Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Will You Start Your Kids On Classic Games Or Newer Games?
An anonymous reader writes "An article at The Verge got me thinking. Parents and those of you who plan to become parents: will you introduce your kids to the games you played when you were younger? Those of us who grew up playing Pong, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man have had a chance to see gaming software evolve into the enormously complex and graphically realistic beast it is today. I've begun to understand why my grandparents tried to get me to watch old movies. I'm also curious how you folks plan to teach your kids about computers and software in general. When teaching them Linux, do you just download the latest stable Mint or Ubuntu release and let them take it from there? Do you track down a 20-year-old version of Slackware and show them how things used to be? I can see how there would be value in that... the UIs we use every day have been abstracted so far away from their roots that we can't always expect new users to intuitively grasp the chain of logic. How do you think this should be handled?"
When teaching them Linux, do you just download the latest stable Mint or Ubuntu release and let them take it from there?
When we what?!?
Our kids will be pushed outside for as long as they can take it, and then they'll come inside and play on whatever system is en vogue when they're the right age for it. They don't give a crap about your nostalgia, and your music sucks.
Many replies below mine will be from Nintendo eta hipsters who'll be pushing them Mario, so they can feel good about their 8-bit tattoos.
You are all fucking bastards that need to be raped by horses.
the graphical beasts of today are nothing more than slightly more complex interactive movies of the 90's
walk in line,
talk to NPC's
kill someone
grab loot
repeat
at least on the consoles. if you want different genres you have to play on the PC for strategy and mobile for puzzle games. even then there is no need to play the original Sim City to enjoy today's farm or city or whatever building games.
scrabble..monopoly... ??
https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom
comes first.. So how about a thread on how to teach your kids that science doesn't have to be *made* fun? I don't care if there have been many of them already, I would take another of those vs this dribble about gaming like it is something really that important.
Started them on classic NES/SNES games that were easy to pick up for kids, like the Mario games. Anything older than that and it's just not worth it.
anywhere near a console. Get them involved in other things instead.
The only games I'll expose my kids to are ones you play outside and shit like Lego? Half the reason kids are fat and dont think or themselves is they dont have this exposure to actual exercise and physical tinkering.
First and foremost, I want my kids to learn from playing games in addition to being entertained. And there's something to be said about the visual simplicity of older (classic) games encouraging imagination, just like books stimulate the brain more than TV and Movies. You could probably make an argument that the eye candy in today's game is distracting from the puzzle-solving aspects. Then again, newer games potentially have better puzzles... I don't recall much of a physics engine in my Atari 2600.
Fortunately, we don't have to make an either/or choice. But if I did, I would probably start with classic games.
Oh yeah. Obligatory to add "Get off my lawn". :)
You stereotypers are all the same...
For crying out loud, please stop it with these "How do I force my kid into liking ${some-random-shit-you-like}?" submissions. It's tiring to see them showing up two or three times each week these days.
Let your kids develop their own interests. If they like Linux, or gaming, or programming, or whatever, then so be it, and encourage them however you can. If they're interested in something else that you know nothing about, encourage and support them to the best of your ability anyway.
But please, for fuck's sake, don't try to force them into the crap you like. By doing that, you'll very likely make them hate it, even if they might've liked it had they had the opportunity to stumble upon it on their own (or even while watching you).
When teaching them Linux, do you just download the latest stable Mint or Ubuntu release and let them take it from there? Do you track down a 20-year-old version of Slackware and show them how things used to be?
I don't need to track down a 20-year-old version of anything - just install the latest Debian build.
Feels pretty much the same.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
My son is too young to be able to play games yet, but he watches me play both new and old games. I think some parents might be afraid that if their children are exposed to new games, they will never like old games, but I do not think this is necessarily the case. Maybe when the kids grow up they can be hipsters with good taste in old games, just to go against the grain.
I think that the original super Mario brothers game is the best game to start out on.
my niece will be 7 in 2017. to put "Old Games" in perspective, this means Ocarina of Time will be 20 years old then. Things from the early ps3 generation like PixelJunk Eden will be 10 years old.
I say anything before the 3d era will be seriously pushing into ancient territory. I was 5 when I was first introduced to Mario, and that game had been out for 10 years before then.
Gaming is not a new thing. Myself I am an avid gamer and I have no nostalgia for 8 bit gaming, mainly because i didn't get to actually game without parent supervision until the 3d era. all the gaming I did with super nintendo era stuff was through emulators.
Waiting for the slashdot grandpas to start telling me to get off their lawn.
Classics. Like peek-a-boo and "roll the ball back to me"? Sheesh.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Largely a solved problem in the education system and the reason they spend so much time teaching you stuff you'll never need to know. They teach you what was so you can understand why what is is better. Or not, depending on your civics teacher's socioeconomic status.
I'd go with a 30 year limit and stick with the classics though: you're trying to teach them "gaming appreciation," not "the history of gaming." The latest advances in emulation make it relatively painless to gather all these titles in one place, too.
That's because The UNIX Way Is Timeless.
The UNIX Way of doing things is inherently fundamental to the way computing works. It's a representation of the natural laws, and hence is always relevant, and will always be relevant.
The UNIX Way is a lot like mathematics or physics. They are merely descriptions of the reality that is. They are independent of time. They don't rot or become outdated. They may be built upon, and enhanced in one way or another, but they are inherently robust and unchanging at their very cores.
The UNIX Way will outlive you. It will outlive me. It will outlive our children, their children, and however deep along your line of descendants you wish to travel. As long as there is existence, there will be The UNIX Way.
Our kids are 3 and 5 - We don't (yet) have a gaming console - The kids play games on the iPad. However, I do have a couple of those joysticks that run 'classic' 80s games, and a few weeks ago at our Christmas open house I hooked them up to the TV. The older kids who were there (age 8 - 14) were instantly hooked and for several hours they played Pac-Man, Bosconian, Dig Dug, Galaga and others. I think part of the appeal was the fact that they were easy to just pick up and start playing.
Amusingly, the exception seemed to be Pac-Man. Took most of the kids several tries to just figure out what the heck they were supposed to do.
Unless we provide them with access to old games, how will they ever sympathize with the pain we went through? Trying to kill the pterodactyl in Joust, or the robot dragon boss at the end of Super Zaxxon?! Or the absolute terror upon seeing Sinistar appear on the screen, "RUN, COWARD!" "I HUNGER. *RAWWWWR!*"
Unless we make them experience these things for themselves, it'll be just like when the vets returned from VietNam, "You don't know man, you weren't there!"
As someone who has kids... I can assure you that any kids you have will not be interested in the video games you played when you are young, or how computers "used to be".
They will call such things "old style" and avoid having anything to do with it on principal, just becasue you like them. Doesn't matter if its great or not, it's "old".
If you want your nostalgic things to play with your kids, you have to find something which has *not* changed in the past 30 years, such as many board games. 8 bit computer games have clearly been supersceded by much more modern computer games (better graphics, better sound, facebook integration, etc) so will be a rather hard sell....
My kids won't be allowed to attend school until they can type in, RUN, and beat 'Hunt the Wumpus' on my old TI-99 4A.
I don't have kids of my own, but I do work with other people's children in education and recreation. In that context my answers would be:
For games, a mixture. I look for games that allow children to express themselves either creatively or constructively. In some cases, modern games are excellent. An example would be Minecraft. In other cases, older games are wonderful. Think Simcity (the different versions are also good for different ages or levels of sophistication).
In the context of computer skills, I prefer modern vintage. Old system software doesn't necessarily teach contemporary skills and frequently has a high barrier of entry for fairly basic skills. Why would I want to spend time teaching command line utilities just because they are scriptable? (Worse, why would I want to expose them to archaic GUIs as a crutch when they would be expected to use modern GUIs as a crutch in the modern world?) A similar parallel can be drawn for programming. BASIC, C, and Pascal probably won't be in common use when they grow up. So I prefer to use something like Scratch. That won't be in common use either, but at least it allows the to focus upon programming concepts like control structures and concurrency without the hurdles of things like syntax errors.
They must start with nethack of course. Nethack is the House of Abraham. And you ate your own dead dog, you disgusting cur. You are doomed.
As a kid, my mother's record collection introduced me to music from her past, and Nick at Night introduced me to television from her era. Shared culture is an ongoing story, and being able to see the earlier parts of that story really helped me to be able to appreciate the later parts. As well, understanding a medium from its simplest implementation to its most complex helps to create a more informed taste.
I don't have children yet, but my little brother is about 25 years younger than me. I've introduced him to old video games that are accessible to him. He loves them, and he's building experiences that will allow him greater appreciation of things he's going to run into later.
If my future children take an interest in technology, I won't force them to use an old PC... but I will certainly drag one out and set it up for them to fiddle with!
Don't let the lure of nostalgia fool you.
Go to some abandonware site, play a few of these ancient games...frankly, they rather stink. I mean, they were great in the day, no question.
But by today's standards (and no, it's NOT JUST THE GRAPHICS) they usually are very simplistic, clumsy, with limited reflex-based gaming choices at best. Tactical choices are extremely limited, conflict resolution is opaque and arbitrary. Save game? Hahahahaa, no, sorry.
Really, don't let yourself be fooled by your rose colored glasses. There's no reason to punish your kid by making them play old crappy titles so they "appreciate" the new ones more. Don't waste your or their time.
Nota bene: I'm 46. I started playing Oregon trail on a MECC terminal in 3-4th grade at age 9? 10? I've been a dedicated gamer since then, playing everything from the Atari800 Space Vikings from cassette tape, to Apple II space empires, to Ultima (before they had numbers), etc etc and so on. Bought my own first computer (a Zeos 386-20, regrettably without a co-processor, I simply couldn't afford it) in my early 20s, wrote computer game reviews for nearly 15 years, and have been involved in several titles from alpha to release. If there's anyone who could be suffused with nostalgia, it's me.
-Styopa
Everyone without kids replies saying they'll never let their child do anything but play outside, do arts and crafts, read books and be the pinnacle of amazing parenting while still working a full time job and have a rich adult social life.
I agree with your goals, but here are some of facts as I see them:
(1) Kids of this age do not have the higher thinking skills to appreciate sacrificing something for longer term gain.
(2) If you force them use an outdated or substandard system, they will resent you, be humiliated with their friends (or more likely, lie about it to prevent that).
(3) You're not really teaching them anything useful in a practical sense. Yes, I love the Atari 2600 too. It is completely irrelevant to anyone born after 1990 except in a historical sense.
(4) Desire to learn history has to come from the seeker, not the purveyor of that knowlege. It can be encouraged, but not forced.
BIt of a pointless exercise this, I grew up playing Sonic, Gods, Falcon 16 CGA because that's what I had, why push my childhood on my kids? Nostalgia blinds us to the games we play (although some of them are truely classics imho).
When my daughter is ready, she can play games, but like other posters have said, I want her outside getting hurt playing in dirt first. She has her entire life to sit behind an organic stretchable LED display.
You insensitive clod.
We played Monopoly, Parcheesi, Canasta, Rook and the like, but only when it wasn't nice outside.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Games are games.
Just had a Christmas party with some 20-somethings where we all played Gauntlet II on the big TV. It was a blast. None of them had ever played it before, but it was about how you play it - not what you're playing.
In the same way that I don't mind loading up a Speccy emulator and then playing some title from Steam and then going back to a DOSBox title from GOG.com and then playing my family at Mario on Wii U, games are very variable and enjoyable across all eras and platforms.
The problem is people who think one is "better" than the other and trying to enforce that opinion on others. Imagine trying to do that with movies - making your kids sit through The Goonies or whatever just because YOU enjoyed it. I bet you can find half-a-dozen people from your school year that also hated such a film. Similarly, people play games that suit them.
This is also why it's so difficult to get someone who "isn't into" games into games... they aren't into it for a reason, or it would have taken their interest years ago. Sure, they might have one particular title that they like, but chances are that even if they like a game, it'll be one you don't like. This is why every year or so, the "how do I get my girlrfriend into games" question pops up on here... show them a couple, if they don't like them, then they don't like them, and chances are that they won't like the same games as you.
Hell, my brother and I were from the era of "the family computer", used to play together all the time (sharing a keyboard!) and are both massive gamers still. Even we don't share the enjoyment of every title we owned - there were lots of games he loved that I can't stand and vice versa.
Don't force your opinions on your kids - let them play what they want (to the normal parenting extents!). And I'm sure if they get into a family tradition of, say, playing Monopoly at Christmas, they'll get into a family tradition of playing some Bomberman when you dig it out and put it on the TV for them all to play. But that's got infinitely more to do with "playing together" as it has the particular game.
You want your kids to play games with you? Do that. Don't worry about what the game is - it can be one of their or one of yours.
You want your kids to learn how to play old games? You might as well try to convince them to put all their MP3's onto cassette.
My collection starts at NES/Master system and includes "everything but xbox" (not really, but close). My kids are ages 4,4,7, and 8.
There is always an assortment of consoles attached to the TV so they have the opportunity to experience whatever they want, they will pick up just about anything, though they usually stick with PS3 disney Infinity or Skylanders or the Tell-tale Lego games
Mostly the 8 year old prefers PC games (including emulators), because you don't have to share them. Consoles are a community event, which is frustrating with 4-year-old brothers.
Recently the 8 year old was staring at my video game cabinet and asked "which one of these can play Donkey Kong?" so I know I am doing something right.
Read "Ready Player One".
Ponder the world that book portrays, and think that's the world your gaming children will live in if everybody plays games.
Then ask your question again.
My list of "important literature" is a buhjillion miles long. I don't intend to ever beget children, but I'm fairly convinced that the way to manipulate them into a constructive mental development would involve making the material available along with either suggesting or declaring that it be forbidden.
Baldur's Gate, Mother / Earthbound, the Foundation trilogy (well, anything that fell from the pen of Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke, really), Dune, and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance... probably a minor of Fire Emblem, EVE (which will no doubt still be going strong even a decade hence), D&D, Orwell (I was into his shit before it became so popular recently! (//_=)), Watership Down and that Wheel Of Time shooter.
Those are the sorts of things which appealed, yes, by dint of flash and engagement, but I also deem them to have held important topics up for examination. None of that Catcher In The Rye sophomoric bullshit, though, please dear god.
My two boys were born in the early 2000's. Through MAME and other emulators they were exposed to just about all major platforms and games from 1980-2000, but the only ones that they were attracted to enough to learn the controls were:
* Super Nintendo: Super Mario World
* Nintendo 64: Mario Kart
As far as legacy platforms, there was no traction on basic HTML or Basic but Javascript was enough of a hit to keep their attention for a while.
Two years ago Spore was the game of choice, and today they play Minecraft on the PC and all other video games on their tablets (Android tablets, of course). All "coding" they do is still in Javascript, but they also haven't made the jump to consuming their own apps on tablets. (Sniff - call it a parental stretch goal.)
Myself? I really only find myself going back to these games/platforms: Nintendo8:Zanac, SegaGenesis:StarControl, Nintendo16:StreetFighterII...and then not too often, because Team Fortress II is only a click away if I get a half hour free here and there.
All three of my boys learned to touch-type quite well playing the old Hero's Quest game. So there is definitely some benefit at least to the old text-based games. "Pick up rock" "Throw rock" and the faster you got at typing the better you took out the monsters.
Just let them play ET all day long. Pretty soon they'll be great at outdoor sports.
Oh man, I just logged in to say I spent countless hours playing this game. I totally remember the adrenaline rushes that I would get while running away from the dragons.
The real classics.
I also had access to my grandparents collection of National Geographics going back to the 1920's.. I could get lost for hours reading those on a rainy day. Then there was my ham radio station, mostly home built while I was in high school. I lived in the country and had my own .22 rifle from the time I was 10 and could go outside and do some "plinking" even though there weren't other kids to play with. I didn't need video/electronic games. I know I'm old, so excuse me for thinking that video games are way over-rated.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
overpopulation is a problem, I'm with ted turner and the Illuminati on this one. Stop having children you self serving fucks
If you think for a moment you will be able to control what games your kids will be playing, you probably either live alone in the desert with no other kids within 100 miles, or you're just not a parent yet and still think you can control these things.
Take it from me, been a gamer since the Atari 2600 was new. I have two kids. I thought I'd influence my son with my interest in games. However, I had a brutal awakening. My son started playing Angry Birds when he was 3. Because his (older) kindergarden friends were . Oh sure, we've done the occasional de-tour into classicaly inspired games like New Super Mario Bros, but in general, he plays what his friends are playing and if I don't let him play that, he'll go play with his LEGOs instead. Daddy can keep his strange old games.
now that is fun and has cool stuff to due in games
They see stuff at their friends houses. The reason their friends have it is because it was more marketable than the stuff we grew up with. So I can't exactly relive my childhood joy with my kiddos. They are pushed away from it by the same stuff that made the new stuff what is new.
Now I have a Wii. Not the Wii-U or the modern stuff. I have the first-generation Wii. There is still an okay used-game market. It is probably approximately equivalent accessible experience. So I can get games that are old-ish and the older-ish of the newer systems, and though I cannot re-live the glory days, I have a more easily crossed bridge to participate with my kiddos in their glory days.
We need to take a serious look at just how dangerous it can be for parents to force their interests onto their children.
Japan is an excellent case study, mainly the children born between 1980 and 2000. This generation's parents were the children of the WWII generation. They grew up during the substantial shifts in culture and society that occurred in post-war Japan. During the 1960s and 1970s we saw televisions and home video become common, driven by Japanese industry. We also saw the rise of anime during this time period.
As these children grew up, they started having their own children, starting around 1980 and continuing for the next two decades. They raised their children on anime. Anime became central to the lives and identities of the 1980-2000 generation. Every single aspect of their lives revolved around anime in one way or another.
By 2010, many of these children had reached or passed the ages at which adulthood typically begins. While they may be adults in terms of age, they were psychologically stunted by the role of anime during their youth.
Just look at Japanese society today. There are many grown men in their 30s who have no desire to start their careers, to get married, to raise families, and to otherwise act like adult men have for centuries. All they do is sit around in their undergarments, watching anime. They attempt to engage in "relationships" with cardboard cutouts of anime characters. Their only sexual interests are concerned with octopuses molesting anime women. By all measures, these people are failures in life.
Those are just the worst off of the generation, however. Those who are slightly more in tune with reality aren't as bad, but they surely aren't much better at all. Many of these men and women are extremely confused about their genders. The men have become feminized, while the women have become androgynous. The stagnation of the culture hangs around them constantly, driven by anime.
It's only safe to assume that their society would be a robust, growing one today had it not been for the very negative effects that anime has had on Japanese culture over the past 30 to 40 years. While there is no hope for redemption for these poor souls, the rest of the world can at least learn from them.
The most important lesson is that parents should not force their interests onto their children. The result will be a disaster, like we have seen in Japanese today. Doing this, especially with a medium as toxic and destructive as anime, will only lead to pain and suffering.
Let children be themselves. Let them explore their own interests. Let them become their own people. Let them be free from the shackles imposed by parents who force their own interests onto their children.
Strange game, only way to win is not to play.
While daughter was growing up, we had a strict no-console policy at home. Yes, I know, I was a horrible parent blah blah. Her friends had consoles of various types, as did her grandmother, and she was free to play them as long as it was at someone else's house. What I was trying to avoid was the all encompassing time-sink effect that I had observed had happened to my nephews. The ban did not apply to PC games, so she spent a lot of time growing up with Oblivion, Railroad Tycoon, The Sims, Spore and the like. But she spent most of her online time researching stuff and reading news. At one point she started asking me to find the collections How It's Made, Dirty Jobs, How Art Made the World, Mythbusters. Her interests would fluctuate but were always about real things. Currently she's reading and watching everything she can find about orcas. (Apparently, we're never supposed to step foot in a Sea World ever again...)
Somewhere along the line she developed a taste for things retro -- charlie chaplin movies, swing music, early roll film cameras. She said she wanted to buy a Nintendo 64. Why? Because it's cool. Shrug. Ok. I said go ahead, it's your money. This was our first console, purchased in early 2013.
She had to do a lot of research to figure out what all the parts were, and what was affordable, and eventually had enough pieces to make a working system. She's collected six games now, and plays with them once or twice a week. I get the idea that putting the system together was more fun than actually playing it, but again, it was her money. So I guess I'd say, she was drawn to older games. But it wasn't me who led her to them. Besides the Mechwarrior series, I haven't really played games much. I tried Warcraft once and got so heavily addicted that I neglected to bathe or eat. I finally gave the disc to daughter and told her to hide it. I still don't know where it is, and I haven't gamed since.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I have five kids, (ranging from three to eleven years old) and while they do sometimes play video games, (the four year old is almost better at MarioKart Wii than me, and he's only been playing it for less than a year!) my focus for them this year has been primarily Legos. We made a point of scavenging all of my old Legos from my parents house just a couple of months ago, and we purchased hundreds of dollars worth of new Legos for Christmas. And you know what? While only a couple of them have had any kind of a lasting interest in video games, every single one of them is perfectly happy to sit down with a pile of bricks in front of them, for hours on end.
I think there is just something intrinsically satisfying about building something with your own hands. Legos capture that in a simplified "child friendly" form like nothing else I've experienced in my own lifetime. So no: I won't focus specifically on those "vintage" video games... but I will be searching the web for PDFs of my old Lego kit instruction manuals. (So far, I've only found one... the official Lego site doesn't go far enough back in their archive. Yet.)
So you lock them up in a bedroom when you go off to work?
Don't worry about UI abstraction and other conveniences. If they are curious and bright enough, they will muddle through it and grasp the underlying structure. If they can't or won't do that, then they would never be able to develop the next generation.
I never looked deeply at mechanical calculators or punch cards, and I am doing just fine with what we have now. The stuff you know and love today will be museum pieces to your kids. That's just how it is.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
They'll gravitate to what their friends are playing. If you try to start them off on an Atari 2600 all that's going to happen is you'll have a bored child who doesn't want to spend time with you. Wise the fuck up.
I'm not going to "start" my kids on games. That's such a strange idea. They're going to play however they want to play (within reason), that's what play is for!
Stop overthinking stuff and start living. Christ!
And unlike Calvin, we make sure that the rats don't have the advantage of numbers.
Did your parents 10-20-30 ago show you video games or did you try them yourself? Don't be stupid.
Puzzle solving, funny and with re-vamped graphics. Avail on Mac on PC and Wine, and cheap
"An article at The Verge got me thinking"
Honestly, I don't think reading any online article should get you "thinking" about anything important. They're just filling a quota for page clicks. It's mostly fluff. There isn't enough news in a 24 hour cycle to satiate us, so lots of dumb articles are written.
Introduce your kids to reading.
A lot of the older Atari era games are far too solo, and don't allow for family bonding. Back when I was a kid this was done with board games, but there's no reason why Mario can't do the exact same thing. It doesn't really matter if it's a Video Game, or just playing Catch. As long the Video Games aren't being used as a baby sitter, and the game helps the family communicate. My daughters current baby sitter is her grand pa, jinga blocks, and Japanese educational tv programming. Video games are still a few years off.
When neither parent can afford to quit his/her job, I would question why they are parents. I'm not suggesting retroactive abortion, but some consideration of your economic circumstances before deciding to make a baby seems prudent. Teach your kids critical thinking skills instead of video games. Save them from the mistakes their parents made.
When my son was just 2 1/2 years old, we learned he was autistic. He had a lot of trouble with coordination and had some sensory issues. He seemed very interested in my computer, but was frustrated trying to do anything on it.
I put an old Slick-Stik joystick in his hands (they fit little hands MUCH better than a controller full of buttons), and fired up my old Atari 2600. Once I got him to understand that the stick needed the button to be up and to the left, the simplistic nature of the games allowed him to learn how to manipulate objects on the screen and avoid other ones (Ms. Pac Man was one of his favorites). In time, he got pretty good at it.
I think it helped him get out of his bubble, and he seemed thrilled that he was finally able to do something that DID something else in a constructive and playful way. It was a long time before he was able to talk, and even longer before he would read with any kind of comprehension, so the older games were PERFECT for him.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Entertainment is; play, books, crafts, end of story.
The backlash against sitting kids in front of a screen was probably forseeable, but outside that, I think a more general underlying question is, WHEN kids inevitably start to interact with technology, are we going to drive them towards the basics that we learned, or jump them into some more updated starting point? Obviously age matters, but it's hard to determine when and how much you expose children to technology (technology which will almost certainly dominate their lives much more than any previous generation). I think you have to depend a lot on the child, particularly their age. It's important to be well rounded, of course, but it's all a matter of balance. Do I think a two year old NEEDS an iPad? Of course not... nor should they spend their days glued to a TV. But will exposing a child to age-appropriate tech as a part of a well rounded lifestyle help them in the long run? Well... it's tough to say.
In general, though, yes, I want my children to learn fundamentals that are important to a deeper long-term understanding and appreciation for things. Just as learning to play peek-a-boo then hide and seek then tag then ball and team games and having unstructured exploration time throughout build some life skills, picking up Call of Duty as the first video game ever played is silly. The underlying question of retro games is, then, is the more modern collection of child games a better starting point than a classic game? I'd mix both, but if I had a child that really showed an interest I would try to help them understand the history better, by exposing them to classic games. This is a little harder with operating systems, but I would certainly try where possible. If my child is interested in programming I'd try to teach logo and basic, but I'll also utilize more modern built-for-kids programming tools, whatever those might be that are appropriate to their age.
But I think the question is important as posed because of how quickly technology changes. Balls are largely the same as they were when I was a child, computers are not. The context that understanding 8-bit video games gives to modern computing seems important to me, so, yes I think it is an important lesson to my child, while at the same time it is now much harder to balance children's social, play, family, and learning time (amongst other categories).
This approach is the same with sports, games, operating systems, robotics, rocket science, finance, and every single aspect of life for which lessons can be taught... underlying groundwork, history, and basics are important, as is balance and wide exposure, as is the narrower focus of dedication when they do choose to specialize. It's just that the groundwork we were taught as kids for new technology is vastly different than the groundwork that is available now, so it's a worthier question beyond an answer of just "don't sit your kids in front of the TV all the time".
If only they made family, babysitters, after-school and other public sports/activity programs, organized sports, and free time for parents in the 16-or-so hours a day that they're not expected to be working... but no, it's impossible for your children to go outside and play safely unless you quit your job and devote yourself to hovering like the world's most annoying hummingbird over your shrink-wrapped child.
Does your wife know you're sneaking out to the Internet Cafe at night when she thinks you're asleep?
Before my daughter gets to ride in a fancy-pants self-driving car, she's going to start in a Model T, with a steering rod and a hand-cranked starter. And that's only if she's mastered horse-riding first! Also, we're only speaking to her in Latin and Ancient Greek for now, gradually working our way up to modern English and Spanish by the time she's around 10. She's gonna love some of these Jacquard Loom games I've printed out from an abandonware punch-card site...
If you want to introduce them to games, use board games. At least that requires some imagination, strategy and actual thought process.
I bought Robot Turtles for my niece. It claims to teach the fundamental thought constructs for programming, which may be true, but really, it's just basic logic, critical thinking and forethought in general -- important life skills that everyone should be taught from a young age.
My sister is a rarity these days -- she is a stay at home mom of two kids, her husband earns a modest salary and they are careful budgeters. She spends a ton time with her kids and loves it. She teaches them to be independent and play on their own with real toys and outdoor activities. Screen time is extremely limited.
Do you really need to be introducing them to anything video game or computer related? They'll discover them on their own soon enough.
Should kids go back and play old games? I have no opinion on this, not interested in getting into that (ongoing and fiery) discussion. Will they play old games without prompting by an adult? Absolutely. I used to run a video game store that allowed patrons to play games (we had couches, TVs, it was a pretty casual quiet atmosphere in a small town). The younger kids were just as likely to play Mario 3 as Halo 3. My niece is currently obsessed with Chronotrigger and she loves watching Let's Plays of older games. I know kids that are into old Megaman, old Sonic, again it doesn't matter to them that it isn't new. They don't even think of it in familiar terms. It's pretty clear they don't care about graphics or old-school difficulty or really anything that's coming up in the thread. If you leave it lying around, some kids will pick it up and some kids would rather do something else. Just like adults.
I don't think the question as posed is particularly valid. It's not about "classic" vs "newer." It's not even about games. It's about the philosophy of parenting and how it might involve various aspects of our culture (wherever we are, and however we define it). We each need to make our own decisions, as parents, in terms of the types of games that we might want our progeny to sample, and they are going to be derived from who we are as parents and as people. Do we wish to enforce our ideas of what games/movies/sports/music are and should be? Or do we want our children to discover themselves and the things that will excite, stimulate, and invigorate them?
Obviously these are big questions and there are many right answers. For me, as a father, I want my son to engage in games that stimulate his creativity, regardless of era. So far, that's been easy, because that is where he generally wants to be.
In terms of operating systems, I watch where his interests go, and lead him towards things that might further develop those interests. While I might explain to him, or show him, the CLI of linux/unix systems, it will always be in the context of "here is why this is cool and powerful," with a concrete example that was arrived at naturally. It won't be forced. I'm also a musician, and the house is full of instruments, and yet I never force him to play. I want him to arrive at the joy of music naturally, or not at all. Same thing with art ( and all other things). I think that there is a larger question inherent in the question posed, as I said, and it needs to be understood.
Otherwise they'll be driving down the center of the road!
My kids learned about running around outside, playing and having fun physically long before they learned about gaming. But when it comes to gaming its about what they like, what interests them - same as it was for you and I. Nostalgia is nice but let them find their own way.
Set, Spot It, Rummy, Carcassonne, LotR Confrontation, and many other board games and card games. Electronic games? She has found those on her own without any encouragement from me.
Uh-huh. "Innocents". Just people that would kill you if you walked by them on the street just for not looking like them. (Southern Afghanistan, Opium production center of the world, who cater to the militant groups that offer them protection. Just try walking in a town down there, doesn't matter how "innocent" you think you are, you're a target for them)
I like how you think our military enjoys killing "innocents". Anyone in the military that actually enjoys killing gets cycled out pretty quick
I agree we should take a serious look, but please cite on Japan as a case study....Much of what we see as "weird stuff" Japan cranks out is extremely limited and publicized because they too don't approve of it. Kinda like holding up Miley Cyrus as a "typical" American. All cultures got their weirdos
It should not really be about whether video games are good for kids or bad (because they can be either), or whether retro games are better than newer ones. Such questions resemble trying do decide whether a tennis racket is better than a crow bar. It depends on the circumstances, does it not?
As parents it is our job to guide our kids, but one who pays close attention can be surprised by how much guidance *they* can give *us*. Some kids will get more out of things like old video games than others. My advice is to look for things that your kids like, then use your mad parenting skillz to foster positive experiences through those things to encourage physical, mental and emotional development.
If you love retro games (like I do) and your kids are excited about them too, that can be a great catalyst for all sorts of positive things that you can do together. But don't force it, and if it does take then stay involved as a parent. Spend time with them, playing and laughing, learning and telling stories, and relating those experiences to other parts of life. This advice could really be about almost anything, not just what type of video games or computing environment to try. Just remember that not all activities are right for all kids, and also that kids need balance and variety. It is up to us to step up and match kids' needs, interests and learning styles with appropriate healthy encounters.
Kids are natural born scientists. Give them some rules and they'll begin exploring the limits of reality, authority, or the game's (possibly quirky) physics engine.
In addition to playing the games I teach youngsters how to write a little code to help with their mathematics and make games, game mods, and graphical programs -- Hey, if Alice can write a program to do long division and show the work graphically for her to "cheat" at her homework, then she knows long division inside and out. If Bob can program a ballistic projectile targeting system then he'll ace his physics test. If Mal can exploit a bug in the game's physics to make Bob and Alice cry foul then they've all learned a valuable life lesson -- Feelings get less hurt in a game than reality.
Kids can craft 2D & 3D architecture, or even planetary systems in the virtual worlds. They can learn to use evolution as not just a theory but as a tool to create all the various desired AI behaviours for a game's enemies without having to write additional lines of code. Most game AI is nothing like machine intelligence, AAA games allocate only 1% to 2% of the asset/processing/memory budget but if you don't care about pushing the graphics envelope then the embarrassingly parallelizable n.nets can exhibit some neat emergent behaviours. When Evolution vs Creationism comes up my niece laughs and says, "Evolution is real, I use it at my uncle's house all the time."
As for classic games? It's not mandatory, but I happen to have a collection. They're good for youngsters who are honing hand-eye coordination: Intellivision's dial/knob controller is still great for pong. The Atari 2600 joystick sucks for kids though, fortunately you can just plug a Sega Genesis controller into it and it'll work great. Young kids do best with high contrast games with simple objectives, but they quickly outgrow this phase. There's an unaddressed gap between Atari and NES where a minimalist style would be great for developing young minds... Some indie game developers are finding and exploring this niche.
As for the violence thing? We'll I watched Tom & Jerry and Loony Tunes, I didn't turn out to be racist or violent. There's no evidence to support the claim that media causes violent behaviour. Competition, maybe, but that's a healthy beneficial trait. I gave my little brother the mouse to shoot Doom's demons and open the doors while I controlled the movement and lined up shots for him when he was under a year old. He turned out to love games and people, and became a pacifist...
One thing to watch out for is isolationism. Introversion needn't be deemed harmful, but exposure to social situations is good. Kids just love having something they imagined come to life for all to see, so consider helping them make a simple game or game-mod with any of the freely available engines as an ongoing weekend collaboration. They can take breaks or trips to the park to play hide and seek, Frisbee, or other sports to work out some energy and make concentration on collaborative engineering tasks easier.
Most modern games (and kids' shows) I consider just bubble-gum or mental candy. There's a difference between playing a game designed to entertain you the longest and playing a game designed that lets you learn or leverage real world skills; Pokemon grind-fest is the former, Minecraft and Halo world editing is the latter. I persuade kids to eat their mental vegetables by having them work on or in a game together towards a common goal. Have them all team up and strategize against me in a 8-way classic Doom Deathmatch, or have teams build new co-op levels then playtest them against each other -- BTW, have you seen all the free zany and even cartoony mods for Doom and Quake "source ports" now? They've even got Monopoly and Clue clones. If anyone says: "Wouldn't it be cool if ___ in the game?", I write it down. Have the kids pick an idea amongst themselves, then help them build it. Combine that with my 3D UI, OS dev, electronics, and robotics projects we've g
Tetris isn't a reflex game. Infinite spin has been the rule since about 2001.
...to appreciate the development of the subject is seldom reasonable. Will you teach your kids Anglo-Saxon first, so they can appreciate the development of English? Will you start with cuneiform when they learn to write? And by all means, don't let them use Arabic numerals until they've mastered arithmetic in Roman numerals.
If only they made family, babysitters, after-school and other public sports/activity programs, organized sports, and free time for parents in the 16-or-so hours a day that they're not expected to be working
Articles like this and this claim that "after-school and other public sports/activity programs, organized sports," and the like are part of the problem.
Everyone without kids replies saying they'll never let their child do anything but play outside
Especially when urban and suburban environments aren't designed to expose children to a lot of quality outside time. They often aren't pedestrian-friendly, and a child might not have a playmate within reasonable walking distance. Parents are afraid of vehicular traffic, abduction by strangers, and abduction by the ex-spouse. Nor can parents with full-time jobs always manage to find stay-at-home neighbors to supervise their kids' outdoor play.
I would like to say that I would share the classics with them, but the truth is that my son has been launching Angry birds since he was 18 months. A keyboard and controller are still years away and at 2 he has become an expert at unlocking levels and getting high scores on the iPad.
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/12/ap_thompson-2/
I have a Hyperspin system I built plus my kids all have 3DSes so I do both. They love playing Mario on the NES/ SNES and even stuff like Rampage, Metal Slug and TMNT on MAME.
For most of us, we start our kids on our phones, keeping them occupied in some store waiting on the wife to try on clothes.
Start them on Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition, Traveller, and then add in newer stuff like 13th age as well as Shadowrun 5th edition.
Keep them well rounded and using all types of dice, add in a percentile like Call of Culthulu when they get older.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I wish that I had someone to introduce me to the best of the classic games when I was a kid. After starting with their successors, it's almost impossible to try going backwards, so there are some really great titles that I just can't get into because now they're "too old".
Growing up with an SNES, trying to play anything that came before it is just painful for me, meaning entire generations of games I've missed out on. If I grew up today with a Wii U, why would I ever try playing Super Mario World if Super Mario 3D World was my first Mario game?
Reading a lot of these responses (especially, the ones modded up), I have a feeling people are missing the point of the OP.
'Yeah. Should I ever have kids, the first version of Pong we're playing is "catch".' WTH??? He's not turning this into a 'play video games all day and nothing else' discussion.
I understand completely where he is coming from. Sure, the kids may not want anything to do with computers (albeit, most jobs in the future will require SOME sort of computer interaction), but what if they DO find interest in them? It's not like everyone enters college and takes a Masters-level CS class - we all learn the basics first.
I admire your no-console policy because consoles haven't traditionally been platforms for end user experimentation. For example, console games rarely have legitimate user-created mods. But with a no-console policy and more than one gamer in the house, you have to either take turns on the PC, connect multiple gamepads and a large monitor to the PC, or buy multiple gaming PCs and multiple copies of each game. Which option did your household choose?
https://archive.org/download/MAME_0.151_ROMs/MAME_0.151_ROMs.zip
MAME 0.151 ROMs (November 2013)
The choice has been made.
Took along my TI-99/4A with about 150 cartridges and an MBX system to Christmas with my family. My two nephews, 7 and 13, got neat new electronica, including a Nintendo DS. They spent most of the day on the TI playing "Championship Baseball" and "Frogger," amongst other games in the collection. They really thought the speech recognition of the MBX was cool, though not perfect.
Why not start them with what you started with, and explain to them your evolution? Maybe even demonstrate it if you can: I have my TI, my Commodore 64, and my Amiga which I can show to them. I can even show them early Macs and Ataris (8-bit and ST) like I got to use in school. It believe it's helpful for them to know from where the technology they use today came.
While I lament that the card-swappers of today don't know so much about the chip-swapping I did (though things like the Arduino and BASIC Stamp certainly help,) I am sure that some of my own elders lament that I never knew what it was like to solder a diode into a CPU to create a new instruction.
Everyone lives their own life, regardless of how much one's parent(s) try to foist their own childhood onto them. We each develop our own sense of nostalgia, which (unless one's parents go to unusual lengths to insulate one from society) will likely be influenced much more by pop culture/technology contemporary to their own formative years than the previous generation's.
That being said, the desire to expose one's kid to the cool stuff you loved as a kid is a strong one, one that I too feel sometimes. For many people, childhood through about 12 or so is the setting for some of their fondest memories, and sharing those memories with your offspring can seem like a way to relive and rekindle the magic of those times. Besides, do you really expect to cram an entire generation's worth of stuff into your kid's childhood? Might as well not force the issue and overdo it, lest they grow tired of or even come to loathe your fascinations. Let your kid(s) live in the now, but give them just a taste now and then of what you enjoyed at their age; maybe let them "catch" you playing some old game or something on an emulator (or even drag out the old NES etc). If they are intrigued, they'll seek out more on their own. But be sure to spend ample time doing with them things that they like.
(Though I don't exactly know why, I do somewhat contradict myself when it comes to Star Wars; I'm pretty firmly in the originals-first-then-prequels camp.)
Will You Start Your Kids On Classic Crack Or Newer Crack?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Occasionally I pick up one of the modern TV games that have a selection of Sega or Atari games on them. You know the ones, cute little miniature controllers, usually run on batteries.
Well but my 4 year old same and I have come to the same conclusion, they suck.
I do have a semi-finished Mame console in the man-cave (garage), which I would like get him onto.
I'm not sure I can ever recreate the joy of playing Indian Battle at the local fish and chip shop, but I'll get it a try.
I taught my kid how to use her imagination and create things like music, art, and prose, and to get out and do things and make things happen. And she did very well for herself. And she still thinks vid games are for couch potatoes.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
I'd start them on the Silent Hill series and then the Fatal Frame series.
Don't waste their time trying to relive your old favourite memories again vicariously though them. I grew up playing Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Pong, Galaga, Doom, Quake, Starcraft, Warcraft, and all those other old 'classics' - same as many people here. That doesn't mean I'd try and push them onto a child born today.
The equivalent of those games today are the phone games and tablet games that indie companies are producing. Find ones that teach hand eye co-ordination, improve decision making times, and look cute and modern, because those are the games that will one day by their 'space invaders'.
When I was young we had Lego and some very lucky kids had Mechano. Today, give them the digital equivalent, software that allows them to experiment, create, draw, and destroy. Give your kid a graphics tablet and some good art software to go with it. Try them out with game making tools. Give them a makerbot if you're one of those lucky enough to be able to afford them.
Teach them Python or Javascript or LUA or some other small, easy to learn language rather than choking them with BASIC or 6502 assembler or Logo just because you have fond memories of it.
Give them the chance you got. Don't give them a heap of old shit machine that has stone age graphics and beeps for sound just because it's all you had. Give them a modern laptop or a tablet instead. Give them a Raspberry Pi and spend time teaching them how to make that thing dance.
We loved those old things because they fired the imaginations and led the way in technology at the time. They do neither of those things now. Give them access to the stuff of dreams for today, because in 30 years time, today is their nostalgic past.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Because I want to be the cool uncle ... Leisure Suit Larry.
Prevent Windows piracy. Use Linux instead.
I always love the kind of comments this kind of question brings up. "What kind of x technology should I show my kids?" The response? "Don't show them anything. Shove them outside until it's dark. It never did me any harm." At no point does the question say "instead of going outside". Too much 'outside' is a bad thing. Homework/studies will suffer. Everything in moderation. What if it's raining? Or dark at 4pm in the winter months? Back on topic, show them some old stuff. It might inspire them to want/create something other than FPSs and violence.
I'm going to start my kids on Dwarf Fortress. Nothing prepares you better for real life than a video game about being a completely deranged psychopath with a god complex.
What do you mean "mom soldiers with baby shields" is not a brilliant idea?
When your kids go round to their mates house and they got a playstation 4 / Xbox 1 and pretty soon your kid will think your old 8 bit games really suck.
If you kids want to play Call of Duty with your friends, you must first beat ZORK !
And you must do it on CP\M
I understand the concept of a household sharing one PC, which still tends to happen in households with children. I was just making a joke about "family computer", hence the "You didn't mean".
Baseball. Football. Basketball. Volleyball. Definitely start your kids on games like these.
He goes to swimming lessons, gymnastics, martial arts, skating lessons, horseback riding, body surfing at the beach.
There's no time for video games.
We tried video games, but he sees them as somethig that only old people do.
He prefers camping and getting outside away from the city.
The fact that slashdotters have kids should be news in itself. Admittedly, I'm the father of three.
I introduced my kids to what was current when they started playing. They've seen video games get better, but with things like Virtual Console and PS1/PS2 Classics, I can now download the games I played when I was a kid. I didn't need to do anything to get them to play them, either. They played around with everything, and they play things from Super Mario Bros 3 and Pac-Man to LittleBigPlanet and Minecraft.
I think a good game is good, period. I don't think games have gotten better over the years per se other than from a technical perspective. It's just that with more and more computing resources available, they expanded into areas they couldn't previously explore due to hardware contraints, but core gameplay/story/etc. is good or bad regardless of how advanced it is. To solidify my point, people will say new technology enables better games, but nobody ever blames current hardware for a bad game. Because technology only offers new ways to play, but does not alter what is fun to play.
Download/purchase a variety of fun stuff appropriate for their age and your kids will gravitate to the good ones.
How'd "eatin' yer words" taste w/ your FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH + "the bitter taste of SELF-defeat" -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4539709&cid=45664491
APK
P.S.=> Eating your words != good nutrition, CHUMPY... lol!
... apk
Nobody is worried about you suing them. You've threatened so many times, and NEVER gone through with it. You're just a fat, stupid, lame, no-brain, lard-eating, bloviating piece of less than human excrement who is so caught up in your own little fantasy that you don't realize - nobody cares.
Nobody.
You are less than nothing.
But you're too stupid to realize it.
But please, SUE ME YOU STUPID IDIOT.
JUMP, MORON, JUMP ... because you can't stop. I post once, you reply half a dozen times. I totally p0wn you.
Stop talking to this loser Lumpy, he has ZERO computer skills and lives in his mom's basement, plus weighs about 500 pounds. I have photos to prove all this I'll gladly post all over the internet.
My daugher got her galaxy tab 10.1 as a x-mas present 2years ago, at the time she was about 20month old.
She uses it regualy but usually just when she is tired or we travel.
There is plenty of educational games out there for the young (actually most are). But the hard task is
1. Learn her to read, write and math.
2. Learn her english.
Those old games.. Well I have a hard time se why I would give her pacman instead of angry birds. Or pong instead of candy crush.
Most of these question seem to wonder what to do if the kid is ~7-8years old, today there is few toddlers that is not god with android or ios. At the age of 4-5 they will better with those OS then most of our parents and around 9-10 I expect them to surpass most of our own generation.
Can you show us where he spoke about a suit to you? I didn't see it. You also avoid his question.
I have a 12 yr old daughter who is into gaming; too many voices write it off as artistically/culturally invalid - I guess just as they did Rock and Roll and Film in generations previous... and as with those earlier mediums there is good and there is bad. Classic games have the benefit of time self-selecting the best - artistically speaking. I've hugely enjoyed curating her discovery of games - many of which I missed at the time because they were commercial flops, such as Shadow of the Collosus. Here's an outline of what we've covered so far:
- Ocarina of Time
- Grim Fandango
- Ico / Shadow of the Collosus
- Half-life
- Final Fantasy VII
- Portal / Portal 2
Looking forward in future to:
- Silent Hill 2
- Resident Evil 4
And emerging classics:
- Papers, Please!
- Brothers
- Gone Home
If you think something's worth playing then introduce it to them and see if they like it. Somethings are timeless... hell he enjoys Rocky & Bullwinkle along with Looney Tunes, 1990's batman cartoons and a bunch of other stuff I grew up with. He's also introduced me to newer things like Phineous and Ferb which as a parent I think is excellent.
I guess in a round about way I'm saying "share what you love and know they will love some (but likely not all) of it too. Also be open minded enough for when they share their favorites with you."
My eldest daughter came home from university for a visit with a new laptop that dual-booted Windows 8 and Ubuntu 13.10. They'll do what they need regardless of what I want.
As it should be.
Then YOU, Lumpy, are FAR less (eating your words) -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4539709&cid=45664491
* By the way: Where did I 'threaten to sue you', hmmm?
(OH, that's right: You're PROJECTING you KNOW you libeled me in that link above... but, then, I never said I'd sue you either - prove otherwise!)
APK
P.S.=> You're a fool - & by the way? "Eating your words" spiced with your FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH + "the bitter taste of SELF-defeat" in the link above IS NOT "GOOD NUTRITION", lol... Your BEST idea for a diet would be to shut up, because you're getting way overweight, hahaha...
... apk