-)discovering Maniac Mansion or Elite with em. š
My 7 year old wastes every waking minute on Roblox then when we get on him he jumps from DS to iPad to someone’s phone. Every weekend is a 2 day long fight to keep him away from video games. He is a crack addict for the computer and it sucks. He won’t ride a bike, getting him to go outside is a fight. This is coming from someone who makes a living in IT and has wasted countless hours playing games.
You do not want this for your kids. You do not want them to be computer junkies. Do yourself a favor and keep them away from video games for as long as possible.
Afraid of having children? It is very rewarding to have two or three children.
However, it still depends on the curiosity level of the kid if being introduced with a smartphone and start asking how things work under the hood.
Rewarding ? Wait until they’re in their teens…
Don’t believe this. Parents always tell you this to feel better after a week-end fighting about Computer-time, cleaning up the kid’s room, helping in the house-hold.
I have two, and really I love them, but getting into discussions whether or not to play War Thunder with 13years and how long can bring you to the limits.
I wonder how many hours a day he made the kid spend with games and how this affected his development, taking valuable times from activities like reading books or playing outside.
My daughter is almost 2 and she will probably receive her own tablet by the age of 4 (for now she plays with mine once in a blue moon), but the plan is to be allowed to use it no more than one hour a day.
Natural selection may well catch up with old mate and his boy. Between diabetes, obesity and anti social introvert, the only way is up.
What about letting him make the choice, see what he likes most from all the devices you’ll have at home.
My family was really poor when I was growing up, so my first computer was as old as me, a BBC Micro model B. I consider myself lucky because of this, as (despite my also wonderful box of games on cassette tape) learning how to make the computer do anything creatively fun required learning (a really fantastic implementation) of BASIC. I studied the machine’s user manual, played around with program listings, experimenting with the source code and learning the computer inside out. Apart from teaching me the fundamentals of programming, this also gave me a greater appreciation of the way a computer “thinks”, the operations underlying everything that we do with them. I mean I’m a nerdy girl anyway, but I think that it should be a standard part of secondary school education to learn how to do a bit of programming. It really demystifies computers and stops them simply being a magical box to watch cat videos on. I think I read this is being added to the secondary school curriculum in the UK, and I’m very pleased by this.