Okay, so I grew up a video game geek kid. I admit it, and to be completely honest...I'm totally proud of it. I'm 31 now (how did that happen?) and I'm still just as much of a gaming geek as I was then. I'm just old enough to buy my own games now!
The pic? It's my main (yes, main, as in, out of like 14) character in a popular MMO that I love and have been a member of practically since its launch, Maple Story. Go ahead, click it and take a look. I'll wait. It'll open a new window. :P
Anyhow, video games have been around for a looooong time. My own little one, who is 7, loves them. Sort of. I grew up with them, with my family having a Colecovision from the time I can remember, and getting our first Nintendo in 1986, when they were released. I was 4, and I was guiding my 10-year-old brother around the mazes in The Legend of Zelda, and The Adventures of Lolo. We were a gaming team, you might say. He had the manual dexterity, and I had the logic, and together, we conquered many games.
Today though, games aren't quite the same, and that fact begins to bring me to the point of this whole article. My son has played both modern and old school video games for several years now. At my house, his first video game system was a Vtech VSmile Motion, which was great for him: it helped him learn the patience and timing some games required, and didn't really respond to so-called "button mashing." He had to learn to plan out his movements. At his dad's house, he's played the Wii, and the XBox 360. Both he enjoyed for a while, got somewhere with the aforementioned "button mashing," then quickly got bored with the games and moved on. The NES that I keep hooked up in the living room however? My son takes on that challenge regularly, because the difficulty of the games both frustrate and challenge him. I encourage him, and when he throws a fit about not doing as well as he would like, I remind him that how well he does is up to him, and that trying again is important. Like a moth to a flame, he's always drawn back to the same games, even though they don't feature the flashy graphics, epic soundtracks, or expensive voice acting. His favorites? Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, the original Legend of Zelda, Marble Madness, and Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Yup. Some of the oldest Nintendo games out there, and yet they top nearly all of today's games.
At Christmas this year, I decided to start letting him play the Wii at my house as well, and he wanted to try his hand at The New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Within 10 minutes of starting the game, he had figured out how to cheat: he was using the Luigi stage guide to get him through the stages, so he didn't have to work on anything to "achieve" the ability to play the next stage. He did this for most of the first world, before I told him he was cheating. All he cared about at that point? Getting further in the game. He didn't care if the achievement was his, he just wanted to see the next stage.
That is, what I believe, the problem with kids and today's video games: there's no real sense of achievement, because they can always get the computer's AI to do it for them, or they can get buy randomly pressing buttons as quickly as they can. Yet the older games seem to hold a stronger appeal, because each time they get just a little further, it's all their own achievement. We have a generation of "nobody loses" thinkers, because we're teaching our kids that everybody is "a winner," but deep down, they still feel that drive of competition, and old games give them something to compete against: themselves. They no longer feel this competition in school, and many don't at home either, nor in newer video games. But, at least to the kids whose parents are introducing them to "the classics" of gaming, kids are still getting that healthy sense of competition somewhere, even if it is against themselves.
The pic? It's my main (yes, main, as in, out of like 14) character in a popular MMO that I love and have been a member of practically since its launch, Maple Story. Go ahead, click it and take a look. I'll wait. It'll open a new window. :P
Anyhow, video games have been around for a looooong time. My own little one, who is 7, loves them. Sort of. I grew up with them, with my family having a Colecovision from the time I can remember, and getting our first Nintendo in 1986, when they were released. I was 4, and I was guiding my 10-year-old brother around the mazes in The Legend of Zelda, and The Adventures of Lolo. We were a gaming team, you might say. He had the manual dexterity, and I had the logic, and together, we conquered many games.
Today though, games aren't quite the same, and that fact begins to bring me to the point of this whole article. My son has played both modern and old school video games for several years now. At my house, his first video game system was a Vtech VSmile Motion, which was great for him: it helped him learn the patience and timing some games required, and didn't really respond to so-called "button mashing." He had to learn to plan out his movements. At his dad's house, he's played the Wii, and the XBox 360. Both he enjoyed for a while, got somewhere with the aforementioned "button mashing," then quickly got bored with the games and moved on. The NES that I keep hooked up in the living room however? My son takes on that challenge regularly, because the difficulty of the games both frustrate and challenge him. I encourage him, and when he throws a fit about not doing as well as he would like, I remind him that how well he does is up to him, and that trying again is important. Like a moth to a flame, he's always drawn back to the same games, even though they don't feature the flashy graphics, epic soundtracks, or expensive voice acting. His favorites? Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, the original Legend of Zelda, Marble Madness, and Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Yup. Some of the oldest Nintendo games out there, and yet they top nearly all of today's games.
At Christmas this year, I decided to start letting him play the Wii at my house as well, and he wanted to try his hand at The New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Within 10 minutes of starting the game, he had figured out how to cheat: he was using the Luigi stage guide to get him through the stages, so he didn't have to work on anything to "achieve" the ability to play the next stage. He did this for most of the first world, before I told him he was cheating. All he cared about at that point? Getting further in the game. He didn't care if the achievement was his, he just wanted to see the next stage.
That is, what I believe, the problem with kids and today's video games: there's no real sense of achievement, because they can always get the computer's AI to do it for them, or they can get buy randomly pressing buttons as quickly as they can. Yet the older games seem to hold a stronger appeal, because each time they get just a little further, it's all their own achievement. We have a generation of "nobody loses" thinkers, because we're teaching our kids that everybody is "a winner," but deep down, they still feel that drive of competition, and old games give them something to compete against: themselves. They no longer feel this competition in school, and many don't at home either, nor in newer video games. But, at least to the kids whose parents are introducing them to "the classics" of gaming, kids are still getting that healthy sense of competition somewhere, even if it is against themselves.