alt Hacker NewsThere is a big difference between games now and games then. E.g. an SNES game was made to be fun, but not to be intentionally addictive, you would never buy a new game if it was.
Many online games are designed to be as addictive as crack to extract as much revenue as possible. Our kid is in the typical video gaming age, almost every kid of her age is stuck in Roblox and some in Fortnite.
Setting limits helps, but more broadly, games that require a monthly subscriptions or buying in-game currency should just be outright forbidden for anyone under 16 or 18. Yes, kids need to learn to recognize and suppress abusive patterns, but these addictive games, together with social media, and Youtube Shorts is destroying their mental health and normal, healthy exploration of the world.
I think parents are also failing in general. It's insane how many use tablets as a pacifier, some give 2 year-olds an iPad to play with. Or setting bad examples like using phones themselves at the dinner table.
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I think the reason for that is less that they didn't want to do it and more that they hadn't polished the mechanisms for it.
I've said before that the analogue for these sorts of games is arcade games - where you had to put in currency per unit time of enjoyment, and they had to try to guesstimate play time versus amount they're willing to pay for it and then would go in person to "test" arcades with early versions of games to see if they were wrong.
The internet reduced that feedback cycle to minutes, so we speedran evolution on it.
TBH, I don't see monthly fee games as even in the same category of concern - at least, not in a vacuum. Games with microtransactions, yes, absolutely, but that's true whether it's nominally a pay-once game or not, I think.
I said in another comment, I don't hate the idea of allowing microtransaction/gambling-style mechanics in games as long as they can't involve real currency on either side, if children are the market - not because I think it's great for kids, but because I think you're not going to manage to ban everything that's the same addictive "shape" as those, and allowing people to be exposed to that in a venue they care about, but with foam sword padding so you can't blow actual money on it, is probably a reasonable risk/reward balance.
(You might reasonably argue that this is just going to lead to kids being primed for addictive behaviors as adults, but the only thing that's going to help that is being mindful about it, e.g. education, and nothing short of people the kids respect reinforcing that is going to change that whether the games allow this sort of soft pain or not...and being exposed to something like Vegas naive or primed is going to, I think, have the same outcomes either way if you're not mindful about it.)
Yeah, the games my SWE friends and I have played were completely free.
I’m a parent. Girls 7 and 4. I think you’re right about a number of parent habits.
Hard to impose a device limit on a kid if that kid watches you use your device constantly. I’m not some hero here - constantly reminding myself to be aware.
Now, I think imposing limits in the open world is a specific challenge. To your point, you’ll see kids at restaurants on iPads. Well, now your kid wants iPad. You don’t give it? They start a shitstorm.
I don’t think an outright device ban is so critical. But limits are important, and even more important is sticking to what you said you would do as a parent. With mine, they sense that moment of giving and almost instinctually rush to exploit. That said, flexibility is important too - knowing when you use it.
As for game, I set a rule on an iPad. No games with ads. Those seem to be the worst of them, and there are tons.