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Should Kids Play Games?

so in other words, make sure your child gets a balance and doesn't become a zombie.

My kids will be kicked outside to play with other kids when they are young, but they are going to be allowed gameboys as well.
 
No, only adult Caucasian males between 43 and 74 born on the 3rd tuesday of each month not ending in the letter Y.

For fuck's sake! Seriously.... I wonder about you guys sometime
 
Personally I dont think its a good idea for children to play games at a very young age such as 3 or 4. the first time I ever played a game i was 7 and i am grateful for that because I spent a good part of my childhood playing with more creative things such as lego or playing outside with others. I think that its helped me a lot because. Toys like lego really help you become more creative and I dont feel that videogames provide much creativity. My brother is a perfect example of this. When I was 7 I got an N64 for my Bday. My brother was 3 at the time and he actually began playing on it alot. Now he is 11 and he has very little creativity and I feel thats because he got addicted to playing videogames and didnt spend time playing with toys like lego.
 
Consindering all the other stuff kids are into at a younger age nowdays, I think gaming is the least of our problems. Just promote other interests and they'll be fine.
 
Beats being fed pointless cartoons and revolting ads (Bratz makes me sick to my stomach). I used to curse the system I grew up in for not allowing us to watch American cartoons all the time; we mostly got programming from China, Russia, other eastern European states, and locally produced shows. In hindsight, however, I think this was probably a good thing.

Eh... I guess that went OT. Anyway, it's all about balance, isn't it? I wouldn't be so concerned with what games my kid plays at this point, I'd be more concerned about games becoming, literally, an alternative reality. I think that can be a pretty negative signal and should be taken seriously.
 
That was a good read--thanks for posting it.

Two scattered comments--

--The argument made by parents in some of the linked comments that games led them into computer science and programming is something I find to be suspect. Assuming that they're my age or thereabouts, when they were kids the process by which computer code became a functioning game was much more transparent to the end user--I'm old enough to remember when the program for an entire game would be printed in a magazine, and you'd spend a few hours typing it in to your computer, then save it on cassette. These days, though, the process by which games come into existence wouldn't be nearly as apparent to a very young child. Cartridges may as well grow on magical Nintendo trees as far as a four-year-old knows, unless a parent sits the kid down and tells him about it--sadly, many parents wouldn't bother to do that, or even know how to begin.

--I'm nowhere near having children, but I see no harm at all in letting a young child have access to music and/or rhythm games (Guitar Hero; Taiko Drum Master; DDR; etc.) The real-world benefits of those games (familiarity with musical instruments, even if in a rudimentary way; actual exercise; etc.) far outweigh the real-world benefits of games in most other genres in my eyes. The poster implies that because his daughter didn't have access to gaming, she took up piano instead, but Guitar Hero seems like a perfect "gateway drug" to get kids into wanting to learn to play music (though his or her hands might not be big enough to deal with the controller, in that case).
 
psycho_snake said:
Personally I dont think its a good idea for children to play games at a very young age such as 3 or 4. the first time I ever played a game i was 7 and i am grateful for that because I spent a good part of my childhood playing with more creative things such as lego or playing outside with others. I think that its helped me a lot because. Toys like lego really help you become more creative and I dont feel that videogames provide much creativity. My brother is a perfect example of this. When I was 7 I got an N64 for my Bday. My brother was 3 at the time and he actually began playing on it alot. Now he is 11 and he has very little creativity and I feel thats because he got addicted to playing videogames and didnt spend time playing with toys like lego.
Click to expand...

I dunno if you can blame videogames. Everyone is wired differently.
 
The blaming video games/television for killing a child's imagination based on anecdotal evidence has to stop. I'd like to see some real studies on the topic, but I doubt anybody could accurately measure creativity for such a study anyway. The poster at Kotaku indicates that all of the kids in his daughter's class who watch TV/play video games/skip breakfast (as if he knows what these kids are doing all the time at home???) are much less imaginative than his daughter...

In reality, some kids have always been more creative than others, since before the invention of media. Hell, ancient Greeks continued inventing story after story about the same characters just like those kids writing scooby-doo fan fic for English class do. I would presume that controlled access to video games and television could possibly be just as beneficial to a child's creativity as it could be detrimental, assuming the child was taught to understand the creative process that went into developing those cartoons and characters, and encouraged to make their own cartoons or TV shows in a similar way.

I have just as much anecdotal evidence about growing up with my friends, and in my experience some of the most creative kids were the ones who watched Saturday morning cartoons and played video games regularly. They were the guys that ended up dungeon master for our RPGs, created a radio drama (with original characters) on our high school radio station, started a comedy/folk band, and studied acting, sound design, and computer animation in collage. Meanwhile the kids who were never allowed to own a video game system, well one of them is a grad student in the field of technical math... successful, yes. creative? not in the slightest. I know math people can be creative (I like to think I am) but this kid is not in the slightest

based on my observations, I could stand up and proclaim that games are a gift to creativity for children, aping the poster's opposition, but I know my friends did a lot more than play video games while growing up. Thus I'd like to think media exposure for a child can be beneficial, but only under the proper prescription
 
In my opinion? No. Even though I've been gaming since I was 5. There's a whole world out there. I'd rather have my kid socializing with other kids, playing T-Ball, Soccer, etc. than playing it on their Xbox 360. If the kid is tired, he can just read. I remember I played games but my parents tried to steer me towards reading. I remember reading novels when I was 7 or 8. Then they had to work more and I gamed more to where I didn't like reading.

The time where my life went downhill was when gaming took the forefront. It wasn't my parents's fault but I'll be damned if I'm letting my children go down the same shitty path I had to.
 
I grew up playing videogames. I was playing Joust and Crystal Castles on my Atari computer when I was 4. Then soon after I got my Master System and NES. Both of my parents worked, so I spent a ton of time gaming when they couldn't be around. I think I turned out pretty normal?
 
I don't read books (except technical ones) because I can't keep my attention on it and never could. That said, I proabaly "read" much much much much more than the average person because of my stupid addiction to the internet.
 
Videogaming started out as a form of entertainment for the kids basically. Why shouldn't they play games? There's much more worse shit that they could be getting into. And be real, the average kid isn't going to sit around and read books and build robots all day. It keeps kids of the lazy parent occupied and doing an activity in which they have a low possibility of getting injured. If parents think the kids should be playing outside, MAKE them go outside! There's nothing wrong with gaming if it is done in moderation.
 
I have twin daughters and they will be six come the 30th. With that said, they both have their own PC and they play the Sims 2. For consoles, they play Paper Mario 2 on the GC when I read the words for them. On the PS2, they play the mini game on Hots Shots Golf Fore. On the Xbox, it's all about Crash Mode on Burnout, racing the slopes on SSX, and play DOA: Volleyball. On the 360, they play Kameo. They think Amped sucks though. They have Nintendogs as well. Their most anticipated game is Dead or Alive 4, because of the girls

I don't mind them playing. I have good kids.
 
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