Introducing kids to old games is great, but restricting them from experiencing their own generations culture, not so much
Except when that culture is full of predatory shit like microtransactions
Yeah, kids shouldn’t be allowed to play Undertale, Armored Core 6, Baldur’s Gate 3, Elden Ring, Final Fantasy XVI, Hollow Knight, or Stardew Valley.
They’ll play shovelware and like it, just like we did!
There are plenty of great games today and horrible games from when we grew up (E.T. anyone?), the trick is to filter the good from the bad and show them what to watch out for.
That’s the thing I did with my niece. She didn’t get to watch many films growing up (she read a lot, listened to a lot of music, but her parents didn’t really do films or TV so it wasn’t much of a thing). As a teenager we started hanging out and I’d show her films that I thought that she’d enjoy and would be culturally important. Meanwhile I’d give her the rundown of “You can watch this, but I wouldn’t bother. This one is good, the rest you can skip.”
I like to think she’s going off to uni with good memories of watching films with me. Hopefully I can do something similar for my recently arrived daughter.
Also, forcing your kids to play your favorite old games assumes that your games were the best games.
They were fun in their day, but time moves on. Assuming that everything since you formed your opinions is inferior is some big boomer energy.
Let them find their own fun with their friends on their terms. Making your kids play your old crap with you is kinda sad.
I think Minecraft is boring as hell and I’m not gonna play it, but I’m not going to force my kids to play mega man 2 instead.
i caught my 5yo playing golden eye the other day and i was not disappointed!
I still play animal crossing new leaf. Just got the golden net the other day (my town has been going since 2013)
3DS is still awesome even in 2025.
Don’t think it’ll ever be not awesome.
I’d love someone to make a modern foldable smartphone in the shape of a 3ds. With the controls and everything, and a stylus. But also cellular capabilities and a modern camera system. Most of all, a chip that can emulate the 3ds. Would be even cooler if one eventually came out that can emulate the Wii U.
Ayaneo Flip DS exists but is ludicrously expensive
Why so salty about a dad sharing his interests and stuff from his life with his kid? She can play other games too.
Salt gets traction, no one on the internet wants normal family values or feelgood anything
Legit, it’s not an either/or. I ragequit Warioland on RA and took my frustrations out building and unleashing siege weapons in TOTK
MOO2 from my dad and original Xcom games
I am 50+, remember paying quarters to play Pong and Space Invaders.
Built my kids a game box using Batocera Linux and ROMs from the 80s and 90s (Atari2600, Intellivision, Colecovision, etc)
I was thereby able to show them the True Magic and Wonder of Computers
Adventure was the tits, but Fuck Linux
Seriously
Every distro, every version
Fuck linux
Calm down, Bill Gates
You are so fucking lucky there’s an entire internet between me and you rn
And you’re lucky there is this entire Lemmy.World instance running on Linux for you to get this worked up over them about.
Why, tho? Is it because it’s not basically an advertisement for some large language model?
You lincucks are so fucking deranged
Why do you like Windows so much, then?
I NEVER SAID I LIKED WINDOWS WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH YOU PEOPLE CONSTANTLY PUTTING WORDS IN MY MOUTH!?
I say ‘FUck linux’ so you immediately assume that I’m some microsuck fan
I say ‘Fuck capitalism’ and you immediately assume I’m a communist
I say ‘Fuck ratheists’ and you immediately assume I’m a conservative evagelical that wants to institute Biblical law
I have never been or wanted any of these things but every FUCKING time I point out the flaws, everyone just immediately assumes I’m an anti
And I’m so fucking tired of it because it erases ALL MOTHERFUCKING NUANCE in EVERY discussion is comes up in
Fuck off
Get bent
Die lonely
“FUCK LINUX” is, like, tooooootally something a Microsoft hater would say, am I right, guys? /s
I point out the flaws
This also contradicts what you initially said.
I have supported windows infrastructure since the early 90s and I can guaran-fucking-tee you there are few people on the planet who hate windows more than me
And before you make another one of your ridiculous assumptions, about 2/3rd of the infrastructure I have been personally responsible for are running linux
This also contradicts what you initially said.
Show me, I’m SO fucking tired of this
r/usernamechecksout
Every one of you gets blocked
Try being original for once in your fucking life
You are fun! Happily to be blocked :) but why is everyone mad at you? Jks no one’s mad they just tapping a screen breathing air and have no real concerns about you or I. But what did you mean to get the minus points?
The only part being true is my life is fucked, rest easy friend I don’t care about strangers online
I am and I don’t care.
I think the trick is to just let kids play what they want
as a kid I grew up with basically every generation of nintendo consoles up to the Wii U, as well as a PC (well, a mac really but whatever) and I turned out fine
i missed out on some of the big sensations of the moment, like fortnite or COD, but tbh I didn’t care, these games never interested me and they still don’t
I think the shared experience there is gaining most of your social interactions through an video game for a period of time during childhood. Its not always the same game and it doesnt even have to be online, but its the shared focal point among a group of people. Sort of like a coffee shop or park.
We have a whole retro game station complete with CRT that they can play. They love Mario, Duck Hunt, some of the other games and are now gravitating to Gameboy, SNES and PS One. They like the Switch too, but usually go for the older stuff first.
Yeah, because the 90s were awesome. Seriously. It’s where all the cool stuff happened. Then 9/11 happened. And everything has sucked since.
This is the responsible way to raise a child on video games IMO. Modern games have predatory practices like microtransactions.
The look on her face says everything to me though.
Well, what about this: Early exposure to the shithead practices of modern gaming can enable children to more easily identify what’s good and what’s just trying to take money from them.
I dunno.
The problem is that kids dont make or have money. Its like burning their hand the first time, they need to attempt to pay for their own lives fully at least once to really understand it. I think its fair to restrict these types of things to mature rated games as a general rule.
You could argue the other way around - growing up with decent and non-predatory practices makes you less tolerant of when companies try to extort you because you already know what “good” looks like.
I’m sure the corpos would love nothing more than kids getting exposed to predatory practices from a young age so they grow up feeling those things are acceptable and normal.
Drag thinks we should expose kids to a safe environment most of the time, and to little bits of predatory design in contexts that make them easy to identify. Like a vaccine.
“Dad, how do I put armour on my horse?”
“You need to grow up and get a job and a credit card for that.”
“That sucks, I hate Oblivion! I want to go back to Morrowind!”
“It’s okay buddy, I pirated the Oblivion remaster. Let’s play that instead.”
yeah the problem is this doesn’t line up with the horror stories I’ve personally witnessed. Sudden, massive credit card charges. The problem can occur when kids aren’t spending their own money, they’re using their parents’, some way some how.
Regardless, kids are already surrounded by ads in every corner of life trying to convince them they need XYZ in exchange for money. I’d rather work to make the kid’s environment less consumerist, to give them a vision of how life could be.
If you give your kid access to your credit card you’re a fool. Those are parents who perhaps needed to learn some extra lessons in life.
The second the kid goes to school, they’re faced with every single fad anyway. It’s insanity. Everyone wants a croc, a Stanley, a labubu. My kids see the ads built in to the YouTubes, and they see it from friends, and I do my best to explain to them what’s happening.
And if they earn some money, or get birthday money, and they want to burn it on some nonsense, I explain to them what’s happening but ultimately give them some autonomy. And when the next thing comes along and they can’t spend money because they have none, they either learn or they don’t.
My kids didn’t see an ad connected to videos until the youngest was about 7 (outside of a movie theater, at least). When they first saw them, they were flabbergasted about what they were or why people would just sit there watching them, and absolutely refuse to put up with them. I’d say they are better off seeing how things could be, so when they see how things are now they recognize how utter shit it is.
absolutely refuse to put up with them
This is amazing. Good job! I wish more people were like this. Apparently São Paulo in Brazil has no ads at all.
Most kids aren’t discerning about those kinds of things.
That’s why I slam that shit home all the time. Robux are a scam. YouTubers are just selling to you. If it has ads it’s not worth watching. Just repeat that every day to the kids and they’re good to go.
The message they will take away is “the things my parents approve of” and “the things that are really cool and fun” are disjoint categories. IDK, I’m not a parent, I don’t want to deal with that. Just thinking about my own childhood here, and the kids of people I know.
Jokes on them. I hack games that have micro transactions and DLCs and make them entirely free. Even games I have paid for. My child hasn’t seen an ad or a micro transaction yet.
Can you elaborate a bit more on that? Most of the games with dlc or microtransaction stuff that I play have it all verified with some sort of online system (steam, mostly). What games are you hacking, and how?
steam does not verify much by itself, its not made to be a strong security system. look up goldberg emu, cream api, etc. they work if the DLC content is not really downloadable, but already baked in just locked away behind a check
and if the content is something to download, most of the time you can grab the clean steam files from a website of a russian counterstrike community and drop the files into your game install folder and then use the aforementioned tools.
Plenty of fun normal games, especially indie games.
Only if you teach them. My son is playing casual games on Steam and emulated games.
While my son’s friends were talking about new Call of Duty/Fortnite updates. And they’re like 8yos.
The look on her face says everything to me though.
lol, it wasn’t even attempting to be a good photoshop. Maybe your screen needs cleaning?
You can’t replace the Roblox and Fortnite, you can only hope to supplement them.
This is the right way to do it. Don’t try to prevent your kids from enjoying what they want to play, don’t forcibly alienate them from the cultural zeitgeist that will connect them to their peers. But if you can get them to develop a wider palate with an appreciation for titles both old and new, that’s a positive.
Correct, it’s about giving them a wider perspective. Also I’m teaching them that scummy games that push micro transactions on you with manipulative shit should be avoided, or at least being conscious about their manipulative shit. In the end you can’t make them not play Minecraft, but there is a difference between Java and Bedrock
I did try to get a nephew to play pokemon fire red (emulated on a tablet), he found it really boring 😅
Gotta think of another game that plays fine on a tablet and maybe isn’t as boring
I’m not really surprised. There’s so many papercuts in those games. I’ve not played a Pokémon games since Black/White but even then, ugh, such a slog. They’re really good at sucking all the momentum out of things, sadly.
I played Blue when I was about 12 and the appeal was mostly that there wasn’t anything on a handheld that had anywhere near as much content. Link’s Awakening is a better game but it’s not that long, etc…
My favorite musical artists as a child (90s) were John Denver; Peter, Paul, and Mary; the Beatles; and Cream. I didn’t ever get into boy bands, but I can sing along to the absolute biggest spice girl hits.
That was only really a hindrance in elementary school because in middle school I branched out into more contemporary musicians. Now, I’ve got a lot more knowledge about the 70s in music than most of my peers, but I’m not isolated from the things my peer group likes (I will lose my shit to Mr. Brightside or Yeah by Usher if I’m drunk, but I definitely will as well for anything from Carole King’s Tapestry)
This one dad wrote an article about introducing his kid to retro gaming, starting with the old Atari console and progressing through newer generations every few months.
https://medium.com/message/playing-with-my-son-e5226ff0a7c3
(some of the image links are broken on the original article so here’s an archive link)
A great read, thanks. I think you have posted this as a full post to this sub (perhaps repost it on a quiet day).
Given all the child predators on Roblox, can’t blame ya
You’re worried about child predators on Roblox.
I’m worried about my dummy kids taking my credit card and buying microtransactions.
(We are not the same meme)
Don’t forget the slavery and financial exploitation!
Ive heard of the financial exploitation and pedo controversy but what is the slavery controversy for roblox?
Gonna be honest, my brain farted while being flippant. “Financial exploitation” to refer to extracting robux from users. I used “slavery” to refer to uncompensated or undercompensated underage labor relating to development…
Nah… it’s okay. She won’t be out of touch. Nintendo is going to release these games for the Switch 2 for $80.
