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Dad Makes His Kid Play Through All Video Game History In Chronological Order
An anonymous reader writes Andy Baio, aka @waxpancake, indy video game enthusiast and founder of the XOXO conference and other cool stuff, conducted a weird/cool experiment on his four-year-old. Andy taught him about gaming by making him play and master all of the old video games and gaming systems in the exact order they were actually released. In other words, this 21st century kid learned gaming the same way the generation that grew up in the 1970s and 1980s experienced them, but in compressed time. From the article: "This approach to widely surveying classic games clearly had an impact on him, and influenced the games that he likes now. Like seemingly every kid his age, he loves Minecraft. No surprises there. But he also loves brutally difficult games that challenge gamers 2–3 times his age, and he’s frighteningly good at them. His favorites usually borrow characteristics from roguelikes: procedurally-generated levels, permanent death, no save points."
In 1988 or whatever, while playing, and exchanging ideas with your friends, Zork was fun.
In 2014, with the internet and guides, its a massive exercise in self restraint not ruin the game for yourself.
In 2014, without the internet and guides, and without the benefit of even having friends playing and exchanging hints with, the game is all but impossible.
I recall spending weeks on end stuck in Kings Quest IV. And in Zork. And in Pyramid 2000. And countless other games. But if you kept at it and your friends were playing the same games, you'd eventually figure it out.
But IMO Internet + GameGuides etc have largely ruined that style of game.
"DAAAAAAD, can I please do my homework? Just an hour?"
"Not before you're done with Donkey Kong!"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We didn't let our son play video games at home until he was in second grade -- of course it's nearly impossible to avoid them at other people's houses without moving to a remote village without electricity. Consequently gaming became an obsession with him. When we visited relatives he'd spend all his time talking with his older cousins about games pretty much from the time he could talk. In kindergarten he started taking books out of the library on beating video games. By the time he was in first grade he was the neighborhood gaming consultant: kids would ask their moms to invite him over because they were stuck. But he couldn't play games at home.
Finally I realized that forbidding games was just making him more obsessed (it's a family trait he gets from both parents). We bought a console and it was the best Christmas EVER. He quickly settled down to a pattern where he gets a new game, plays it relentlessly for a few days until he figures out all the interesting ways to beat it, then sets it aside. Now he's a teenager, and gaming is just another thing he does. It's *important* to him, but if you average out his playing time it adds up to maybe four hours a week. The time he plays the most is when his older sister comes back from college. They'll play through a stack of old games, like it's their way of reconnecting.
People worry too much about parenting issues like this. You have to be prepared to be tough if an actual problem arises, but most of the time you're better off relaxing and seeing what happens. Think of it as "agile parenting". You don't have to foresee everything, you just have to be on top of what actually happens.
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