Good games, good kids, good parents ... - Video Game Writers

Written by Lee Clontz | Monday, June 20, 2011

If you're teaching a toddler problem-solving and cause-and-effect, you could do worse than Cut the Rope.

Yesterday was, among other things, Father?s Day, and President Obama used the occasion to kick off a new initiative called Strong Fathers, Strong Families. There?s a Web site, a pledge, a blog and lots of supporting material aimed at encouraging men to be more present fathers to their children, and to help be strong role models for children whose fathers aren?t around.

As a father of two young boys, I support the broad goals of the program, but one phrase in his introductory speech frustrated me: ?We know that every father has a personal responsibility to do right by?their kids ? to encourage them to turn off the video games and pick up a book.?

There is, undoubtedly, a significant generational shift occurring, where most adults in their 50s grew up seeing gaming as a pointless waste of time that turns children into obese agoraphobics. For adults of this mindset, video games are little more than mind-numbing eye candy, a hypnotic, electronic boogeyman killing off brain cells. The only answer is to ?turn them off? and, invariably, to ?pick up a book,? as if to suggest that avid video game players are less likely to be inclined to literature.

The problem is that this worldview just doesn?t ring true anymore for numerous reasons. Most of us in our 30s, or younger, grew up playing video games and many of us never quit. My dad bought me an Odyssey2 when I was just a wee lad, and it was my gateway drug to experiences that have profoundly influenced and shaped my life. Video games led to computer games; computer games led to curiosity about what was inside the box and how to make it perform better. I spent my pre-teen years typing in programs from the back of Compute?s Gazette (an aside: I desperately want one of those new-age Commodore 64s), my teen years installing ISA cards and tweaking IRQs and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. I set up a rudimentary network in my college apartment to play Doom with my roommate and today, I have my regular Friday night Halo game with friends and coworkers.

My memories of playing games as a youth are peppered with great memories of playing with my dad and going to the arcade with him on weekends. He often didn?t play as much as he would watch along with me, listening to me endlessly drone on about this boss I?d toppled, or this level I?d reached. I was a shy kid, and video games were a great way of making connections with other people, my dad included. To the casual eye, it probably looked like I was wasting my time staring into a screen with a controller in my hand, but to see it that way short-changes the actual experience I was having, and continue to with my kids.

Yes, my kids play video games, and sure, I control what they play and what experiences they see. My four-year-old loves to play Cut the Rope on iPad, and it?s amazing to me to see his developing ability to solve problems. My seven-year-old loves to get the family together for a round of Castle Crashers (with the gore turned off, of course), or unlocking characters in the Lego games. We all play Rock Band together (they?ve learned to love the Beatles), and, as the boys are getting older, we?ve started playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.

As Steven Johnson wrote memorably in ?Everything Bad is Good for You? about the so-called Sleeper Curve: ?For decades, we?ve worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a steadily declining path toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ?masses? want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies want to give the masses what they want. But in fact, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more intellectually demanding, not less.? Today?s kids are smarter, and are doing more advanced work earlier, than any kids in history, while at the same time negotiating a vastly more complicated societal and media landscape.

Then-candidate Barack Obama used Burnout in his successful presidential campaign.

The media likes to focus on video game sex and violence, but why focus so rigidly on video games? If you?ve walked through a bookstore lately, the shelves are replete with gratuitous sex and rampant violence in addition to the classics. Movies are no different ? the movies that are ?good for you? aren?t generally the ones that kids are watching. The same television networks that decry video game violence fill prime time with police procedural murder shows and ersatz-reality idiocy. Most of the ?experts? called upon to discuss the evils of video games don?t play them. Can you imagine an art critic who never went to museums or a film critic who considered cinema beneath him? Gaming is still an art form in-the-making, but for the upcoming generation, Nico Bellic, Master Chief and Mario will have, and deserve, a prominent place at the cultural table. Video games deserve to be taken seriously.

?Turn off the video games and pick up a book? misses the point. Of course encouraging reading is absolutely necessary, and, as a parent, you absolutely have to hold the reins and keep kids from spending all day in front of a screen. The focus on video games, though, is misguided. The kickoff for this new program took place at a screening of Cars 2, not Citizen Kane. Why are movies seen as so much more acceptable as worthwhile entertainment than video games? Is there a more passive medium than simply watching a screen? If you want to focus on the need to control screen time, do so, but don?t narrow the focus on gaming, which not only encourages but demands engagement from players.

Yes, of course, video games shouldn?t be used as babysitters ? not often, anyway ? and kids shouldn?t play whatever they want without guidance, just like they shouldn?t watch R-rated movies or read romance novels. Parents definitely need to be involved, which I suspect is the President?s main thrust, but the continual media focus on video games as some kind of surefire harbinger of illiteracy ignores that this generation is different, just like every generation before. It used to be comic books and horror movies, and before that it was rock-and-roll music that was going to destroy the brains of impressionable youth. That hasn?t happened yet. We ? and our children ? have grown up playing video games, and it?s unlikely that we?ll ever stop. The difference is, we?ll play them together.

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About the Author

Lee Clontz Lee was born with a controller in his hands, cutting his teeth early on the Odyssey2 and Atari 2600 and most console and PC platforms since. He also owned a Vectrex, but we don't talk about that. He's based in Atlanta and is married and has two small children.

Source: http://videogamewriters.com/good-games-good-kids-good-parents-13956

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