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Father and Son Learn From Games
Via GamePolitics, a Washington Post article that for once paints gaming as an activity that can bring people together. Apparently you can even learn thing from games. From the article: "I'm sure that not all games are good for you, just as not all movies or newspaper articles improve your intellect or morals. Williams, the professor at the University of Illinois, has studied the impact of computer games on social patterns, and he finds results both good and troubling. But games that teach 11-year-olds about inflation or history can't be all evil, and they may be an improvement on Clue or Monopoly for all I know. Besides, kids clearly enjoy them. That surely ought to count for something."
Some of my fondest memories of growing up were playing video games with my dad on our Commodore 64. I remember one game, Falcon Patrol, where you fly a blue Harrier and shoot down red enemy jets (probably Soviets). I could always fly and shoot the bad guys, but I never could land the plane. I would always wait until I was almost out of fuel and ammo and then try to quickly hand the joystick off to my dad for him to land it for me.
Another game he and I used to play was Threshold, and he actually got so good playing it with me that he crashed the game because he got so many extra lives.
It was because of playing video games with my dad that he taught me how to do the basics of loading programs and games on a Commodore 64. While, that doesn't seem like a big deal, but at 4 years old, I thought it was pretty cool that I could list the files on a disk, find the game I wanted, and load it all by myself.
"Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." --Barry Goldwater
Why does everything an 11-year old kid does have to contribute to making him/her a better person?
When I was 11, my coalition force of Empire and Rebel Alliance action figure units would mount a joint assult on the mighty Green Army Man Lego Fortress for hours on end. Assults became more one-sided after "The Empire Strikes Back" was released, as I was suddenly able to employ tough-looking Snowtroopers, along with three different Han Solos, but then the Green Army Men added some Yellow Japanese Soldiers, who found the Rebel Snow Speeder to be little difficulty compared to the mighty Godzilla. The scales were finally tipped by ramped up production from the Droid Factory, a collectable 8" R2D2, and my brother's Boba Fett, who towered over everybody like a massive anime robot. Sometimes, small firecrackers would be deployed, but only against the cheap Green Army men, which actually looked cooler if you had a few mangled "casualties" in the set.
I didn't learn a single goddamn thing of any socially redeeming value at all from my time spent commanding those plastic troops, but I wouldn't trade a minute of it for anything.
So if your kid is playing maybe a little too much Grand Theft Auto for your liking, just be glad he isn't blowing up shit behind your tool shed.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Games - like all other social activities - can do a lot of good things for people. Now I don't talk about single-player doom, just like solitaire isn't so much use. But online games? Check.
.sig) - and among the praise I got was a father who played the game together with his children whom he didn't see for years after the divorce and the part plays a good part in helping them bond together again.
Two data points:
One, a recent study on MMORPGs (sorry, lost the link) revealed that quite a lot of couples play together. I do that myself and it helps keeping a long-distance relationship happy.
Two, I run an online game myself (see
Multiplayer games are social activities and should be seen in that light, with all the good and bad that brings.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
My seven year-old son and I play a fair amount of computer games together. It started with adventure games, that "gateway drug" to the hard stuff like Counterstrike. Some games he can do on his own, like Fable and virtually any FPS (he started on Jedi Outcast, as I recall). Some games spark lots of chatting outside of gaming, such as Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault and discussions of the era and our family history (my step-mother is Japanese-American and was born in the Nevada internment camps). We played Civ 4 and talk about technology and such.
Gaming in general has led to some funny moments as well. He and his young cousin were pretending to shoot other cars from the back seat, wildly making machine gun noises and pointing in all directions. "No, Sam!" I told him harshly. "Use short, controlled bursts!" He smiled and complied with my suggestions.