As you might be able to tell by previous posts of mine, in particular one right before this, we have a video game system, in fact we have several. We have a Playstation 2, a Nintendo Wii and an XBox 360. A lot of games that we have we don’t play around my son because they’re pretty darn violent, and why when we were looking at game systems to invest in around Yule time we decided at that time to invest in the Wii, rather than the XBox because it looked like we would be able to not only exercise with it but also that once the munchkin was old enough to really properly be playing video games it would have educational games, and be less violent.
Last month we decided we would get the 360 because there were a lot of titles coming out that we, the adults, really wanted to play, and the PS-2 is not getting new titles given the PS-3 exists.
Video games are a big part of our life, and chances are they’re going to be a part of his as well, as movies are because both my husband and I are big movie fans. I would imagine he’s also going to be a gamer as we play “World of Darkness”, “Dungeons and Dragons” and “Savage Worlds”, but if we introduce him to table-top it will be the same as with video games. Slowly, gradually and with careful monitoring to be sure that things are going more on the side of education versus mindlessness.
Some friends of ours were over the other night for a “Savage Worlds” game. Since the munchkin’s accident they’ve been gracious enough to come to our house any time we want to game and while we were waiting for two of our friends to come back from the food run some of them were playing an Arcade game on our XBox while I gave the munchkin his supper. One friend was saying that she’d been having a talk with her boss about the fact that, “there aren’t any kid-friendly games” for XBox 360. My husband and I were both pretty boggled by this statement. His answer was, “XBox has never really been marketed as a kid-friendly system. If you have a young kid it’s best to have a Wii.”
We asked her what brought that up exactly. Apparently her boss’s children had bought their six-year old an XBox 360. I about did the classic “head-desk” maneuver. I’m sure there are some out there who wouldn’t agree with me on that one, but I just don’t see buying a child that young that sort of game system. Of course I don’t know the full situation, perhaps they are monitoring the child very carefully when they play on the game system. The system may well be kept in a public area and not stashed away in the child’s room, but I remember my former co-worker who was constantly complaining about their son trading violent games for his games at school and getting away with it because he would play them in his room, and feeling it’s a situation like that, especially given some of the titles my friend listed that this child had.
I’m not sure I can name one child-friendly title for XBox; except perhaps a couple of Arcade games like: Bejeweled or Feeding Frenzy.
ETA: Reflecting on this as I’m cooking supper I realize that I’m coming down heavy on the violent aspect, when I’ve seen first hand that violence in video games is less likely to correlate to a child than violence in person, and I know from studies in Comm classes in college that video violence isn’t the mitigating factor in children developing violent behavior.
I don’t think it helps, though, and I don’t believe children under a certain age should be exposed to certain things when their brains are still in that stage where it’s hard for them to distinguish fantasy and reality. That’s my main issue. I remember my nephew last Yule when he was playing Halo2 on his XBox, he’s fourteen, and he was saying that someone they know in New York their three year old had been playing Halo long enough to actually be able to work it, and would talk to classmates in pre-school as though they were all aspects of the video game, as though the Horde was going to manifest right there in their schoolroom. That’s my issue.
