Ask Slashdot: Will You Start Your Kids On Classic Games Or Newer Games? 285
An anonymous reader writes "An article at The Verge got me thinking. Parents and those of you who plan to become parents: will you introduce your kids to the games you played when you were younger? Those of us who grew up playing Pong, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man have had a chance to see gaming software evolve into the enormously complex and graphically realistic beast it is today. I've begun to understand why my grandparents tried to get me to watch old movies. I'm also curious how you folks plan to teach your kids about computers and software in general. When teaching them Linux, do you just download the latest stable Mint or Ubuntu release and let them take it from there? Do you track down a 20-year-old version of Slackware and show them how things used to be? I can see how there would be value in that... the UIs we use every day have been abstracted so far away from their roots that we can't always expect new users to intuitively grasp the chain of logic. How do you think this should be handled?"
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
I'll no doubt be trolled, but as a complete techno-nerd, it was tough getting our kids outside. We enrolled one in Karate, got him trying out for every sports team, but still he'll play as much LOL or DOTA as we'll let him. [...much the way some animals will eat themselves to death.] My daughter, on the other hand, is a book-nerd, and it's hard to dissuade her from wanting to read endlessly.
The two younger kids both leave the house and seek sunlight on their skin without prodding, so we figure we've done OK for having teenagers in a major city.
Adding to my own post... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
You know, crime rates are down from the 70s.
I'm amazed regularly by how many of my peers believe in the boogeyman. The problem isn't that it isn't safe out there, but there unless you're taking kids to organized activities, there just isn't anyone outside. I know that's a suburban viewpoint, and that the urban reality in big cities is different, but my kids could walk for miles and might only encounter people getting into cars or walking their dogs.