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we are currently playing stardew valley and I don’t think harvest moon would hit as well, but maybe that’s an exception overall, they truly just enjoy hard simpler games like the classics are
Now my daughter brings her friends home to play Mario 64! Masterpieces have no expiry date!!
I have had an N-64 plugged into the back of my TV for 25 years straight. The TV has changed. My kids were raised on this shit.
Cant force the shit, same with any culturally significant thing from your childhood. Think of it in reverse: if you aren’t willing to engage with their zeitgeist in good faith, how could you expect them to engage with yours?
There are plenty of games up to the PS3 era that every kid would do well to play at least once. Stuff that is objectively good, that aged well, or close enough.
The problem, as I see it, is that if they get too used to mobile games, they won’t have the patience for typical console or PC games, because those, on average, aren’t dopamine dispensers and won’t be rewarding every second click or button press - more importantly, they should NOT nag the player with cash shops.
Also important: limit the amount of games available - this is valid both for current and retro games. The moment you have “all the games” at your disposal, several things kick in: analysis paralysis, appeal to familiarity (will only play what you already know or someone knows), seeing no value in the games[1].
Others mentioned the social aspect, which is true as well and something they just can’t experience nowadays anymore. Minecraft and Roblox are famous because they’re easy for kids to pick and play with friends. Back in our days, we had to physically sit beside one another and play together, or pass the controller on death; we also physically lent and traded games, so the games also had value within our little social circles. While fully digital games are extremely convenient, the “scarcity” gave them a social value that they completely lack today and which I suppose boardgames now fill out (yes, you can play them online, but playing on an actual table is almost always better)
If, when you were small, you only had a limited selection of games, which was common during the cartridge era, you would be very careful with choosing new games to ask your parents to buy, though renting was an option to see which ones were good or not. You had to make do with the little you had. When you got bored with one, you either looked through your collection and played something else, or did something else entirely; you never threw away a game (unless it really sucked) and you never got a new game on a whim. That is good. ↩︎
i don’t think i’ve ever heard anyone call it “the ps3 era”.
I got a Miyoo Mini plus for mine, installed onionos and loads of games from internet archive. They love it, maybe one day I’ll set up my dusty wiiU but i only have Mario kart for it. Or some kind of minipc set up.
Given all the child predators on Roblox, can’t blame ya
Don’t forget the slavery and financial exploitation!
Ive heard of the financial exploitation and pedo controversy but what is the slavery controversy for roblox?
God I tried. And it told me a lot out myself.
The VAST majority of that old stuff, the stuff that I remember so fondly, was only fun because it was the best we had.
My first game was Yars Revenge. By today’s standards, it’s about 30 seconds of entertainment.
Even Super Mario Brothers, the pinnacle of games for years, had no save button and you have to pull off a long series of perfect play with only a couple of lives or get sent back to level 1. It was almost all single player taking turns.
Compared to even old current systems, there’s just no draw there and there’s no social aspects for them.
I think you’re missing a large piece of the puzzle here.
back between the 70s-90s you played games with friends in the room. you would mock and challenge each other to do better. That was the game.
ᵃⁿᵈ ʸᵒᵘ ʲᵘˢᵗ ˡᵒˢᵗ ᶦᵗ
Sounds like something someone who had friends growing up would say
I didn’t have any friends, but I had siblings.
ᵃⁿᵈ ʸᵒᵘ ʲᵘˢᵗ ˡᵒˢᵗ ᶦᵗ
thanks for making me lose the game 😠
Even Super Mario Brothers, the pinnacle of games for years, had no save button and you have to pull off a long series of perfect play with only a couple of lives or get sent back to level 1.
Maybe the original has this issue of being held back by overly punishing arcade inspired design, but I replayed Super Mario World recently and I think it holds up in this respect. You only need to get past the next checkpoint for your progress to be saved, and if you are running low on lives and don’t want to lose progress, there is the option of going back to previous levels to farm more lives and powerups. There are also semi-secret areas with buttons that put extra blocks into every level that make the game easier. For basically the first half of the game the only thing that’s really required to win is a small amount of impulse control, planning and patience, and it seems to deliberately work to teach you that stuff in various ways.
My kid is almost 6 so he doesn’t really know modern games. For now he is totally into lemmings and the incredible machine 2. It’s fun because I played those games a lot and can easily help him when he is stuck.
I grew up playing games with my dad. I wouldn’t change a thing. I miss it dearly.
He never went easy on me in Soul Calibur.
He never went easy on me in Soul Calibur
Dad aint raising no wimp! Get good or get schooled.
But seriously that’s really sweet.Your dad is Nick Swardson? That’s cool
Yeah my mom was an old school namco head and we’d play together when I was a kid
Telling my five-year-old that if they can beat Ecco the Dolphin in front of me I will take them out for ice cream, but I’m not sitting down to watch more often than once a week.
Woah you just unlocked some core memories.
This is the responsible way to raise a child on video games IMO. Modern games have predatory practices like microtransactions.
The look on her face says everything to me though.
The look on her face says everything to me though.
lol, it wasn’t even attempting to be a good photoshop. Maybe your screen needs cleaning?
Plenty of fun normal games, especially indie games.
Jokes on them. I hack games that have micro transactions and DLCs and make them entirely free. Even games I have paid for. My child hasn’t seen an ad or a micro transaction yet.
Can you elaborate a bit more on that? Most of the games with dlc or microtransaction stuff that I play have it all verified with some sort of online system (steam, mostly). What games are you hacking, and how?
steam does not verify much by itself, its not made to be a strong security system. look up goldberg emu, cream api, etc. they work if the DLC content is not really downloadable, but already baked in just locked away behind a check
Well, what about this: Early exposure to the shithead practices of modern gaming can enable children to more easily identify what’s good and what’s just trying to take money from them.
I dunno.
You could argue the other way around - growing up with decent and non-predatory practices makes you less tolerant of when companies try to extort you because you already know what “good” looks like.
I’m sure the corpos would love nothing more than kids getting exposed to predatory practices from a young age so they grow up feeling those things are acceptable and normal.
Drag thinks we should expose kids to a safe environment most of the time, and to little bits of predatory design in contexts that make them easy to identify. Like a vaccine.
“Dad, how do I put armour on my horse?”
“You need to grow up and get a job and a credit card for that.”
“That sucks, I hate Oblivion! I want to go back to Morrowind!”
“It’s okay buddy, I pirated the Oblivion remaster. Let’s play that instead.”
Most kids aren’t discerning about those kinds of things.
That’s why I slam that shit home all the time. Robux are a scam. YouTubers are just selling to you. If it has ads it’s not worth watching. Just repeat that every day to the kids and they’re good to go.
My kids didn’t see an ad connected to videos until the youngest was about 7 (outside of a movie theater, at least). When they first saw them, they were flabbergasted about what they were or why people would just sit there watching them, and absolutely refuse to put up with them. I’d say they are better off seeing how things could be, so when they see how things are now they recognize how utter shit it is.
The problem is that kids dont make or have money. Its like burning their hand the first time, they need to attempt to pay for their own lives fully at least once to really understand it. I think its fair to restrict these types of things to mature rated games as a general rule.
This one dad wrote an article about introducing his kid to retro gaming, starting with the old Atari console and progressing through newer generations every few months.
https://medium.com/message/playing-with-my-son-e5226ff0a7c3
(some of the image links are broken on the original article so here’s an archive link)
A great read, thanks. I think you have posted this as a full post to this sub (perhaps repost it on a quiet day).
As long as we all raise our kids this way, they won’t be out of touch with their peers!
I just let my sister have access to my Steam account and it’s turned out alright
make a steam family to share your games with friends
Introducing kids to old games is great, but restricting them from experiencing their own generations culture, not so much
Also, forcing your kids to play your favorite old games assumes that your games were the best games.
They were fun in their day, but time moves on. Assuming that everything since you formed your opinions is inferior is some big boomer energy.
Let them find their own fun with their friends on their terms. Making your kids play your old crap with you is kinda sad.
I think Minecraft is boring as hell and I’m not gonna play it, but I’m not going to force my kids to play mega man 2 instead.
Except when that culture is full of predatory shit like microtransactions
Yeah, kids shouldn’t be allowed to play Undertale, Armored Core 6, Baldur’s Gate 3, Elden Ring, Final Fantasy XVI, Hollow Knight, or Stardew Valley.
They’ll play shovelware and like it, just like we did!
There are plenty of great games today and horrible games from when we grew up (E.T. anyone?), the trick is to filter the good from the bad and show them what to watch out for.
