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?"

Comments

What?

[mythosaz]

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.

Re:What?

[dyingtolive]

Yeah. Should I ever have kids, the first version of Pong we're playing is "catch".

I've seen kids raised by video games. No thanks.

Re:What?

[unixisc]

You mean that games like Monopoly, Chess, Clue, Stratego, Risk et al didn't/don't count?

Re:What?

[mythosaz]

I'll no doubt be trolled, but as a complete techno-nerd, it was tough getting our kids outside. We enrolled one in Karate, got him trying out for every sports team, but still he'll play as much LOL or DOTA as we'll let him. [...much the way some animals will eat themselves to death.] My daughter, on the other hand, is a book-nerd, and it's hard to dissuade her from wanting to read endlessly.

The two younger kids both leave the house and seek sunlight on their skin without prodding, so we figure we've done OK for having teenagers in a major city.

Re:What?

[ApplePy]

You have some smart friends.

There was no TV or video games in my house when I was growing up. I'm pretty sure I'm not mentally under-developed as a result.

Most of my peer group, however, was raised on television... and it shows. It is somewhat disconcerting at times to be the only one in a room with an attention span.

My kids (someday) aren't going to have TV either.

Re:What?

[chispito]

My son is active, but any gadgets that hold my attention become the objects of his desire. Phones, tablets, computers, etc., generally get shelved while he is awake. If I want to play something, I'll get down on my hands and knees and play hide and seek or blocks or something. Video games can wait till he's asleep or till some other odd hour.

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.

Re:What?

[narcc]

It depends. Do you want your children living in your basement 40 years from now?

Re:What?

[PopeRatzo]

There was no TV or video games in my house when I was growing up. I'm pretty sure I'm not mentally under-developed as a result.

Growing up in Chicago in the 60s and 70s, local TV stations had massive libraries of films, from silent movies to film noir, foreign films (subbed and dubbed) and just about everything ever made. In the later evening and sometimes early in the morning, they would put one of those movies on and they had low-cost programming.

It was possible, if you watched The Late Late Show and WGN and Midnight Movie, you could get an extremely complete education in filmmaking and film history. Over years. I would bet that students from the best film programs didn't get a chance to see as many movies as I did growing up, including Fellini, Howard Hawks, King Vidor, Ingmar Bergman. I remember watching Roberto Rosselini's 1946 classic Open City when I was 13, and I had no idea what it was, but it was transfixing. They Drive by Night, Angels with Dirty Faces, Greed and Battleship Potemkin, The Red Shoes and everything in between.

Later, when the rights to a lot of these movies were gobbled up, those movies were replace by two episodes of some bad TV drama and it was a terrible shame.

But for a little while, the entirety of film history was available to anyone who cared to watch. Television wasn't always a wasteland.

Re:What?

[mythosaz]

The wife and I are fairly indoor types ourselves. We're lost :)

We have to make a conscious effort to get outside, since we wouldn't otherwise. [We've always been much more at home in a casino than in a tent.] We schedule weekend activities with the kids that involve walking - even if it's just touring the outdoor park-and-swap instead of the mall - and are much more apt to do things with our kids outside rather than in. We all enjoy a day at the Ostrich Festival more than an afternoon in front of the TV. The wife and I wouldn't go by ourselves, but we do enjoy those things as a family.

I'm pretty sure more active parents have more active kids, and obviously leading by example is a great way to lead. We're home-bodies, so we make a point of doing pretty much all of our off-the-couch activities with the kids (where possible), and we encourage them (actively) to have their own off-the-couch activities.

As such, we've got some fairly well balanced kids, one involved heavily in sport, the other heavily involved in academics; both of whom spend some of their time playing video games, but neither of whom watch a lot of TV.

Re:What?

[anagama]

You know, crime rates are down from the 70s.

I don't have kids, or want them, so I don't know what I'm doing in here but gawking, but having been born in 1968 to some hippie parents who spent the first two years of my life camping out in various places in the NW US and Canada, and then spending almost all of my time as a toddler and kid outside doing various things in all sorts of weather, I feel sort of bad for kids who have parents hovering over them. People don't even let their kids ride the school bus anymore, opting instead to drop them off and pick them up at school. It's like all parents have become exceptionally paranoid, which from the perspective of a kid, must be really annoying.

Re:What?

[mythosaz]

You know, crime rates are down from the 70s.

I'm amazed regularly by how many of my peers believe in the boogeyman. The problem isn't that it isn't safe out there, but there unless you're taking kids to organized activities, there just isn't anyone outside. I know that's a suburban viewpoint, and that the urban reality in big cities is different, but my kids could walk for miles and might only encounter people getting into cars or walking their dogs.

Another force-your-kids-into-shit-you-like topic.

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Linux

[CanHasDIY]

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.

Classics

[istartedi]

Classics. Like peek-a-boo and "roll the ball back to me"? Sheesh.

Silly rose-colored glasses

[argStyopa]

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.

In before

[stigmato]

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.

excellent plan

[hypergreatthing]

Just let them play ET all day long. Pretty soon they'll be great at outdoor sports.

Adding to my own post...

[the_rajah]

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.

old games

[roc97007]

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.

Not just games!

[santiago]

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...

Re:Look what happened to a generation of Japanese.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Who the hell are you to judge what constitutes success or failure in regards to another person's life, and to clarify such people are hardly exclusive to Japan, all over the world we are seeing grown adults who for whatever reasons do not strive for what others consider "maturity", and why should they, in this modern age for many in so called "developed nations" maturity means becoming a wage slave to pay off perpetual debt generated by pursuing a consumer lifestyle to distract themselves from the purgatory existence of waking up, going to work, coming home, watching regularly scheduled programming, going to sleep, waking up and doing that over and over again because anything else costs more money which means more debt which means more slavery and if that's adulthood can you really blame some people for saying screw you I'm gonna stay a kid forever?

All of the above, and more.

[VortexCortex]

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