That’s a line I repeat often in our house. Not only because I can do a fair impression of BMO from Adventure Time, where the quote comes from, but because we do just that, play video games. Gaming is more wide-spread than ever before, but I know that some parents are still iffy on the subject, or worse still, completely uninformed. So today I’m going to give you my thoughts on the subject and hopefully help shed light on a worthy hobby that often cops a lot of flak.
I think the first games I ever played were on the Atari at my aunt and uncles house, and a Super Nintendo at a friend’s house. I began playing regularly when my mum bought me a Sega Master System II with built in Alex Kidd for Christmas, I think back in… 1993? She also got me a Sonic the Hedgehog game and maybe something else, I can’t clearly remember. It wasn’t something I had asked for, I usually didn’t specifically ask for presents as a child, but my mum was onto a winner! We always had a console from then on, and gaming was a hobby both she and I enjoyed. On that particular console there was no save feature with the Alex Kidd, so if you wanted to ‘clock’ or finish the game, you had to do it in one session or leave the console paused for ages and hope no one turned it off. My mum stayed up all night once in order complete Alex Kidd, haha.
But what about now that I’m a mum? Gaming has come a loooog way from those early 8- and 16-bit days, with graphics being ultra-realistic, storylines being darker, grittier, aimed at adults instead of only at children, and of course, the advent of online multiplayer.
My husband and I are both avid gamers, we primarily game on consoles (less tech issues compared to PC), and we both love RPGs, that’s role-playing games, along with many other genres. I’m also very partial to games that require you to solve mysteries! Our daughter has grown up around gaming, but, like with any other media, we’ve been careful what she’s been around. When she was very little, we didn’t allow her to see games with violence or adult themes, or any games with too heavy a vibe. As she’s gotten older, we’ve adapted the rules for her, but there are still games she’s not allowed to watch, and games she’s not allowed to play.
At this stage she’s playing a wide variety of games, with her favourite being Minecraft, which she’s put in over a thousand hours in in the last six years. My goodness! She still plays nearly every day, but she mixes it up with quite a few other games, such as Animal Crossing (New Horizon and New Leaf) Terraria, The Sims, Cooking Simulator, Stardew Valley, Spiritfarer, Bug Snacks, and so many others!
These games have provided us with the opportunity to discuss so many topics, from mythology to ethics to parasites to death to home décor! Allowing those conversations to naturally arise out of something that’s familiar and relevant to her. She’s learnt so much because of how often we take her gaming as a launchpad for discussion. She’s now at a point where she doesn’t need to be shielded from most violence in games – she avidly watches my husband play Elden Ring! But we do still protect her from adult content. For example, she knows what sex is, and knows about ‘Woo Hoo’ in The Sims, but we don’t let her watch cut scenes in Baldur’s Gate 3, for example, unless we’ve watched them before and know they’re appropriate. Some games, like Baldur’s Gate 3 or The Witcher 3, are far more explicit in their depiction of sexual content than we feel is appropriate for her at this age.
There are some games that are wildly popular with her age group that we don’t allow her to play, however, because those games are entirely online multiplayer. We played our fair share of Fall Guys, a massively popular online multiplayer game, and would allow her to play it unsupervised, because there was no in-game voice chat. Other multiplayer games, like Fortnight and Roblox, have full voice chat, and let me tell you, there are no safeguards on most voice chats. Sure, you can report players who say inappropriate things, but that’s after they’ve done it. I’m not personally bothered by, shall we say, colourful language. But the hateful vitriol I’ve heard from multiplayer chats is unbelievable. Certain genres of online multiplayer games (looking at you, first-person shooters) have some of the nastiest voice chats I’ve ever heard, with much of it being extremely sexist.
There has been a lot of study into the effects of video games, and the old fears about violent games causing kids to act out violence has been utterly debunked. I’m glad for that, because it’s always been obvious to me. Gaming is something we do as a family. We will often watch and engage with each other’s games, or play games together! We love finding games we can all play together, we have had heaps of fun playing all the Super Mario games, and Sackboy: A Big Adventure and more recently we got into Minecraft Dungeons. My daughter regularly asks us to play games with her, and it brings us so much fun, laughter, and quality together time!
So much of what we do as parents is introduce our children to the world. We try to enrich their mental landscapes with stories though literature, film and television, and gaming is absolutely worthy of being included in that list. That is, of course, aside from all of the physiological benefits, kids derive from gaming, fine motor skills to problem solving. If you’re not a gamer, I hope you investigate the world of gaming, because I guarantee there’s a game out there that you will love! Spending time on days when it’s better to be indoors, laughing and enjoying time with each other, is such a special thing, so… “who wants to play video games?”
