BigJKO

Video Game Baby - Idle Parents

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I have a 4 week old and I appreciate this thread! I'm excited to curate and have him try games out like ICO, The Yawhg, or Noby Noby Boy as he becomes old enough for them.

 

I'm a bit hesitant to do play-alongs because I worry it would be too passive of an activity for him and too attractive for me since I'll get to play games. I could see having him direct and advise me to go places or interact with things... I'd want him to be more than an observer.

 

One thing I've come up with already is making it a custom to stand while playing games in the living room. If it's a console game with a controller, I'll stand while I'm playing. The inspiration for this came from how I stood while playing Street Fighter against my older brother and would jump frantically up and down whenever the fight was going in my favor. I figure standing will encourage him to move more and get some excess energy out while he plays.

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Expecting a kid in late September, and was happy to see this thread.  Really enjoyed a lot of the anecdotes you've shared.

 

I'm hoping by the time the kid's old enough to be interested I'll have finished off my retro games room.  If I can just teach them to love Blast Corps the way I loved Blast Corps, then I'll feel I've succeeded.

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Small update: at 3.2 my eldest's favourite game is Bit.Trip runner. One button to push, pretty graphics and nice music come together very nicely for her.

In a similar vein, for multiplayer Get On Top has been a great success.

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My 4 year old (almost 5) just got the hang of using a mouse.  She really likes Botanicula from the Machinarium and Samorost people--I think it might be the most suited for a young child.

 

I know there were people doing educational type point n click adventures back in the late 90's... does anyone know if any of those were any good?  Is Freddie Fish doable without being able to read more than 6 letter words?

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I think Humongous Entertainment's games are supposed to be good-ish and probably playable without much reading. Putt-Putt is available on iPad as well, I think..

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Today I discovered Crayon Physics together with my 3.5 year old daughter. I don't think I've seen her so proud and happy in quite a while. The first two islands of puzzles are just her level. It's super charming.

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My son is almost 3 now and he loves to play on my arcade cabinet with Raiden II and Halley's Comet. He also likes some Ms. Pac-Man and games like that from a 256 in 1 board I put in. Lately he's enjoyed playing with The Black Knight pinball machine I recently got mostly working. Playing those together is a blast.

He grew up with an iPad. Mostly curious George type games which aren't so much games as interactive learning.

My favourite though, is he LOVES Spelunky. He doesn't play at all, but he calls it "puppy" or "save the girl". I play on my big projector screen and he runs around in front of the screen looking for the damsel, and when I save her, he kisses her after the character gets his kiss. It's adorable. I should really shoot a video.

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Spelunky is a bit to gruesome for me to play around my kids, but everyone's limits are different there. Sounds super cute!

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Ten year old daughter and I started with the Lego games, Kirby and Mario Kart three years ago and have now progressed to Civ V, Skyrim, and Tropico 4.  She loves those games!  I had my reservations about some of the violence in Skyrim but she loves the fantasy setting.  If it were a more realistic FPS it would be off limits.

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For the parents concerned about violence, I wonder what your experiences as a child were like with violent media. I had full access as a child and enjoyed DOOM, Quake, and the like. I could always distinguish real and imaginary violence. I suppose games in that era had much less fidelity to actual gore, but I'm still not sure if it's something worth "protecting" our children from.

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For the parents concerned about violence, I wonder what your experiences as a child were like with violent media. I had full access as a child and enjoyed DOOM, Quake, and the like. I could always distinguish real and imaginary violence. I suppose games in that era had much less fidelity to actual gore, but I'm still not sure if it's something worth "protecting" our children from.

 

Yeah I was a product of that era of marketing Robocop, Rambo and Aliens to kids. I wouldn't let my son watch ANY of those now. I am okay with things that are thematically violent, while not graphic, if that makes sense. Like he loves Dragonball, and LOVES to have beam battles with me where we pretend to throw Kamehamehas and Special Beam Cannons at each other, but he knows hitting is bad. Like I'd let him watch Dragonball day and night, but never Fist of the North Star or Akira or Ricky-Oh. I don't necessarily need to protect him from the concept of violence, because we can talk about that and use it as an example. More than once we've watched DBZ and he's gone "CELL! DON'T HIT! Daddy, tell him it's bad! Time out, Cell!" (which is also adorable), but I think graphic violence would just rattle him with no benefit or discussion coming from it.

 

He also doesn't really have a concept of death, which I am totally okay with and want to protect for a little while.

 

That was really ramble-y.  Sorry.

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Well it's the "fidelity to actual gore" in a video game, show or story where I monitor for my ten year old. At around six or seven children begin to learn or recognize that yes, there are true life horrifying violent events, but kids that age shouldn't be exposed to media that dwells on lurid details.

Younger kids can't digest that kind of stuff in the way that most adults can.  For me the deciding factor is about the presentation and the theme in a game, combined with the child's age and maturity level. Breton Mages shattering Draugr's in Tamriel: OK. Sociopath gang members shooting bystanders in GTA V: Not OK.

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For the parents concerned about violence, I wonder what your experiences as a child were like with violent media. I had full access as a child and enjoyed DOOM, Quake, and the like. I could always distinguish real and imaginary violence. I suppose games in that era had much less fidelity to actual gore, but I'm still not sure if it's something worth "protecting" our children from.

I think saying "I was raised in way X and am fine" is a bit of a fallacy. It certainly makes doing things potentially better a lot harder.

I personally try to minimise the exposure of my kids to violent action until I'm certain that they have properly internalised the lesson that violence is bad.

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Not ramble-y at all, Winnipeg. I appreciate all your perspectives. It's something I'm mulling over for my own lil guy (just three months old as of this week!) I wonder anthropologically how children are exposed to violence in other cultures (e.g. hunting with the tribe and being involved with the skinning and preparation of meat for cooking). I agree that there's a large thematic range for violence, and I'd easily choose not to show him something like Oldboy until he's much older (ha).

 

I think Call of Doodoo is an interesting game to consider because it's popularity leads to many young kids play it. HALO seems to be much more palatable and fantastical. What about Uncharted?

 

GTA seems like the perfect game to play-along with an X year old kid and discuss things like morality and violence...

 

No Heavy Rain :)

 

P.S. this little exchange makes me sad for the kids in the world where violence is an inescapable reality of their lives. What a luxury we have to curate the experiences of our children.

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P.S. this little exchange makes me sad for the kids in the world where violence is an inescapable reality of their lives. What a luxury we have to curate the experiences of our children.

Agreed - it is such a luxury. Your use of the word 'curate' reminds me of a thread I made about presenting historically significant games to kids in an engaging way. In the UK I have a nephew around 18 months old who I don't see very often (I live in Spain). He waves at me via skype most weekends and I'm pretty sure he thinks I live inside an ipad screen.

 

I'm thinking a lot about his introduction to games. I agree with comments earlier in the thread that Kirby's Epic Yarn would be fantastic for a 3/4 year old and an adult (I think Yoshi's Yarn is coming and hopefully that will offer something similar). I like that it promotes teamwork and that the barrier to entry is low - my sister might be inclined to play with him and enjoy it.

Curating his experience remotely will be challenging though. I've been thinking about the consoles I have boxed in the attic at my parents' house and how they could perhaps provide an introduction to games, and also basic video game history. I could hook up a NES or a Mega Drive and leave 4 or 5 games for him to tinker with, as he likes. There will be a short window when he's young enough to not be influenced by what his friends have got and this feels like a good time to let him play with older stuff. Has anybody had a good experience dusting off a retro console with young children or do they simply make a beeline for the ipad?

I've met 8/9 year old kids who are mad for Black Ops 2. Fair enough - I understand its attraction - but it is just one flavour of the delicious video game pie, and single-figure years feels a bit early for it.

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For the sake of the low fidelity cartoony aspect, what do people think of the idea of transferring children to the more cartoony FPSes, like Team Fortress 2 or Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare.

Would it help, do you think it would even work or would there be too much draw because "everyone plays Call of Duty", or would the stylised look actually put off the children, maybe they partly want to feel grown up with 'real' soldier fights.

 

(full disclosure, I don't have kids. I'm just interested in throwing this into the discussion)

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TF2, though caricatured and comical, has gibs aplenty. PvZ Garden Warfare's status is slightly undermined by its nomenclature that references a CoD game but I'd be more comfortable with something like that. Happy Wars maybe? Infested as it is with encouragement to make in-game purchases.

 

I think what you said about wanting to feel grown up is right on point. Children are learning machines, intrinsically wired to gather all the information and experiences necessary to survive and thrive as older children, teens, and adults.

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Yeah I was a product of that era of marketing Robocop, Rambo and Aliens to kids.

 

Oh man, I wore out a VHS copy of Robocop when I was 6. Why did they make toys for that!? I remember I had the bubble bath, too.

 

My 4.5 year old guy loves Mario (New SMB and SMB3DW), the Nintendoland pack-in game, and Ghostbusters. God he loves Ghostbusters. He makes me draw Ghostbusters, "proton streams" and traps all the time. I built him a trap for his birthday that he still plays with:

 

ghosttrap.JPG

 

We don't let him play more than an hour or two a day, and very rarely have we ever had to actively enforce that restriction; we pack his days with lots of activities most of the time and he's rarely upset at dropping the controller.

 

I recently showed him Goat Simulator, he thinks its hysterical.

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I just found out my nephew is coming tomorrow, he's about old enough to play Putt-Putt and likes Pixar's cars, so I thought I'd let him play while i guide him? He's almost five, so he should be able to handle it, right?

 

How to encourage him to go on? He's never played an adventure game before, so he might not get it. :|

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Happy Father's Day to all the idle parents out there!  Hope you have a great one.  We're going bowling to celebrate.  What are you doing for your papa's day?

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Since you asked:

 

My little guy and wife woke me up at 9:30 with some McDonald's breakfast, a box of Reese's Pieces for later and a gift card to the other love in my life, Wendy's (it's not just a name). We hung out and watched Frozen for the 18 millionth time until he took his nap, and I took mine, and then my parents and her parents along with some uncles and aunts (of his, my brothers) came over and we had some dinner and too many desserts. My wife made pulled pork and apple pie and blueberry pie and my mother in law made some out of this world cherry and chocolate trifle thing.  

 

Now I've just finished watching Fringe with a good friend, who is also an uncle to my son, and I'm trying to decide between getting some more work done, or ditching any work for the day and playing League of Legends before I turn in.

 

Pretty fantastic day, honestly.

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Hmm, what WiiU game would you recommend to play co-op with a 4 year old? Nintendo Land? The New Mario Bros WiiU? Something else?

 

Should I get a gamepad cover just in case he insists in using the WiiU gamepad?

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I can't recommend anything for the WiiU as I don't have one but I just found out this last weekend that Mario Kart Double Dash is pretty much the perfect game for a 4-5 year old. After a couple of races, my daughter had a full grasp on how to fire items in both directions and bash into other drivers when they got close. Sorry that this post in no way answers what you were asking.

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Tanuk, any of the lego games would be good.  New Super Mario Bros is also a great coop game, but at four they might fall off cliffs too much.  That's not big deal if they're playing solo, because they can take the time to get batter, but if you're playing with them they might just bubble the whole time.  Get Lego Marvel Super Heroes and they can run around and die and it won't matter while you can actually accomplish things with Iron Man if they take too long.

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