Comment by rpdillon
2 days ago
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.
After a ~20 year break from first person shooters I’ve recently played Call of Duty Multiplayer and what struck me was how many superficial skins or various rewards were visible to others - it seems to steer the player to accumulate these things (through play or $), to show others in the game.
And the odd pumpkin heads (literally players with pumpkins as heads) running around coinciding with Halloween.
Very different than Counter Strike circa 2005.
Roughly the same mechanics but much more commercialised, playing to the psychological weaknesses of players.
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