Shooting Ducks

After reading the title you might have thought this post was about hunting or maybe an analysis of the shows to watch with kids. If that is indeed what you thought then you are wrong, and you should feel bad about that. It’s okay I’ll wait…

Okay now on to the matter at hand, which is not hunting, but video game play with kids. One of my young nephews lives in the same house that I currently reside in. Every once and awhile he asks if he can come downstairs to hang out with me. A good deal of the time we end up watching Bubble Guppies or Paw Patrol. I know all the characters and have issues with a 10 year old boy running an entire city’s emergency services with a bunch of talking dogs. I will cover that logical concern in a later post. However when I am already playing a video game the resident Tiny Face will want to play along. As a good deal of gamer parents will tell you it is very hard to play a video game with a Tiny Face. They want to help out and play along. When my nephew first asked to play video games with me I handed him a controller without a connection or batteries. He took it and started to hit the buttons, then proceeded to complain about nothing happening. Kid is a little too smart for his own good.
After a few tries I figured out that he was okay playing the video game if he thought he was doing the silly stuff. For instance driving cars. He found it hilarious if he was causing the car to crash into buildings or knocking over light poles. (Note here: most games have codes or controls to make sure there are no people walking around the cities, so no need to explain why that person just flew fifteen feet in the air.)He also enjoyed controlling the bridges so we could see how far we could jump across them. Hours on end the conversation would go like this.
“Drive the red car,” said Tiny Face

“This red car, or the red truck?” I would answer.
“The red truck, go get it, drive it,” he would yell.
“Okay, here we go,” I would say as I got into the truck. We would drive around for a while hitting buildings and other cars. Then he would get bored or see another car or another color. Likely he would get bored and this would happen.
“BRIDGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEE! JUMP IT! JUMP IT! JUMP IT NOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!” he would yell, on average no more than an inch from my ear.
We would of course jump the bridge, then jump it again, and then a hundred times more. The issue would eventually become the time spent entertaining my nephew in lieu of progressing through the game itself. How much time do I spend jumping the same bridge verse just doing the next mission in the game? For this type of situation I came up with a creative answer; play a different game.
Farcry 3 and Farcry 4 produced by Ubisoft, are two great games with a big open world rich with beautiful scenes capes, animals, and story. But both games are rated M or mature because of the blood and gore as well as graphic language. Funny thing is in these two games you can go and hunt animals to either make money, or advance your character’s defense and skills. I can hear parents yelling at the screen right now, “BUT YOU ARE KILLING THINGS!” Yes, I get that and I understand there are concerns. Though why do you have to say they are dead, why not say they are asleep?

     For example in Farcry 3, there are emus which honestly are pretty nasty birds. My nephew did not understand emu so he called them ducks. So, when I would go out and hunt emus I was shooting ducks. When I shot them it was because I wanted to get their candy, and they did not die they just fell asleep due to eating too much candy. I was helping them stay awake by taking their candy. On the converse when the ducks punched me I too had eaten a large quantity of candy causing me to fall asleep. Hence the title of this post “Shooting Ducks”, which was what Tiny Face and I would do roaming the wide expanses of Far Cry 3. It was much the same with Farcry 4, though there were now both cars to drive and elephants to ride. All the while we would punch an animal and they would go to sleep so we could take their candy. It helped a lot that once you find one animal there is another in that area a good deal of the time. If one bear “goes to sleep” another one in the area would show up. To my nephew it is the same bear who has woken and now is upset that we took its candy. No killing, just animals falling asleep and us taking their candy. There are people in the games but it I easy enough to avoid them.
   

Also it was funny to interject myself freaking out when the animals would come after us to make it less intense for the kiddo. Saying things like, “it’s going to bite our butts.” Yes, seems odd to say butts, but for a three year old it is funny and distracts from the idea that the animal is about to maul us and most likely feast upon our corpse. It is also really funny to hear a three year yelling about butts.
Now traditional parent concerns aside there are plenty of games to play with younger kids that do not need as much sleight of hand. Games like Minecraft by Mojang. A wonderfully creative game now available on all gaming consoles. My nephew does not play Minecraft with me but does play it very often with his Dad. He especially loves

the animals and chasing them around. The simple nature of the game allows for easy progression between toddler requested activities. Though there are no cars and that is a huge no-no for my nephew. Every game must have cars, no exceptions.
Finally, some of the best games to play with kids are the classic games being re-mastered for newer systems. Recently my nephew and I spent three days hanging out with each other waiting for his parents to return home with his baby brother. Three days is far too long to watch the same episodes of shows over and over. So, I put on a game I had downloaded called Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee by GT interactive. This game is an older side scrolling game featuring Abe, a green funny looking alien trying to free his people. In the game there are plenty of explosions and places to fall down. These two factors were funny to my nephew because I feigned frustration as if he has made me fall and/or explode when he hit buttons on his controller. It was also great to replay a game I had as a kid with my nephew for the first time. A shared experience of enjoyment across two generations.

The best part was a feature on the loading screen where you can test Abe’s ability to talk and make noises. My nephew found this to be hilarious because Abe was talking to him sayings things like hello, follow me, and of course farting. Tiny face would repeat after Abe, whistle at him, and make farting noises. Seems pretty simple and dumb, but really it ate up a bunch of time and was a good distraction while his parents were away. Tiny face would even get mad when Abe would not talk back to him and really there is nothing better than a three year old arguing with a video game character. Imagination kids, imagination.
All and all if you are a parent or a relative and are also a gamer then there is no reason you should argue over gaming and kids. Find a way to make the game fun to watch and interact with for your kids. Give them an old controller and have them drive the cars bumping into walls. Or find a way for them to laugh at your folly while you are still progressing through the game. They will enjoy it and hopefully ask to do it again. Gamers for life are not born, they are bred, play on.