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?"
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
When teaching them Linux, do you just download the latest stable Mint or Ubuntu release and let them take it from there?
When we what?!?
Our kids will be pushed outside for as long as they can take it, and then they'll come inside and play on whatever system is en vogue when they're the right age for it. They don't give a crap about your nostalgia, and your music sucks.
Many replies below mine will be from Nintendo eta hipsters who'll be pushing them Mario, so they can feel good about their 8-bit tattoos.
Another force-your-kids-into-shit-you-like topic. (Score:5, Insightful)
For crying out loud, please stop it with these "How do I force my kid into liking ${some-random-shit-you-like}?" submissions. It's tiring to see them showing up two or three times each week these days.
Let your kids develop their own interests. If they like Linux, or gaming, or programming, or whatever, then so be it, and encourage them however you can. If they're interested in something else that you know nothing about, encourage and support them to the best of your ability anyway.
But please, for fuck's sake, don't try to force them into the crap you like. By doing that, you'll very likely make them hate it, even if they might've liked it had they had the opportunity to stumble upon it on their own (or even while watching you).
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen kids raised by video games. No thanks.
Classics (Score:4, Insightful)
Classics. Like peek-a-boo and "roll the ball back to me"? Sheesh.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Silly rose-colored glasses (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't let the lure of nostalgia fool you.
Go to some abandonware site, play a few of these ancient games...frankly, they rather stink. I mean, they were great in the day, no question.
But by today's standards (and no, it's NOT JUST THE GRAPHICS) they usually are very simplistic, clumsy, with limited reflex-based gaming choices at best. Tactical choices are extremely limited, conflict resolution is opaque and arbitrary. Save game? Hahahahaa, no, sorry.
Really, don't let yourself be fooled by your rose colored glasses. There's no reason to punish your kid by making them play old crappy titles so they "appreciate" the new ones more. Don't waste your or their time.
Nota bene: I'm 46. I started playing Oregon trail on a MECC terminal in 3-4th grade at age 9? 10? I've been a dedicated gamer since then, playing everything from the Atari800 Space Vikings from cassette tape, to Apple II space empires, to Ultima (before they had numbers), etc etc and so on. Bought my own first computer (a Zeos 386-20, regrettably without a co-processor, I simply couldn't afford it) in my early 20s, wrote computer game reviews for nearly 15 years, and have been involved in several titles from alpha to release. If there's anyone who could be suffused with nostalgia, it's me.
In before (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have some smart friends.
There was no TV or video games in my house when I was growing up. I'm pretty sure I'm not mentally under-developed as a result.
Most of my peer group, however, was raised on television... and it shows. It is somewhat disconcerting at times to be the only one in a room with an attention span.
My kids (someday) aren't going to have TV either.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
When we what?!?
Our kids will be pushed outside for as long as they can take it, and then they'll come inside and play on whatever system is en vogue when they're the right age for it. They don't give a crap about your nostalgia, and your music sucks.
Many replies below mine will be from Nintendo eta hipsters who'll be pushing them Mario, so they can feel good about their 8-bit tattoos.
Re:Look what happened to a generation of Japanese. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just look at Japanese society today. There are many grown men in their 30s who have no desire to start their careers, to get married, to raise families, and to otherwise act like adult men have for centuries. All they do is sit around in their undergarments, watching anime. They attempt to engage in "relationships" with cardboard cutouts of anime characters. Their only sexual interests are concerned with octopuses molesting anime women. By all measures, these people are failures in life.
Who the hell are you to judge what constitutes success or failure in regards to another person's life, and to clarify such people are hardly exclusive to Japan, all over the world we are seeing grown adults who for whatever reasons do not strive for what others consider "maturity", and why should they, in this modern age for many in so called "developed nations" maturity means becoming a wage slave to pay off perpetual debt generated by pursuing a consumer lifestyle to distract themselves from the purgatory existence of waking up, going to work, coming home, watching regularly scheduled programming, going to sleep, waking up and doing that over and over again because anything else costs more money which means more debt which means more slavery and if that's adulthood can you really blame some people for saying screw you I'm gonna stay a kid forever?
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, crime rates are down from the 70s.
I don't have kids, or want them, so I don't know what I'm doing in here but gawking, but having been born in 1968 to some hippie parents who spent the first two years of my life camping out in various places in the NW US and Canada, and then spending almost all of my time as a toddler and kid outside doing various things in all sorts of weather, I feel sort of bad for kids who have parents hovering over them. People don't even let their kids ride the school bus anymore, opting instead to drop them off and pick them up at school. It's like all parents have become exceptionally paranoid, which from the perspective of a kid, must be really annoying.