Whit Andrews

Earlier, I noted my detailed concerns and thoughts about whether to Get A Game for Joe. We decided to get the game, and we installed it right away on Sunday. We played for a while and then turned in. (And then I played a while longer.)

The first thing that strikes me is what Lydia said in her excellent comment, which is that games are ubiquitous, now. Protecting Joe from video games is roughly as easy as protecting him from, say, germs. It’s a matter of resistance and inclusion (we do, after all, have intestinal fauna). I got an egg timer and put it on my desk; Joe and I discussed how much time we should play a day, and what we can “trade” for that time. Joe has already decided, for example, that he will sometimes prefer game time to video time. And per Steven Berlin Johnson‘s book I referred to earlier, Everything Bad is Good For You, I have to agree with him that it’s better for him to be learning construction, adaptation, and art than it is for him to be sitting and watching lions tell him how to read — when he already knows.

At this age, what TV did I have available to me? Saturday morning cartoons, I remember. I liked shows like “Anything Goes” and “Get Smart,” but I didn’t get half the jokes or more — in fact, I didn’t get that they WERE jokes, for the most part. (Although I did like to watch Agent 99 smile. And who doesn’t, really?) I knew a kid in college who said he experienced a genuinely dislocating grief when he realized that the TV Batman was tongue-in-cheek, and that not only had there been no real peril, he had not been meant to fear real peril. Anyway, I had no video games at that age, and wouldn’t until the little handhelds with LEDs came out a few years later. Those were twitch games, through and through. Spore ain’t, although there are more twitchy aspects than I expected. (“Quick, Joe! Spit! Spit again!”)

What I am seeing is that Joe is:

• getting meaningful keyboard experience, which is important — to my shock, he is expected to type his reports, and therefore is learning hunt-and-peck before his hands are even large enough to do touch typing;
• learning how to budget “DNA money;”
• experiencing a virtual landscape, and orientation and control;
• finding that he is happier actually being peaceful and gaining respect through social interaction than he is through being a carnivore.

I have to say, I think we made the right decision.

(I ordered myself Age of Empires III yesterday. Let’s see if I feel the same way after a holiday season of staring down other colonial powers.)

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