I share Ms. Stecher's skepticism, though. Games today are fundamentally different from what they were when we were growing up (I'm guessing we're around the same age if you were big into AoE). Some of my friends have kids now, and the games I see them playing make me cringe. They look designed to be addictive - not in the way that playing C&C was addictive, but that they're designed to form real addictive behaviors.

So I don't know what I'll do. It's a hard problem. Banning all screens doesn't seem like the answer. I don't know what is.

Today gaming is much broader. Video games have merged with the larger gaming world (gambling). Most iOS games aren’t fun. They aren’t challenging. The are games of random chance at best. Like video poker or a Vegas slot machine you just press a button and hear a “winning” sound, even if you didn’t win.

It’s the weirdest thing when you watch somone playing a game like this and ask them, “Is it fun,” and their answer is, “Not really.”

Video games are awesome, but they provide too much stimulation and instant gratification for little kids. I don't think TV is much better, but video games are way more entertaining than TV.

If my kid was good at Dark Souls I’d be impressed. Hell, if I was good at Dark Souls I’d be impressed with myself.

Flipping heads on a coin 20 times in a row is difficult, but doesn't require thinking. Flipping a water bottle to land is difficult, but doesn't require critical/analytical thinking skills.

Good games definitely require brain power and critical thinking. I think most people that don't play good (at least my definition of good) games don't understand some of what they teach. I believe that learning anything can be good for you.

Kids need to learn how to learn, focus, and grind to be good at something. Video games help with that. Well, not the generic slot machine simulator "games" or "brain training" games that are popular on mobile, but actual games with depth that provide challenges.

Maybe Nintendo will save us.

With even smaller kids having a smartphone and constant high speed access to the web, of course they are stuck to the screen. Its a never ending source of keeping you entertained and hooked and you might remember, that being a kid can be boring as hell. With the phones so affordable and everyone doing it, it was kind of inevitable of a development. I think we are witnessing the fallout of that development. With kids stuck to screens and as a reaction the ever increasing demand to make the web more childproof to at least have less of a bad conscience if you let your child have unrestricted access.

I dont think individual parents are to blame though, being a parent is tough and you dont want your kid to be the only one without a smart phone. Neither do I think an all or nothing approach is any more sensible. As always the dosage makes the poison, which is why I think approaches like in french schools are reasonable, who banned smartphones inside the school. Having it established, that there are restrictions to smartphone usage might help parents to establish restrictions as well. However, it all boils down to the question of what is appropriate content for children, and whether the internet is intended to be such childproof content. The answer might simply be no, in which case the only real option would be a second child proof web. Sure, it would be close to impossible to enforce, but so is the ban of giving alcohol to minors. Kids will get their hands on a beer sooner or later, but such bans are usefull enough to not give them easy enough access to drink daily.

But thats something we need to decide as a society. We might decide on something else or keep everything as is, but at least we would have made a decisions. Because we shouldnt kid our self, at the moment we simply keep ignoring the issue only interrupted from short periods of senseless actionism. The availability of smartphones have introduced new circumstances and it is no suprise, that without intervening, they had a clear effect.

Everyone is attached to a screen, it's not just kids. Just sit down on a bench or a bus and reflect on your surroundings. It really is surreal. This is obviously the kind of reality they have to meet, so they adapt and learn.

Banning things have never really worked out in my opinion, compared to work together and talk about things.

Parents have always and will always act preventive, being concerned. Our biggest job however is to have faith in the minds of our kids. They are great at getting the best experience they can from their life. Just be there as a parent and help them navigate. They will probably be stronger and better at facing technology than us the parents ever will be.

This is atleast what I tell concerned parents and myself. The best thing we do here is to start a game of fortnite and play all together since that is the only thing everyone agrees on (used to be minecraft).

There's a lot of research on this to find bad behaviours, were peoples life actually change to the worse. And what I have learned is that we need to love talk and interact with your kids, try to understand their interests and be brave. The world is a tough place and they need all the guidance they can to figure out what we came up with actually means. Childproofing only gets you that far.

You're kidding, right? Those RTS, particularly Starcraft, are an exercise in APS more than anything else.

* For non-gamers, APS = actions per second. Being able to issue more commands than your opponent and "micro" (from the word micromanage) your units to tightly control their behavior are a large part of winning Starcraft. It's fascinating to watch high level Starcraft players clicking their mice at an almost inhuman rate.

I'm more annoyed that everytime video games come up, someone brings up Civilization as a strawman to argue.

99% of games aren't Civilization. We all know people are talking about that 99%. The article even calls out that the parents make exceptions for some educational games/screen time. And yet rather than legitimately engage and address peoples concerns about video games, it's always the same argument of: raise the benefits of Civilization, share nostalgia about playing it in the past and ignore the actual arguments being presented.

This thread is no exception. This is a place of more intelligent discourse - address the opposition's points, or concede they are valid.

That said, I don't know where I'd go with Fortnite, Overwatch, the COD lineup, and the rest of the mega titles. You could maybe make an argument for some of them maybe but I don't know what that would look like. They're fun games but mostly seem pretty devoid of anything inspiring or intellectually challenging.

Then there's the ugly... Mobile games categorically seem awful.

Edit: Also, kids should be encouraged to mod games. I think you'll probably find more than a few people who are here right now because they found out how to mess with game files to change what they see on the screen, in effect, the ultimate power and learning experience.

Into The Breach, Starbound, Galactic Civilizations, Celeste... these are all games that require you to think in some way and aren't mindless hack-and-slash or competitive shooter games.

Can they replace going to school? No, but let's not devolve this argument into "most games aren't like Civilization". A lot of the hatred for games is seriously misplaced.

I have warm memories of both. But I didn’t learn anything from Zelda- it was pure entertainment and connection to popular culture. I can still hum the theme song. I did learn some stuff from Carmen Sandiego.

> 99% of games aren't Civilization. We all know people are talking about that 99%. The article even calls out that the parents make exceptions for some educational games/screen time. And yet rather than legitimately engage and address peoples concerns about video games, it's always the same argument of: raise the benefits of Civilization, share nostalgia about playing it in the past and ignore the actual arguments being presented.

> This thread is no exception. This is a place of more intelligent discourse - address the opposition's points, or concede they are valid.

If you had carefully read the comment you’re replying to, you'd have noticed the GP is addressing the claim “video games can be educational”. Not “most video games are educational”, but “video games can be educational”, which Ms. Stecher seems to be denying. Thus it makes perfect sense for the GP to present an example.

So before hypocritically accusing others of “strawmanning”, “unintelligent discourse”, and “ignoring the actual arguments being presented”, please take the time to read what people are actually saying.

And while 99% of games aren’t Civilization, I’d need a citation for the claim that 99% of games aren’t educational, if that’s what you meant to imply.

Having said that, I do think there's a big, big difference between playing games of that sort and... Candy Crush.

Now she's older and retired, and whenever I visit to see what she's doing with her leisure time, she spends most of it on her laptop playing a fish aquarium game or Farmville on Facebook.

FWIW, many public libraries have a small collection of Xbone/PS4 games, so if you got the base hardware, there'd be an opportunity to sample a bunch of things quickly to try different styles and genres.

With that said, I regret in hindsight that I didn't force her to try Animal Crossing back when it came to the Gamecube 15 years ago. It was very much a prototype of the casual gaming trend that's popular now. We might've found some common ground back then before our ages caused role-reversal.

I can't find it now, but there was a heartwarming story on reddit a few months ago about a dad dying of cancer and playing BOTW on a switch in his hospital bed, and bonding with his adult son over it— he never even made it off the Plateau (the initial tutorial section of the game), but was having a ball running around collecting plants, making potions, getting gear, whatever.

Even if the violence level of Assassins Creed or God of War isn't your cup of tea, something like Detroit Become Human or Horizon Zero Dawn could be a good fit.

It is sort of like assuming that someone who likes guitar rock songs would like metal, because both are music.

And let's be honest, as much as I like(d) counter-strike it's not an intellectual game by a long shot.

I remember my internet was so bad I had to add wait;wait;wait between issuing commands to the server or they would be dropped -- have been dealing with latency ever since :)

Oh, you'd be surprised by how much strategy goes into CS at the highest levels of play.

So not for 99.99% of the players.

Although it's not the same subject, this reminds me of a video by Duncan "Thoorin" Shields, a rather controversial and prominent eSports figure: "Gaming is a Waste of Time" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiXfnfBk3BM)

In the video, he talks (among other things) about people justifying the time they spend on video games by the fact that some players win millions by playing the game. Sure some do, but the very vast majority of players don't, and using the 0.01% of players as an exemple is not a good argument in favour of video games.

Firstly, OP basically said that CS is not a strategic game at all, which is completely false.

Secondly, CS can get extremely strategic in the professional scene, but it is also quite strategic at higher ranks in the game's competitive mode ladder. It is also a heavily team-based game: e.g., if one of your team members is not communicating, you are at a huge disadvantage.

Ok, well tell us the percentage of CS players that play at the highest level?

So this is kind of a problem. LOTS of people of our generation learned a lot of our history from games like Age of Empires and Civilization. But these sources of information aren't neutral. They had biases baked into their narratives by the simple structure of game design.

The notion of "nations" or "civilizations" as discrete, immutable, and clearly defined categories is actually straight up wrong. The idea of history as the story of competition between these civilizational entities is likewise wrong. But tons of people of our generation think of history this way. They think of technological advancement like a "tech tree" as if all of human progress can be charted on a map with no consideration for alternative ways the world could have shaken out. Monotheism MUST be invented after polytheism, you MUST have invented the wheel in order to invent agriculture, and so on. Overall you're being fed the idea that the world as it is is the only way the world could have been, which is just not the case.

We were being acculturated into a specific (and imperialistic) worldview about what history is and how culture works. But because nobody ever took video games seriously, they never bothered to understand and unpack their influence as pedagogical tools. It's not like a novel or a movie where the morals and themes of the narrative are there to make an intentional point. With games the logic of needing to have a game to play and goals and objectives to meet winds up transmitting themes and morals that people either don't intend or don't bother thinking very hard about.

>Self-motivated learning, I think, is something special.

In certain disciplines, like philosophy or history, where narrative and temporality matter a great deal, "self-motivated learning" often puts people at high risk for falling in with total cranks and walking away with deeply problematic biases.

The problem is that there is a lot of cool, fun stuff in these fields. But to actually understand them, there is also a fair bit of boring stuff about methodology and self-examination where you need to unlearn certain biases and confront a few types of of cognitive dissonance that we all have. Self-styled autodidacts have a tendency to spend a lot of time on the intellectual equivalent of candy and junk food and not enough on the "vegetables," so they come away with weird and unbalanced ideas about how the world works.

> At an early age I acquired a taste for novel reading, and indulged it to such an excess, that my mind was enervated, and its relish destroyed for higher and more solid attainments. I feel that I had a capacity for better things; but, under the ascendancy of this idle habit, it sunk into a fatal lethargy, from which neither shame nor ambition could awaken it. The drunkard, in the intervals of sobriety, feels most keenly the evils of intoxication, and, if self love allowed him to be candid, could a tale unfold of disease, of mental and bodily suffering, that would do more for the cause of temperance than all the societies in the world have ever accomplished. The excitement of novel reading is akin to intoxication. When it subsides, it leaves the mind collapsed and imbecile, without the capacity or the inclination for active exertion. I question, whether the confessions of an opium-eater exhibit more striking evidences of the pernicious influence of that stimulating drug on the physical system, than the experience of an habitual novel reader can furnish of the injurious effects, produced on his mental organization by the constant perusal of works of fiction.

Reading novels will make your brains pour out your ears, kid.

Any new form of entertainment will meet resistance.

I think video games are beautiful. I just finished Detroit: Become Human, and I've been playing games since Wolf3d came out. I suspect that the digital story telling in many video games is every bit as much "literature" as any novel, poem, or play.

I also personally saw more people drop out of college because of WoW than drugs.

Just an anecdote.

But I don't feel that video games are any better or worse than smoking cannabis or drinking alcohol, and I don't mind feeling a little grated when folks marketed them to my kids in ways that directly attempt to increase their addictive potential.

I'd say it's important to avoid Skinner box style games, but otherwise they can be fun and mentally productive. If I had a kid I'd introduce them to games like Kerbal Space Program, racing games (e.g. Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo) [1], and maybe some RTS games as they got older. I think it's important to choose what games children. The examples listed above reward learning, discipline, and skill. Not luck or pure time commitment.

And some games really can be educational, or develop thinking skills, etc. I wonder what game critics would say about a child spending hours a day playing Chess.

But all chess and no soccer is not a good mix. All Fortnite and no chess is not a good mix. In fact, I seriously question the value of any Fortnite or Minecraft. As entertainment, a little bit isn't worse than many other entertainments. But too much is too much.

And as far as entertainment goes, I'm tired of yet another Marvel movie where we can blow up as many things as possible in the most spectacular ways and never even think about consequences. I know it's goofy to worry about real life when we are talking about mythological characters and aliens. But I do think that we spend a huge amount of time and money to train youth to disconnect from real life. If somebody dies on the other side of town, it isn't real so it doesn't matter. If you have to kill 100 opponents to get to the princess, it's all part of the game.

But many years ago we played cops and robbers and killed each other, too. Or cowboys and Indians. And we argued about whether somebody should be dead or not because of how many times they'd been shot. And we graduated from pointing fingers to rubberbands to add some realism. Then paintballs.

So I suppose the human brain is capable of sorting it all out.

But I think it is healthy to feed the brain some balance. Put down the controller and join a service project now and then. Adopt a highway, or visit a care center. Connect with real people and remind your brain that video games aren't real. And stealing cars isn't the only way to win the game. In fact, it's just wrong.

I think the problem is not screens or technology, it is, as with so many things, greed and the 'marketing' tactics that it breeds.

But because I didn't feel like the life I'm living now was within reach back then, I lied to myself about the benefits of video games (so people wouldn't bother me or I felt better about spending my time in that way). That's my takeaway from introspecting on the parents and mine similar sounding scenarios.