Major side-eye

zsazsa-stl

Talk of the Nation is talking about kids & gaming - is it good or bad?

This woman called in to say that it was very beneficial for her kids because she wouldn't let her kids play the games until they could read the title screens to her, so they learned to read at a very young age (ummm...that means they memorized the titles of a handful of games at a young age, not that they could read).  And now they spend lots of quality family time together playing Halo and WoW.

I know a lot of you play these games and that's fine.  But I do judge parents letting their kids play games like Halo where there is blood spattering everywhere.  That is not family fun time for a 10 year old.

DG1

ugh.  So many shades of gray in this one. Ages of the kids, types of games, hours of exposure, etc.

I mean, we played our fair share of super mario brothers and frogger. I say it did some good things for our hand-eye coordination and the like.  But we also played outside plenty, and frogger =/= grand theft auto.

This is already an issue in our house, as Dexter is constantly wanting to play "monkeys" on our iphones.  It's educational and bloodless, so I'm OK with a certain amount of it, but not at the expense of playing outside or quality time with legos.

I am not looking forward to the day (probably 2 years from now) when he comes back and says "But Evan's mom lets him play halo!"

hmonkey

halo is family time?  maybe if you're my BILs, who are in their 30s, live on opposite coasts and play via xbox live. 

not if you're not allowed to walk down the street.

zsazsa-stl

Super Mario is light years away from Halo. 

GBCK

to be fair, i *think* you can turn off the blood/etc in most of them.
Although that doesn't necessarily make it less creepy to imagine a 3 YO playing them.

I think there are sufficient kid-friendly, non-stupid games for most families to actually find something family friendly if they WANT to...they just don't.
And with that, I'm off to play some Spore :-P

DG1

On a related note, when DH and I were discussing this a few nights ago, he got way too much delight out of the fact that I couldn't remember the name of "Grand Theft Auto" and instead referred to it as "Carjack City."  I haven't seen him laugh that hard in a looooong time.

VarunaTT

DH did a paper on this topic last year and grabbed a book that was really interesting re: kids and gaming.  Basically, gaming can improve your kids hand-eye coordinate, their problem solving skills, and a myriad other things that are really great for them.  BUT, it has negative things, just like too much of anything does.

The age recommendations are there for a reason.  Hell, I STILL don't think I'm mature enough to play God of War and that games makes me flinch (the graphic pulling out of the monsters eye and then beating him to death with it almost made me throw up).  I think parents just have to pay attention and seek a balance.

And there are plenty of family friendly party games for families to play together.  DH and I are loving the new Super Mario that has cooperative for up to 4 players.

WoW has unique problems and while I think I would let our kids play with us and with all chats totally blocked, I'm not sure I would let them play w/out me at all.  My guild has agreed to let someone's kid play before and it's under some strict language rules, but it doesn't happen very often.  It was so someone's kid could get a specific drop and once kid had it, we were OUT.  Half the fun is the guild chat and having to remember to censor was hard.