Comment by hamdingers
2 days ago
> We shun most of this as faddish and low quality.
This is almost word for word the same way my parents talked about Harry Potter and Pokemon when I was feeling alienated in school for only being allowed to read religious books for entertainment.
It leads to some pretty strong resentment, if that's the kind of thing you care about.
My boys are sitting and reading through this with me as I make comments. They are very surprised by the resentment expressed by many of the comments.
My eldest read your comment and said that Battlefield and Fortnite are trash because of the multiplayer component that leads to gameplay that's low quality. He doesn't feel this way about Elden Ring, for example. In short, we exercise judgment.
It sounds like the difference may be— if your boys are able to make the comparison— that you also did not forbid them from those games? That would explain some of the difference from resentment in these areas that is often born from the material being banned. That leads to social isolation, because multiplayer w/ people you know is really not so much about the game mechanics compared to the shared social experience.
Developing social intelligence and not following social proof are two valuable skills that parents can develop themselves and with their little ones.
Just to be clear, I don’t think your parenting decisions here are harmful, and I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for the centimeter thick gentoo manual. My only plea is to acknowledge the downsides- and it might well be the case they are minimal. I wish you luck and patience in parenting.
No worries. I'm here for the discussion, and appreciate how others see things. Thanks for your thoughts!
What does that even mean? How can we trust your kid's judgement of games they're not allowed to play?
When I was a kid I parroted my parents opinions about Harry Potter books being a pathway to practicing witchcraft. Now in hindsight I recognize those weren't so much my opinions as they were a performance to get my parents approval.
To be clear I'm not psychoanalyzing your kids (not liking multiplayer is rational), I'm sharing my own related experience.
The witchcraft angle as expressed included a personal interpretation that included being righteous towards and at the expense of others externally, to validate one's self internally. It's not the child's fault what they recieve without question and have to do the work to undo.
In the case of judgement, we can pick something simple like TV shows. A parent can speak to their kids about the addictive quality of some shows that leave them upset when turned off, vs 15 minutes of something that didn't and have them start to be aware of the difference, and how they seem to get bored of both and want to go back to the real world.
Doing that long before it's needed, allows the development of awareness, which as long as it's modeled by the parents, leaves the home as the important teacher of navigating the world, not the households of friends and teachers alone.
That's an opinion... All multiplayer games are bad.
I didn't want to paraphrase what he said too much, but since you're inquiring, I think the general idea is that multiplayer games strive for particular types of engagement and the techniques that companies use to drive that engagement is often negative. I can see that this also exists in single-player games, particularly in mobile apps. We tend to avoid those as well.
Multiplayer is a special category of risk in my opinion because I was an ever quest player and I built a feeling of responsibility toward the players that were relying on me and this led me away from schoolwork. I'm trying to avoid that same pitfall by still allowing them to game, even in a multiplayer setting, just only to a limited degree.
We simply try to avoid the games that are the most egregious in this particular way because they're the riskiest.
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Limiting reading like that is extremely restrictive and unnecessary.
I do not think it can be compared to choice of OS where you have to choose one per machine (unless you dual boot or run VMs).
I am guessing when you say "religious books" you mean a narrow range of books approved of by a very narrow minded religious group. Not much mention of, say, scriptures and mystics using sexual imagery, for example. right? Of the many deeply religious major authors who did not fit that particular groups views?
If you follow the context of the thread it should be clear my reply is about GP prohibiting their kids from playing games with their friends, not the OS choice.
My kids play games with their friends, just to be clear. What we don't do is pick up any game that their friends happen to be playing without evaluating it first. And this is a discussion that I have with my children, not some mandate from on high.
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