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Even if you don’t have a kid or still consider yourself one I think this is an interesting question for our podcast audience. How would you approach introducing gaming to a kid today? Ideally this kid is yours but use whatever scenario makes sense in your head.

A couple questions to consider:

1. What age would you introduce them to games, if at all?
2. What games or consoles would you introduce them to?
3. What sort of restrictions would you put on their gaming?
4. What about online gaming?

Plus anything else you think is interesting, I’m sure you all will have fascinating insights since I don’t think many of our listeners are even thinking about having a kid and this should hopefully be a good prompt you haven’t already thought too much about.

I don’t know much about kids, but I’d definitely make sure they start with the older games.
If they got too spoiled on modern graphics, they might refuse to give the great old games a try.
I would probably put a controller in their hand the day they are able to crawl.
As for restrictions, I’d say no more than 8 hours a day is probably for the best.
Probably they would only be allowed to watch me play ps3 until they have beaten all the classics.
Wow, if I ever did have a kid the poor thing would be listening to fangamer podcasts instead of bedtime stories, so… I think maybe I am not a good hypothetical parent.

Excellent topic, by the way. Glad to see the podcast topics return with gusto.

I’m going to agree with rune up there, in that if you expose them to a variety of games and let them choose what they want to play then you aren’t pressuring them and they will be able to chose what interests them and approach the activity with greater enthusiasm.

There are 9 years between myself and my younger brother, six years between myself and my older brother. Growing up, I watched my elder play and my younger watched me play. Influence would of course become mutual instead of monodirectional as independent interests were pursued. But for the most part, I often took enough interest to try what my elder was playing, and my younger brother would often take enough interest to try what I was playing.

What I noticed with my brother was that he would often prefer to choose older games that were close to being representative of the “core” qualities of the genre. For instance, he loved to play Gradius III and Super R-Type. He wouldn’t touch many contemporary games because I guess he assumed that they were difficult. I would say that they are more outwardly complex, often requiring a lot of reading, numbers, or using a lot of buttons. So as a young child, even though Super R-Type was quite a bit more difficult than the alternatives the straightforwardness appealed to him.

I think it’s best to approach it without an agenda. Just see if they’re interested, ask if they’d like a turn and be supportive if they do. If they don’t want to, then don’t push it and if they never want to play then that’s perfectly fine.

I believe multiplayer offers a great outlet for younger kids to play with you and elevate their interest. Here’s a question I’ll pose to the cast – do you think you should “throw” games with youngsters? Do you thinking losing a multiplayer game on purpose will warm a kid to playing games or do you believe that this is patronizing and might sour the experience for them?

There have been some really great games for young kids, as young as five or younger. When our daughter was little (she’s 17 now) she started playing a Winnie-the-Pooh (PC) game that read stories to her and had little puzzles to figure out. (She also loved [LOVED] a promotional cd from the state of Texas that has some games on it like tic-tac-toe and memory cards).

After those they (by this time our son was also old enough to play) graduated to the Pajama Sam games and Reader Rabbit and Putt-Putt games. Those were all PC games. We actually had a large collection of PC games for kids by the time our daughter was ten. Lego had/has a series of games that they really enjoyed- and Simtown and Simmusic.

The first console they got was N64- they inherited it from their Uncle so they had what ever games he gave them, although I do remember playing Yoshi’s Island quite a lot myself. They also loved playing Snowboarding Kids on that console.

Eventually they got a GameCube because my daughter wanted to get SuperSmashBros. I was probably a little hesitant about that since that was the first game with any type of violence in it. I think I was hesitant about violence in games only until I started playing and after that I wasn’t worried about it so much.

The main thing we restricted in games was scary content and sexual content. We didn’t want them to be unable to sleep because of something they watch in a game and we weren’t comfortable with them being exposed to sexual images when they were very young. The violence in games was less of an issue for me because after having played games I knew that killing something in a game did not make me more violent and after exposing them to violence in games I can say it has not made them more violent or aggressive in any way.

When they were younger we limited their time and the games that they can play. We still limit their time but we are very lenient. When they get a new game we always allow them extra time because it is so difficult to stop playing a new game. Their time is limited during the week but Friday after three until Sunday morning is free time and they can play as much as they want.

They haven’t really gotten into online gaming- at least not any MMO’s. They do like to play flash games though. They are really old enough to monitor themselves and I have no problem with the games they choose to play.

As of now we have an N64, SNES, xBox, xBox360, Wii and a GameCube as well as GameBoys and DS’s. We never got a PS system because when we were first in the market for a PS or xBox the PS had no games for kids and that was one of the factors in our decision. Now, of course, they have some excellent title for kids and we’ve often debated about buying a PS to get some of the exclusive titles.

They like to play just about anything, from SuperMeatBoy (our son) to MySims (our son, our daughter, and me [their mother]), to Halo (all of us) and Gears (mostly their father and me). Oh and for a while we loved playing StarWars BattleFront all together- that was great! (More split-screen!)

That’s been our experience with raising kids in a gaming world.

Oh my gosh, you know what? Having a kid play second player on Super Mario Galaxy would be so much fun!! Honestly, I had a blast playing second player, and I think I was 19 at the time. It’s simple enough, it’s got all sorts of pretty colors and noises!

man, gotta go have some kids so i can play VIDEO GAMES with em

If I were to have a child, and that child was influenced by my video gaming habits, then I would definately take on board much of what has been said here!

There is one thing that I would consider, and something that I think my parents did when I was a youngster, and that is be firm with what video games I would buy for them, something like finishing the old game before being allowed a new one, or at least getting to a point where it either just sucks too much or the main story/action has been experienced. There is a problem that people have today, young and old, where they buy games only to never actually open them or have time for them, at least until a much later date where the price would have drop significantly by then. I wouldn’t want my kid to have that kind of mentality when buying games, especially when it’s my cash that’s on the line. I admittedly had a lot of GameCube games, which I then sold an later regretted that I hadn’t gotten further in things like Viewtiful Joe or Pikmin 2, and it’s only until recently that I’ve been catching up with my N64 collection.

So in short, I feel exposing and allowing your child gaming in moderation is an important and useful ethic to have.

Edit: the point isn’t about money, but about getting the most out of the gaming experience. My post seems to make me out as some really tight-pocketed grump oops

I introduced my younger cousin to games when he was about four; I would say that one or two is a good age to introduce kids to video games. Four or five is a good age for them to actually start playing games.

Initially, have them watch as you play. I was playing Super Mario Sunshine when my cousin got interested; it has a lot of eye-catching things going on that grabbed his attention. The Mario games all fit this role well. When they start playing games, try ones with simple controls, like Wii Sports or Wii Play. There isn’t any way to get a game over (or anything of the sort), and the controls are easy enough to “pick up and play”. Other, more traditional games are the Kirby series. They all have easy controls and tend to be lax when dealing with losing lives and such, and have more of a challenge. From there, I would introduce them to any games that they were interested in playing.

I never had many restrictions, so I wouldn’t impose too many. A limit of around two hours would be good at first, but after awhile it would probably be lifted. They’ll reach a point when they know how much or how little they’ll want to play.

Finally, for online gaming, I would allow it as long as they can deal with others in a mature manner and, if someone was to act immaturely towards them, they wouldn’t let it ruin their game. If either of these became a problem, I would ban online gaming until they would be able to deal with it better.

I would also stress that gaming shouldn’t take away from the “social experience”; if anything, it should help move it along, like gaming with friends, playing online, etc.

I dont have kids but my 5 years old niece loves to play some basic games on wii. If later she ask me for something more advanced i will show them some old/retro games first. The kids need to know how the gaming was in the “old days” to understand how they are today imo!

This topic always comes to mind when I think about parents letting their kids play games.

Coming from a large extended family with many cousins who play video games has given me some idea of what budding gamers in the coming years might be like. One of my youngest cousins started playing games probably around the time he was five, and we played all manner of things with him at family gatherings. The only thing his parents restricted him on was shooters. For a few years anyway we had to try to keep him out of the room if we wanted to play Bond or Halo, but he was actually really interested in them so sometimes the best we could do was to keep him from actually playing and to remind him that it’s just a game and that gun violence is a real-world issue and so on. It was hard to tell if he really “got it”, but he was a pretty normal kid and only played as rough as your typical elementary schooler (which is to say fairly rough sometimes!). When we did start letting him play shooters he took to them as quick as we figured he would. It didn’t change him at all from what I can tell. Now that he’s a little older, soon to finish middle school, he has calmed down some like I expect he would. He’s totally normal in every way I can think of, which leads me to believe that what we introduced him to, when we did it, and how we did it were all basically appropriate.

I really do believe that video games should be treated like any other medium of entertainment when it comes to children. We have fairly well established ideas of when kids should be exposed to what, which do vary from person to person and community to community, but I don’t see any need to make an exception for video games based on my experiences with my cousins. It’s true that video games can now depict more real-looking scenarios, and that would be the one thing I think merits some thought. I’ve had video games in my life for as long as I can remember, but realistic FPSs wouldn’t hit the scene until well after my formative years. Still, I would count those games more or less the same way I count violent movies. I wouldn’t make an exception for video games, and I would absolutely let my kids play video games if they wanted, and I would follow the same principles in restricting their content that I would with any other medium.

On a personal note, I would definitely want to have my kids play the classic platformers like Mario and Sonic, more or less the way I started. It’s been noted by many critics that those games excelled because their level design taught you how to play very naturally and without clunky tutorials, which I think makes them excellent games to begin with.

We didn’t end up doing a live stream for this show, it’s finally available for download here

Yes it was, thanks! Exciting times are ahead.

Listening to the podcast, there seems to be this occasional sound akin to teeth grinding or sipping on an empty drink through a straw. Not sure if it was present in previous recordings, but now that I have noticed it, I can’t not hear it anymore. Not sure what it is. It might be someone typing on the keyboard, but whatever the cause, I’ll need to keep in mind to stay in the light and not stare at monsters.

On another note… Hi Matt! Grats Gerritt!