“I Love Pokemon!” 

I am a media consumer and so are my children. There - I said it. My kids watch television, enjoy movies, and even play games. Having said that, they also enjoy drawing, finger-paints, Lock Blocks, Exo-Bonz, and anything that you can do with a ball. We try to use moderation. Yet, Saturday mornings are an exception.

Long before I discovered that Saturday mornings were invented to sleep in after hanging out with your friends on Friday night, I used to relish the Saturday morning cartoon brigade. I have fond childhood memories of getting up as early as I could to watch Scooby Doo: Where Are You? Yes - the original. I’m that old. Well my son has his favorites and the commercials are just as devious now as they were when we were young. I had the opportunity of witnessing the impact this weekend.

Yesterday we were at a local soccer park for a birthday party. Kids were running as fast as they could in every direction (and occasionally toward the ball) and it was a workout for all. During the break when the kids got to replenish their energy with a the ever healthy mega dose of sugar (cupcakes with a layer of diabetic-shock inducing icing), my son saw another child playing with a Nintendo DS. He had never seen one in person, but thanks to the ever-so-helpful Saturday morning brainwashing, I heard the following comment erupt from his mouth, “Wow, that’s Pokemon! Pokemon is so cool! I love Pokemon!”

As it turned out, the child was, indeed, playing the current Pokemon title on the DS (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time). It’s not that I have a problem with my children enjoying games. I don’t even mind them begging for them. I understand. Granted, it can be a bit trying at times, but it’s part of life. However, my son had never played a Pokemon game. He has never played a handheld game. He has never seen the Pokemon television series. Yet, thanks to the wonders of targeted marketing, he knows that he loves Pokemon and that it is cool.

Honestly, the Pokemon titles are a good choice for kids. They involve a sense of justice and fair play and provide opportunities to develop good problem-solving skills. I don’t have reservations about the franchise. But it is a bit unsettling to witness the power of the Saturday morning commercial in effect. As with all things, this provides an opportunity for discussion. I wish you all the best with this and I recommend practicing the fine art of diversion. I believe that my response yesterday was, “That’s pretty cool, son, and - HEY there goes the ball!”

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Back when I was a kid…
What is it to be human? Do you ask yourself that? Elements of spirituality, responsibility, morality, and other “-ity” things come into the mix. I ask myself what I want my children to learn, from whom, and how. And when I think of what my children will become, I sometimes ask myself, “What is it to be human?”

Many lessons are introduced in classrooms, but lessons are rarely learned there. I’d venture to say that the hallways and playgrounds offered many life lessons for me as I grew up while the library and my home provided the opportunity to explore what the teachers intended. But who are the teachers in our children’s lives.

• Parents?
• Instructors?
• Friends?
• Enemies?
• Media?

To whom do our children grant credibility and authority in their lives? I remember the slippery slope of my teen years when I was often tempted to put the opinion of my peers above that of my family. And how cool is it for kids to actually listen to their instructors in school? But when it came to the books we read, the movies we saw, the television shows we watched, and the games we played - they carried some serious credibility. They shaped the language we spoke and created the bonds through which we identified ourselves in releation to each other.

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The Scooby Game, Part 2:
For those of you who missed Part 1 or would like a refresher, you can find it here.

As noted previously, when a game is rated “E” for Everyone it is referring to the content. Let me qualify this, if I may. Since viewing a film is more passive, the rating is appropriate for all viewers because everyone who sees the film is capable of participating similarly based on their level of interpretation. (This is not to say that everyone walks away with the same experience.) However, with a videogame, you have the player and you have others who may view the game. Now if a game is rated “M” for Mature, I would infer that my four-year-old should neither play the game, nor watch someone else playing the game because of the content. Does that make sense? In contrast, a game that is rated “E” should have no objectionable content for practically anyone in the room to view. But that doesn’t mean that anyone can play the game. (Keep in mind that games rated “E” for Everyone are actually intended for ages 6 and older, not everyone as the rating implies. For more details, check out the ESRB ratings guide here.)

In the case of Scooby Doo! Night of 100 Frights I found nothing that was objectionable for my son to watch. However, playing the game requires a level of hand-eye coordination and patience that was far beyond my (then) three-year-old. In fact, as a seasoned gamer, there were a number of sequences in this game that truly frustrated me and required that I play them over and over until I accomplished the objective (and survived). Many more challenging games have such sequences and provide a sense of accomplishment for a veteran gamer. However, sequences like these can discourage and dishearten a younger and less-experienced player.

There are a few specific sequences in this title that hearken back to old arcade games or early 2D platformers where the only way that you can survive the sequence is through memorizing the patterns. Gamers 20 years ago thought that this was “fun” and it provided an opportunity for bragging rights. However, these days it can be a bit tiresome.

As I mentioned in the first part of this article, Scooby Doo! Night of 100 Frights is a hub-based game. This means that as you accomplish certain tasks and navigate particular areas, you then can return to the starting point. Usually, sucessfully navigating an entire area gives you the opportunity (thankfully) to unlock another linking point. This allows you to jump in at that point instead of having to go through the whole area again. In many cases, this saves time. In certain instances, it truly preserves sanity. I don’t mean to beat a dead horse. As I said before, overall the game is actually pretty good. It’s just those few areas that test whether or not you are committed to finishing the title.

In part one I mentioned the monster tokens. These are for the completist and are simply a novelty within the game. Acquiring them neither pushes the plot further nor helps in any way to finish the game. What they do offer is another opportunity to nurture the desire to collect things. It was this aspect of the game that really captured my son’s attention. He wasn’t as interested in the story or the plot line as much as seeing the different monsters in the areas and collecting the monster tokens. Once a token is acquired, it unlocks that creature in the monster gallery. There were entire 0ne-hour sessions during which all my son wanted to do was look at the statuesque representations of the monsters in this cavern showcase. This macabre trophy room became more important than any other aspect of the game. And it was his interest in this that got me thinking.

Whether it be Pokemon, Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars, or baseball cards, our culture encourages children to collect things. When I was a kid, I collected rocks and coins. As a young adult I began to collect comic books and videogames. The fact is that there is a big difference in collecting rocks as opposed to comics or baseball cards. Though there are rare gems and minerals, there are no lists that say, “only 1,000 gold nuggets were made.” Yet no matter what, when you want to fill a gap in your collection with a rare or limited item, it usually costs more and can become a bit of a thorn in your side until it’s acquired.

This concerns me. I see games that encourage this level of collecting (and we can trace this as far back as the original arcade version of PacMan) and I wonder what we’re “wiring” our kids brains to do. If my son becomes as obsessive about baseball cards as he was about those monster tokens, is he going to justify spending a thousand dollars on some single card one day to complete an historic team from his childhood? Should this be an issue for concern?

I don’t have answers. I have questions and concerns for my family. We all want what’s best for our children. And we want to help our kids navigate the challenges that life offers. Sometimes games (including sports, board games, and videogames) can offer the opportunity to role play and problem solve to enhance a skill-set for life. But they can provide the opportunity to learn other behaviors as well. Some of which may not serve our children’s best interest. All I can say is that as with all things, we parents must try to maintain open communication with our sons and daughters to better understand what they are learning and to help shape those lessons accordingly.

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With the holiday season fast approaching it’s worth mentioning Parental Controls. What are Parental Controls? According to Wikipedia,

“Parental controls are options, typically included in digital television services, computer and video games, or computer software used to access the Internet, that allows a parent to monitor or limit what a child can see or do and/or time-limit these activities.”

The newer consoles all allow for parental controls to be set. While a videogame system is never able to fully monitor your child’s play time these tools allow parents to set varying boundaries to help protect children.

If you find a shiny new Wii or PS3 under you tree this holiday season I highly recommend you take a look at the Parental Control settings for your system of choice.

Listed below are links to each of the major video game system manufactures websites where they detail how to enable parental settings.

Nintendo Wii

Xbox 360

Playstation 3

Hopefully in a future episode of Game Apparent TV we’ll detail out how to access these settings for those who haven’t had a chance to see them first hand!

Image provided under a Creative Commons license from Nick Bair via Flickr.

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The Scooby Game, Part 1:
My son loves Scooby Doo. I can’t blame him. I loved Scooby Doo when I was a kid. And honestly, looking at some of the kids shows these days, it holds up pretty well. The Mystery Gang cares about others and they don’t use weapons. They just use their minds. Granted, each episode usually has at least one plot hole big enough to accommodate a decent sized planet, but I still give ‘em an “A” for effort. With this in mind, last year I decided to introduce him to a fairly current Scooby game. (Keep in mind that I have systems that are 30 years old, so the fact that this title was available for the Xbox, PS2, and GameCube puts it only one generation behind and, therefore, fairly current in this context.)

For those of you who may grow weary of my assorted analogies and meandering prose, I’ll give you the quick up front. It was a BAD idea. My son was just three at the time and he was at too early an age to appropriately relate to a more engaging and immersive title such as this one. I would seriously advise against such exposure at this age based on this experience. Now, for those of you still interested in the details and willing to navigate the twisted thought patterns of my mind, read on…

The game is called Scooby Doo! Night of 100 Frights. It’s actually a pretty good game. I’d rate it a 7.5 out of 10. The ESRB grants it an “E” for everyone with a caveat of “comic mischief.” The game is essentially a 3D platformer in which you have to solve a rather complicated mystery. It appears Professor Alexander Graham has mysteriously disappeared and the gang sets out to find him. However, before they get far, they all get kidnapped and it’s up to Scooby to find everyone and solve the mystery. This title is hub-based and requires multiple re-visits to stages to get all of the “Scooby Snacks” and “monster tokens.” The former are required to open additional areas while the latter are not required to complete the story. However, it was the monster tokens that became my son’s obsession.

Acquiring a monster token unlocked a 3D version of that monster in the monster gallery. In many cases, you’ll see a monster token when you enter an area, but you will have no way to reach it. Most of these require special inventions made by Professor Alexander Graham. And the inventions required to access many of these tokens are not available until the later parts of the game. I can’t tell you how many times we’d spend time in the same room or on a particular section of docks trying to figure out how to get a monster token. And it wouldn’t matter if I told him that we needed to come back later, he wouldn’t hear of it.

That was just one of the issues. Another was the difficulty curve for this title. Even though it’s listed as an “E” title, that’s just content. Nothing offensive in there. However, I cannot imagine anyone under seven or eight years having the patience and the hand-eye coordination to handle many of the tricky maneuvers. Especially one sequence that required the player to jump from ship to ship as they were sinking and if you made one mistake, you had to start all over again. There were a number of these sequences throughout the game and after my son failed repeatedly, he’d hand me the controller dejectedly and say, “I can’t do it Daddy. You do it for me.”

As you may have already guessed, I had enough warning flags to try to stop this, but he was obsessed. I tried to tell him that we could play it when he was a little older. That really depressed him. It was like I had opened Pandora’s box and it was too late for me to ask everything to get back in so I could close it up and pretend that it didn’t happen. Nope. My son begged to play, “The Scooby Game,” as he called it, all day long.

My wife, God bless her, played dumb. She has never been a big fan of videogames anyway so it wasn’t really a lie when she told him that he’d have to wait for Daddy to come home from work because she didn’t know how to work the system. We had him play in the evening after his younger sister had gone to bed. We didn’t want her to want to play the game at this point (and she was only one). But this time of day was a problem too. Be aware that some forms of entertainment can wind us down whereas other can do the opposite. In this case, the attention required for the platforming elements and the puzzle-solving components was enough to have his brain in high gear. Not only did he hate stopping the game at the one-hour limit, but he had a harder time winding down and going to sleep. My wife and I discussed this at length after the first week and we resolved to get through this title, but as soon as it was done, we would not introduce another game to him that would require this level of involvement and attachment. I’ll pick this up next week and give you the details of what transpired over the following month or so that it took us to survive our first immersive title with our son. In the meantime, if you have specific questions, observations, or relevant experiences of your own, I invite you to click the link below and share your comments.

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