Beyond Fun, Fathers Playing Video Games With Their Kids to Bond
When Will Nickelson and his daughter want to spend some quality time together, they fire up Nintendo Co.’s Wii and play a few rounds of “Wii Sports” or “Mario Party 8.”
“It’s kind of difficult picking a game for a 7-year-old girl, but she really likes to beat her dad at bowling,” says Nickelson, 30, a stay-at-home dad from Huntsville, Ala. He’s certainly not alone.
The generation that grew up with “Pac-Man” and “Pong” are now having children of their own. And across the nation, fathers and their kids are finding the virtual worlds of video games a popular place to bond.
Many fathers say the games bring them closer to their kids by providing a safe, convenient way to stay in touch and talk to their children on their own terms.
A national survey released last year by the Entertainment Software Association, a video game industry group, found that 35 percent of parents play video games, of which 80 percent play with their children. Mothers, too, were part of the study. continue reading…
Archive
Tag: kids
Oh yeah, it’s happening.
Following the soon-to-be -released Transformers and the recently-announced He-Man comes yet another afternoon ‘toon from my childhood making its way to the silver screen.
This time, it’s ThunderCats, an animated series that aired in the 1980s and focused on a group of warriors that looked like a meld of both human and feline. Warner Bros. has optioned a script from Paul Sopocy for the live-action, feature-length adaptation.
The original series, created by Ted “Tobin” Wolf, featured characters Lion-O, Jaga, Panthro, Cheetra and others as citizens of a planet named Thundera who come to Third Earth after their planet is destroyed. Not unlike He-Man, the cartoon mixed all kinds of mythological, fantasy and futuristic elements. Also, it really made you want to buy the action figures, which was probably the point.
Sopocy’s script will serve as an “origin story” for the ThunderCats, dealing with a young Lion-O as he begins his journey toward leading the rest of the ThunderCats. continue reading…
Everyone loves the Wii. Nintendo is incredibly giving and has a very positive image. So what do they do? They take their awesome product and donate 100 party packs to YMCA chapters Nationwide to keep families entertained and active.
Starting April 14th, the YMCA chapters will incorporate active Wii games into their Healthy Kids Day events.
“Consumers all over America are telling us the Wii helps them to stay
active and fit and also gives them another reason to be together as a family,” says George Harrison, Nintendo of America’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. “Wii has quickly become a part of America’s fitness plan, from bowling leagues for active seniors to kids and parents who sweat through Wii Sports pentathlons together.”One can definitely get a workout doing Wii sports. It’s nice to see that kids will be encouraged to be active in playing a game and not just sit down. It will be interesting to see if more people adapt the Wii into their households to try and keep families active and at a healthy weight.
On the Wired site, Clive Thompson has up an article that points out a sobering truth: gamers are getting older. Folks who grew up playing video games like Doom and Quake are now facing parental decisions with their own kids regarding appropriate content. Thompson cites well known gamer dads like Kotaku’s Brian Crecente, discussing some of the approaches folks educated in gaming take with their own offspring: ‘”Everybody knows, as an adult, that the world is not always a nice place,” Crecente told me. “But I don’t want him to know that yet. I want him to have a childhood.” So he disallows games with “realistic” combat, like World War II titles, or Resistance: Fall of Man, but permits highly cartoony shooting, like Starfox on the Nintendo DS — since he regards it as essentially as abstract as playing cops and robbers with your fingers as guns.’ Where do you think gamer parents should draw the line? If you have kids, what approach are you taking to introducing them to gaming? How old is ‘old enough’ to start fragging?
On the streets of popular driving-style video games, you can drive up onto sidewalks and careen at top speeds down narrow streets crashing into buildings, all without anyone getting hurt. Obviously you know that when you get into your actual car, you can’t behave that way, right? On a conscious level you may know that, but recent research in Germany suggests that when you play these kinds of video games, your risk-taking behavior on the real streets may increase.
Three different studies found that both men and women who played video games that allowed or required major traffic violations were more likely exhibit risky behavior in a driving simulator. While these results can’t necessarily be transferred into real life, it does suggest that playing these types of video games may affect the judgment of drivers on the road. Not only that, when you consider that kids start playing these kinds of games as early as 10 years old, it makes you wonder what kind of drivers you may be sharing the road with in the future.
The effects of video games on teens and young adults has been a source of debate for some time now. Do violent games cause violent behavior? Do video games play a role in childhood obesity? Now we can add to that list — Do video games make bad drivers? What do you think?
Quintura for Kids is a child- and school-friendly version of the Quintura See & Find search engine, which employs a cloud-like environment for conducting web searches.
Search for music, for instance, and related topics (such as jazz, dance and instrument) appear in a “cloud” surrounding the original search term. Click any of those results to narrow the search. Related sites appear in a window in the bottom half of the screen. Although Quintura for Kids doesn’t expressly promise protection from inappropriate material, it’s powered by Yahoo Kids, so all search results should be G-rated.
Don’t confuse this with Quintura Search, a downloadable search client that employs the same kind of cloud-based structure. Quintura for Kids is entirely Web-based.
Zipland Interactive recently completed the world’s first research-based psychological computer game designed to help kids from separated or divorce families cope indirectly with the emotional issues that arise from their new reality (7-13 year olds).
“Earthquake in Zipland” is unique in the sense that it deals with a situation no other game has ever dealt with, in a fun yet effective way,” says Chaya Harash, MSW Family Therapist and CEO of Zipland Interactive, with 25 years of experience dealing with family, children, couples and divorce therapy. “Everyone knows that divorce has a terrible impact on the children involved. Now, parents and psychologists have a tool that can actually interact with a child whose parents are separated or divorced, in order to help him handle the drastic changes in his or her life”.
I look forward to seeing how more games can help children deal with large events in their lives. Serious games may not be fun to talk about, but they are very interesting in what they are trying to accomplish.
It really takes a class act to drop a lawsuit against a mother and then re-assign the lawsuit to her kids. Kids are kids, and I just bet if those at the RIAA went home and searched their kids’ computers they may be surprised to find some illegal music at home as well.
Let’s get really honest here. Kids do stupid stuff, and with technology the way it is today most parents have naught a clue as to what the kids are up to. I have been called in more than once by a suspecting parent to do some low level analysis of their kid’s computer to find out what they are up to.
In 99% of the cases, the kids have not covered their tracks and a wealth of material from software, videos, games and music and of course porn show up on the drive. Sometimes the kids work hard to be stealthy but some digging around usually reveals the goods.
I usually have a heart to heart with the parent and work on a computer use strategy that will help mitigate the activity. I usually leave before the nuclear bomb goes off in those homes, but in the end lets face it the parents are ultimately responsible for the kid’s actions.
They call kids minors for a reason. It’s because the laws of this country in most instances realize kids are gonna mess up and cut them a break if the issue is isolated. Which brings us full circle the RIAA is worried about one thing: Money, Money, Money. [TechDirt]
Funny stuff. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings…