It’s a quick win, a quick escape from boring reality. In gaming, you can travel to faraway star systems, under the oceans, back in time, or some fantasy world. We can be heroes saving the world or galaxy; or a villain and destroy them. Games have re-spawns and extra lives, and a clear-cut mission. We can live vicariously through our avatars and not have to worry about jumping off buildings, running up to tanks, or fighting zombies. We are invincible in the game world. Games can bring a family together or tear them apart. Addiction to video games is a real condition in places like South Korea, where they actually have rehab centers for it. Now video games have a bad rap on this but what about board games? The fastest way to break up a family is to play Monopoly or Uno or Risk.
What can we learn from games? In her TED talk Gaming can make the world better, Jane McGonigal talked about this way more articulately than I ever can. I, however, can learn to solve problems and control my frustration (I know the other players are using cheats) well mostly control myself. Well…..I am working on it. And the reason I have to work on it is that my son has the same issue, and I have to become a video game role model.
Many of you are wondering why I am putting SO much thought into the metaphysical aspect of video games. Well, I am an “Elder Millennial” which means that I know how it was before computers and the internet, but I also know what is it like to get on to AOL, MySpace, and 4 player N64 (stop screen peeping, cheater). The average gamer is around 35, and it is getting older every year because I am (LOL).
We have to raise our children the best way we can. How do we do this? The way that our parents did will not work. Not that they did anything wrong, but it wasn’t the same world and they did not have the same technology that we currently have. We were able to get away with so much not because we were smarter, but because we didn’t have camera phones, Facebook, Instagram, etc. So being a Gamer or a Nerd if you will, allows me to have a different perspective from what our parents had. You see articles about how much screen time you should allow children to have, two hours for the whole day. Don’t be a hypocrite.
What is the first thing you do when you wake up? How long do you stare at a screen all day? Phone, tablet, computer, and TV, how long? Now I am not saying this as a bad thing. I am an IT Professional that looks at three monitors at work, come home, and has 3 monitors on my home computer, plus a work phone and a personal phone, plus the TV.
Gaming Setup Updated
So what can video games teach us? Well, that we can persevere through adversity even if it is simulated. That screen time is not that dangerous, and in the workforce of the future, the more screen time you get, the better you will survive. If my son can type 120 words per min. because he played Roblox and had to type fast in the game to chat, or if my daughter knew how to fix her computer and program because she set up a gaming server for Minecraft; they both would have a leg up on the kids that only had two hours a day and didn’t have a Gaming parent (Mary plays on the phone and we all know that’s not gaming). “MOBILE GAMES DOES NOT MAKE YOU A GAMER” – Everyone
I haven’t even started talking about how you can make money on playing games like Tyler “Ninja” Blevins who made $500,000 per month. Maybe that will be in the next post.
In the end, YOU are the parent. YOU make the rules. It’s a new world where the rules have evolved from our parent’s era. This will continue to evolve as the days pass and technology grows to meet our new needs. If there is one thing that gaming has taught ALL OF US, it is that you MUST learn to quickly evolve and adapt to new situations, and overcome any obstacles. As parents, we won’t truly find out if we did a good job until our young gamers have long moved out of the house, and have a family of their own. When that time comes, we can teach Jr. not to mess with Grandpa on 007 Goldeneye, any of the Battlefields, Tekken, Mario Karts, Maddens or etc.
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