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Gaming with kids

Started by Kelvin, July 04, 2018, 03:34:23 PM

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Kelvin

A thread for funny or heart warming stories about gaming with the younger generation.

I don't have kids of my own, but I'm currently staying with my parents for a few weeks, and they regularly look after their grand-daughter, my niece, whose 10. When I was down at Christmas, she played Zelda on my switch a fair bit, and as soon as she found out I was staying for longer this time, she asked if she could play it again and maybe start her own game.

So, on and off for several days now, she's been learning to play Breath of the Wild from the start, learning to experiment with the environment, learning to actually fight enemies, instead of just running away or handing me the controller. She can't really solve the shrines by herself, but I'm at least trying to walk her through them and get her thinking about what abilities she could use.

It's fun just making our own adventures, to be honest. She either can't or doesn't really have an interest in doing the main quest, so I'm setting her tasks that encourage her to explore and see cool things; "climb that mountain, then shield surf down to the bottom", "find the village on the far side of the map", stuff that gives her a destination, but with ample opportunity to get distracted by the things she likes interacting with, like enemies, animals, and people. It's basically all she wants to do when she comes round, and it's cool seeing her so invested in a game that I love, and in a way that reminds me of my own excitement for gaming when I was her age. I honestly thought she'd be more into Mario Odessey, but I can't even get her to try it, she's so invested in exploring Zelda.       

Anyone here game with their, or someone else's kids? Doesn't have to be funny, or even especially interesting. Just nice stories about playing games with them, or watching them get into games would be nice.

Lemming

My niece frequently stays over with me, her cool unemployed failure of an uncle, while my brother and his wife are away doing Extremely Important shit. I've been trying to show her my favourite older games, movies, comedy and music, because I'm a dick and I want her to be culturally trapped in the 90s/early 2000s and totally unable to relate to her peers. So she's been watching me play Thief: The Dark Project recently. We were sneaking through the Hammerite prison level when, all in the space of about a second, a guard appeared out of absolutely fucking nowhere, spotted us, shouted an alert and immediately started attacking. Niece jumped out of her skin, screamed like a fucking banshee and, in her haste to scramble away from the monitor, landed a perfect accidental kick to my kidneys. Great stuff, visceral gaming.

Quote from: Kelvin on July 04, 2018, 03:34:23 PMit's cool seeing her so invested in a game that I love, and in a way that reminds me of my own excitement for gaming when I was her age.

I've noticed this too. I often just stick my niece in front of Skyrim since it's the ultimate go-to game to amuse kids, and the seemingly endless fun she can have just walking around villages doing totally inane shit like harvesting plants and fighting the same three bandits over and over makes me upset that, somewhere on the way to becoming an adult, I lost that ability to have so much fun doing nothing.

Kelvin

Quote from: Lemming on July 04, 2018, 05:11:10 PM
I've noticed this too. I often just stick my niece in front of Skyrim since it's the ultimate go-to game to amuse kids, and the seemingly endless fun she can have just walking around villages doing totally inane shit like harvesting plants and fighting the same three bandits over and over makes me upset that, somewhere on the way to becoming an adult, I lost that ability to have so much fun doing nothing.

Yeah, it's wierd how the stuff I'd assume a kid would find most boring, is often the stuff they enjoy doing most. In Zelda, my niece loves catching horses, collecting apples, making meals. Busy work you wouldn't think would engage someone playing so casually.

Whereas she skips through all the story and dialogue as fast as possible. I honestly don't think she has the slightest idea what her main mission is in the game, beyond "kill the evil king at the castle". 


Quote from: Kelvin on July 04, 2018, 06:43:15 PM
Yeah, it's wierd how the stuff I'd assume a kid would find most boring, is often the stuff they enjoy doing most. In Zelda, my niece loves catching horses, collecting apples, making meals. Busy work you wouldn't think would engage someone playing so casually.

Whereas she skips through all the story and dialogue as fast as possible. I honestly don't think she has the slightest idea what her main mission is in the game, beyond "kill the evil king at the castle".
That mostly the reason Minecraft is so popular with the younger generation, I don;t even thik a lot of kids bother with any of the bosses and just spend the time doing not very much.

madhair60

ooh that's the nintendo magic isn't it? ooh it's the magic of nintendo.

fucking unreal.

Kelvin

Quote from: madhair60 on July 04, 2018, 07:29:02 PM
ooh that's the nintendo magic isn't it? ooh it's the magic of nintendo.

fucking unreal.

If I ever play a game with you, I will post in this thread.

Because I will have played games with a BIG BABY.

Twed

Kelvin is your niece a bit thick?

I also played Zelda with a kid, eight years old, week or two after it come out. Kid doesn't play games because her mum doesn't want her to be a fanny like me but the kid was absolutely loving it, did fuck all but climb, fall off, float and do it again. She said she never like a computer game before but she love Zelda. When I see her now I try to re-engage her by talking about it and the DLC we should play together but she's over it, likes Roblox now and if I bring it up again again it's probably grooming so I'll just accept that for one afternoon, someone, an actual person, shared my interest in games. My wife liked my Ikaruga grade A screenshot on social media but she didn't like it, I know, because when I actually did it and showed her she wasn't interested at all.

Kelvin

Quote from: Twed on July 04, 2018, 07:33:45 PM
Kelvin is your niece a bit thick?

I don't think so, why?

If you mean the shrines, I think the problem is more that she's too impatient to solve them herself, and just wants to push on through them and explore the overworld. She's only got limited time with the game, an hour or two each week, so she doesn't want to spend it solving puzzles. Kids learn and get good at games through endless repetition, grinding away till they git gud, and she's not a big gamer, or one with any experience of these big open world 3D games.

Twed

Sorry I was just making a shit blunt joke. I don't think being 10 excludes you from being able to play BotW properly, but not really being experienced with games would.

Kelvin

I mean, I was beating TMNT and Ninja Gaiden on the NES at her age, but then I was playing them over and over and over again, for weeks on end. I very much doubt I would have the patience to beat them now. In fact, I know I wouldn't, because I generally hate hard games nowadays.

She's not actually bad, though. It more that we're playing it with the mindset that she wants to do as much as possible before I move back up north, and so she's trying to focus on the fun stuff, rather than read acres of text, or solve puzzles.

Twed

If she applies this mindset to life in general she'll be happy. Hopefully BotW will teach her to sack off university and chase her dreams (killing goblins and regicide).

madhair60

Quote from: Kelvin on July 04, 2018, 07:32:32 PM
If I ever play a game with you, I will post in this thread.

Because I will have played games with a BIG BABY.

<3