As strange as it may sound, getting my kids to play games is important to me. My daughter’s turning three early next year, my son’s newly born, and I’m already working out what we can play together. Does that make me a bad parent?
No. At least, I hope not. And, here’s why.
Apparently, older games are unplayable. It seems we may have finally hit a point where the level of literacy required to play the games of yester-year no longer exists. As a child of the ’80s, that breaks my heart – that Abbott’s class specifically couldn’t play Ultima IV is a tragedy.
A tragedy, but not necessarily for the obvious reason. Sure, it’s a ground-breaking game and worth studying from an academic and interpretative perspective in its own right. But, that’s not why it’s tragic. My real concern is that in a class of university-level students, so many of them struggled to do something as simple as review the material they’d been provided with. In a class structured to develop game literacy and an understanding of the genre as a mechanical and literary field, many of them apparently threw up their hands and gave up when presented with what’s in reality such a basic mental challenge.
To me, their reactions are a sad indictment on how games have been progressively moving from an intellectual challenge to what my parents were always concerned they were – a timewaster. Growing up with these games taught me stuff, damn it; games were more than mere mechanics, they were personal and social challenges.
You think I’m kidding? Here’s what Ultima alone taught me:
- Research skills: Understanding and interpreting the game required reading relatively copious amounts of printed material and relating it back to the extremely abstract world I was dealing with.
- Memorisation and memory skills: With no worldmap, I had to remember the location of every character and location. And, I had to memorize every possible key combination – you think dealing with a 12 button controller is hard? Try memorizing a command for every key on the keyboard as well as the key combinations for thirty odd spells!
- Problem solving and procedural elimination: Getting it running in the first place was a challenge in its own right – I not only had to understand memory architectures and memory optimisation on the PC, I had to incrementally update my config.sys and autoexec.ini files to minimize my memory footprint.
- Imagination: The minimal graphic design meant that I was free to overlay my own perceptions of what I was interacting with.
- Social skills: Without an Internet to rely on, my Gamefaqs was the playground. Together, we fought our way through this and a multitude of other games, working together to solve the hairier problems.
The trend in today’s games is away from this level of complexity – the general design ethic is one of simplification and, to be blunt, mollycoddling. I mean, Final Fantasy XIII has a freakin’ 20 plus hour tutorial!. And, Resonance of Fate, a game that offers a similar level of complexity but drops the player straight into the thick of it, has been specifically criticised for providing a challenge.
Rightly or wrongly, this dumbing down of material is often the quickest path to commercial success. To me though, it’s indicative of a broader societal trend towards oversimplification and accessibility. The reality is that the world isn’t accessible – life is complicated and problems are real, and if you’re not comfortable with creative thinking and dealing with change, you’ll struggle. “Easy” sells, but just like junk food, it doesn’t help us.
As a gamer, I care about entertainment and enjoyment. As a parent though, I care about development and enjoyment. And, that’s a whole different ballgame. Obviously, not every retro game was good. But, they taught me stuff, stuff that’s increasingly lacking in today’s games. Stuff that’s important, regardless of how you learn it.
So, I’ve made it my mission to make sure my children build the same skills I developed (albeit by accident).
Surprisingly, it’s difficult. Finding recent games that are accessible and worthwhile for a three-year old isn’t easy – it’s not only that most games need a certain level of motor control, it’s also that in the main, most games are crap. Not only in terms of mechanics, but also in terms of development; timewasters like Modern Warfare 2 have their place as leisure activities, but historically speaking, they weren’t the only option when I was a kid. I played Mario 3, but I also clocked Red Storm Rising while I was doing it.
After unsuccessfully trawling a variety of forums trying to find games that fit the bill, I had a brainwave – I enjoyed the games I grew up with, so why not test them out on my daughter?
Guess what – she loves them, just like I did when I was a kid. That their graphics aren’t the latest and greatest? So what; she doesn’t care! And so, in the interests of helping other interested parents out there, I thought I’d run through some of what we’re playing, what I’m thinking we’ll eventually play, and why.
Before I get into the detail, some important (and obvious) clarifications. Parenting is hard work, and everyone has their own opinions about what’s right and what’s wrong; I’m as human as the next person, but here’s what I try and hold myself to:
- Games are only one aspect of personal growth – they can teach a wide variety of skills, but they only teach a small set of the skills needed to be a balanced person. We spend more time hitting the beach, reading, and playing with our musical instruments than we do playing computer games together. And, that’s the way it should be.
- I believe that my role as a parent is to help my kids grow and experiment while keeping them safe. That means helping them constantly test their own boundaries and have new experiences while being extremely conscious that they’re dealing with appropriate material.
- When it comes to kids, games are a way of spending fun time together – they’re not an electronic babysitter. If I’m not playing them with her, they’re normally a waste of time.
Next up: what we’re playing now.
If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy our subsequent article, Toddler Games: What we’re playing.
Related posts:
- Toddler Games: What we’re playing
- The game they let you play in heaven and make you play in hell
- Baby games
Tags: family, fun, kids, learning, retro
Oh wow, this is fantastic. I’m in exactly the same position, and have been trying to work out games my 3 year olds might be able to handle. Can’t wait to hear what you’ve been trying out.
You’ve hit upon a larger vein of the next generation here, not just in gaming, but period. The bigger bugbear in the room isn’t that they aren’t game literate enough to ger Ultima IV, I will never condemn anyone for ignorance. If you’ve never seen something I cannot expect you to know anything about it.
But they didn’t even make the effort. It is part of a larger problem in the US, I don’t know about your country. I read an article, a little hyperbolic, but it told of a generation, teenagers, that could not use a can opener and getting an ice cube from an ice tray defeated them. I wont condemn them for not knowing how an ice tray works if they’ve never used one, but it Defeated them. The child just stood there looking at it hopelessly.
The problem isn’t we are bringing up an ignorant generation, but one that seems to be brought up not to try. That was the biggest thing I got from Micheal Abbot’s post, none of his students seemed to try, like for instance, reading the manuel.
If anything I think you might be doing more than teaching your child old school gaming skills, you might be counteracting such mollycoddling in the real world as well. After all if a computer expects you to be able to do it yourself without it holding your hand, then you’ll be better off in the real world.
I don’t buy it. It feels like a cliché to say “every generation has thought their kids were lazy and weak-minded”, but it’s the correct response to the even bigger cliché that “kids today are lazy and weak-minded”.
You could find a version of that newspaper article written at any point in history, illustrated with a few examples that are hardly representative. How could they be? How do you sum up such a complex and shifting set of behaviours for an entire generation?
We also see what we expect or want to see in what we read. Go back to Michael Abbott’s example: not all of his class gave up on the game. He picked out comments from the more baffled students, which may give the impression that only a few hardy individuals battled through while the dopey mass gave up at the start screen. Obviously that’s not the case; there must be a spread of achievement, from those who got nowhere to those who achieved mastery.
Remember also that, contrary to what a lot of people (Evan included – sorry mate!) have said, Abbott is not talking about “older games” in general. He gives several examples of older games that gave his students brief trouble before they learned what the game expected of them. Only Ultima IV is singled out as a particular problem, which suggests that the common problem is that game and not its players.
On top of that, the forum comments Abbott quotes are from players in the middle of learning to play the game, and nearly all of them describe making a concerted effort to understand, whether on their own or through the help of others. Over the course of a few days, they’re putting hours into this (probably pretty minor) assignment, so they’re obviously not just lazy.
Even though these kids describe well thought-out strategies for learning and an implied commitment to keep trying, you might be reminded of a teenager who’s unwilling to figure out how an ice tray works. I’m reminded of nobody from my generation or younger, but rather Roger Ebert, who was not willing to even attempt to play a game, any game, because he was scared it would be too difficult; Mike Newell, who would rather dismiss the very game he’s been paid to adapt into a film, because it’s too hard to learn how to play; my dad, who used to yell at his kids for leaving the volume turned up on the computer, because he was unwilling to learn how to work the volume control. These people are all in their 60s. None of them are stupid, mollycoddled or in need of hand-holding.
When obtuse old games like Ultima IV and Red Storm Rising were “popular”, videogames were a relatively niche proposition. The game audience has expanded partly because the design of games has changed. Maybe there are the same proportion of people willing to tolerate this level of inscrutable complexity now as there were then, but their share of the game-playing population has decreased as the popularity of games has increased. There is demonstrably still a niche market for people who want to figure things out for themselves: games like Etrian Odyssey and Demon’s Souls continue to sell reasonably well, and there’s certainly an argument to be made for the brutal difficulty of learning the systems of multiplayer Starcraft 2 or, yes, Modern Warfare 2 in a multiplayer arena.
@Fraser:
I understand where you’re coming from, but while Abbott isn’t talking about older games in general, the reality is that Ultima IV was representative of a point in time. I’d be interested to know how his class would deal with The Magic Candle, Deathlord, Moebius, Autoduel, Windwalker, or Wasteland; all had aspects that while not as historically significant as Ultima IV, still added to the field in either a mechanical or literary sense.
Lest you think I’m talking specifically about RPGs, I’d also be curious to see how they’d deal with Police Quest, Sword of Kadash, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Murder on the Zinderneuf, Kampfgruppe, or Tass Times in Tone Town. I can make a persuasive (and hopefully strong) case that all have elements that should be studied as part of a (very) comprehensive curriculum. I’d obviously support Ultima IV as being more culturally and historically important than any of these, but consider them “background reading”.
Of a lot of these, Ultima IV was actually among the most approachable! However, it also represented a point in time where the level of complexity within games had advanced past the ability of developers to create a simplified game interface. So to me, struggling to play Ultima IV is representative of being unable to play a specific set of older games. I’d be extremely curious to know Abbott’s position on it, obviously.
@TheGameCritique:
Fraser’s going to gnash his teeth, but I do wonder whether it’s a generational thing. I realise every generation rubbishes the generations that come after it, but there are actually fundamental shifts occuring. There’s usability (link) and behavioural (link) studies which back that up; it’s not just “grumpy old man” talk.
I think I’m doing the right thing. It’s not so much about the retro factor for me (although, I do think there’s a measure of historical appreciation that goes along with it). Instead, it’s about trying to find ways to combat what I think is actually a legitimate growing trend towards an entertainment-based, spoon-fed media consumption-focused society.
@kateri:
Thanks! I’m glad to hear there’s other parents in the same boat; I’m hoping I’ll have the next one up soon …
Classic games should of course be part of a curriculum, but we have to realize that the chance for people to have fun with these games is long gone. Sure, there will be a few kids who really take to these old games, but most of them won’t. And guess what? Most kids didn’t like Ultima IV when it first came out.
Ultima IV is an instantiation of a game design theory, and should be seen as such. What is the theory driving it, how was this theory realized, and how does understanding this theory add to our own theory of games? If kids have a hard time getting into it, discuss what it is exactly that is keeping them away, and what mechanics could be employed to make the game more approachable, and whether or not those new mechanics would compromise the intent of the game. But don’t expect people to feel the way you did when you played this game–remember, you hadn’t played Ocarina of Time or Modern Warfare 2 yet.
Choosing what experiences our kids are going to have at a young age should be a major concern for parents–and I will say that if you want a kid to appreciate a game like Ultima IV, the earlier you can get her playing it, the better–but also realize that your kid will be all right even if she never likes Ultima IV.
I liked this post. We’re doing a similar thing, I’ve been trying to build a ‘curriculum’ in games and movies and books here for my own kids. Or, I’d like to create a flexible curriculum to follow at their pace and by their own interest, but right now it’s all very freeform.
We make good use of emulators but I aspire to a collection of old computers (BBC, C64..). I keep my old consoles as well. I think emulators are brilliant but there is a lot to be said for playing a game on it’s original intended hardware.
Dropped by from GameSetWatch. This is fantastic.
(1) I loved Red Storm Rising when I was a kid, even though I could only play it in CGA. Really glad to see it mentioned here! I’ve been thinking about cooking up something in a similar vein, but never got round to it…
(2) I put it to you that the Internet serves quite nicely to develop the same sort of “research skills” which Ultima IV hinges on. Which leads me to…
(3) Dwarf Fortress. That is all.
Conclusion:
I’d like to suggest that the percentage of people willing to sit down and get to grips with Ultima IV or Red Storm Rising in their day is probably not much more than the percentage of people willing to sit down and get to grips with a Dwarf Fortress or Hearts of Iron nowadays.
(For that matter, you and I could be on the receiving end of the same criticism if we tried to play Europa Universalis and gave up. At least, I did, although I’ll probably go back when there’s not much else to play.)
The difference is that the kind of kid who used to be sitting in front of the TV watching endless inanity, or shoving smaller kids around in the schoolyard, is now the kind of kid who plays Halo.
It’s not that gamers or people in general are getting lazier and dumber, it’s that more lazy and dumb people are becoming gamers because there are many more games which cater to them. However, it’s unlikely that “intelligent” games will go away any time soon – see any given roguelike, or Civilization, and the list goes on.
That said, I fully approve of the author’s efforts to bring up his daughter the right way. (Evan, you may want to take a look at Atelier Rorona, which does take a stab at delivering a complex and interesting system within something that vaguely resembles the standard JRPG framework.)
I think Fraser is spot on about his analysis. People in the 80′s in general didn’t play Ultima IV. A very small, very specific subset of them tried it. And an even smaller subset of them understood and enjoyed it enough to play it through.
Different people put different amounts of effort into different challenges. You got through Ultima IV because at the time, the challenge was one you were able and willing to overcome.
Take some average Atari 2600 owners from the era. Hand them a 360 controller and a copy of Modern Warfare 2. See how many of them stick it out. You’re asking essentially the same thing of anyone from a modern gaming perspective in playing U4. And on top of that, asking them to play a game with archaic graphics and a storyline that through reuse has become cliche.
Its not a kids-today-have-it-too-easy problem, its an effort != reward problem. They aren’t lazy, they calculated working through U4 isn’t worth the effort. And that would apply for most people.
[...] my kids to play games is important to me. It’s not because of the games specifically – it’s because as a parent, I’m [...]
You know, it wasn’t until the last comment that I realized someone had already posted much the same thing that I had, only before I did.
Oops. Mea culpa.
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