The internet touches every
aspect of your children's lives. Where you might look up an unknown word
in a dictionary, your kids are more likely to use dictionary.com. Where
you use the telephone, they use instant messenger. An even greater
difference can be found in how they play games. Where the games of their
parent's generation may have involved a board, cards, or at their most
sophisticated a console system, the games your children play on the net
can be far more complex. They mine gold, spread empires, fight dragons
and aliens alone or with tens, hundreds, even thousands of their fellow
gamers. All of this makes for a confusing mish mash of names, places,
jargon and lingo that can leave you with no idea what your kids are
actually doing and a vague feeling of uneasiness that some part of it
might not be good for them.
What's appropriate for your kids is a decision only you can make. How
much violence they are exposed to, how much time they spend in front of
a screen and how much contact they have with the faceless strangers so
common to the net are all questions you must grapple with and, in the
end, decide for your family. While we can't help you make these rough
decisions, we can certainly help you get the information you need to
understand your children's hobbies better, both to make informed
judgments about what they should and should not be doing, and to help
you reach into another part of their lives that may have previously
seemed like something of a puzzle box.
The Easy Stuff
The simplest type of online game is the sort of Flash or Java driven
game that you generally see running inside your web browser. This type
of game tends to be relatively simple compared to the stand alone games
discussed later. Common examples include Bejeweled, Zuma, and Diner
Dash. These games are almost universally single player and have none of
the sort of violent or mature content that keeps parents up at night.
Were they movies, they would be G Rated, with perhaps the occasional
game stretching to PG. If this is the type of game your kids are into
then first, be relieved. Then, try the game out. Many of these games can
be very enjoyable for even the most casual of players. Some, such as
Bookworm, even have genuine educational content. These games can be as
much an opportunity for bonding and learning as throwing around a
baseball in the backyard, and have the added bonus of being much easier
to get your kids to sit down with you and play.
FPSs: Finding Something to Shoot.
FPS stands for First Person Shooter. They are First Person in the
same since that a story might be. That is, the player sees the world
through the eyes of a single character and interacts with the game
environment as though he were that character. Shooter comes from the
primary goal of most such games, the shooting of whatever happens to be
the bad guy. FPS games are among some of the most popular online. Common
examples include Doom, Battlefield:1942, and the X-Box game Halo. From a
parental perspective, these games can be cause for concern. They vary
widely in the amount of realism, degree of violence, language, and
general attitude. The only way to get a good idea of the content issues
is to watch the particular game. If your kids don't want you watching
while they play, then fire up the game yourself sometime when they
aren't around. There is a sizeable variation in how violent and how
personal FPS content can be from game to game. The single player portion
of Halo, for example, has players fighting against alien invaders with
largely energy weapons and a minimum of realistic human suffering. In
contrast, WWII themed games tend to go out of their way to show
realistic violence. Given the subject matter, this is appropriate for
the game, but may not be for your kids. Online play presents a
potentially greater concern. The goal of online FPS games is almost
always killing other players.
While some games do have various modes where this is a secondary
goal, all of them give the player a gun and encourage him to use it on
characters representing other people. Simulated gore and the use of
violence against others to achieve goals may be things you don't want
your kids exposed to. Again, these are your decisions to make, but we
encourage you to make them with as much information as possible. Talk to
your kids. Find out what they think, in their words, is going on in the
game. Make sure they see the line between what happens in the game and
what happens in the real world, between what it's okay to simulate and
what it's okay to do. The answers may surprise you. If your children
understand the differences, see real violence as deplorable and
simulated violence as part of the game then FPS games, even online ones,
can be a perfectly healthy way to have fun and let off steam. In the
end, it falls on you to make sure that what your child gets out of the
game is good for him or her.
Next time, we'll talk about RTS and MMORPG, the two other common
types of commercial online game and touch on the twin demons of
addiction and predation.
Steve is a member of the GrandMatrix team. They provide a broad range
of games and puzzle articles and reviews. Read more articles and play
the latest PC games for free plus thousands of user submitted puzzles,
quizzes and word games at:
http://www.grandmatrix.com
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