Evolution of a Gamer: Episode 1
Written by Ryan Johnson Saturday, 16 October 2010 18:00
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Ryan Johnson watches another gamer begin his journey, and asks you to follow along.
I don't have a high Gamerscore for a good reason. I'm a husband and a dad. I doubt my GS will ever break a few thousand through the course of my Xbox 360 career, and that's okay. When I was a bachelor, I probably spent more time playing games than going to college classes (and I didn't skip classes, either). Now, other things take an important priority.
Gaming isn't gone from my life, though. It's in my blood. In my DNA. DNA that I have passed on to my son, now four years old. I have enjoyed watching him learn the ins and outs of video games, so I decided to start a series of articles on it. I have taught my son so many things about games; however, he in turn has taught me a thing or two.
When my son first came home, he was an adventure. Without a doubt, probably one of the easiest infants ever, but we still had to get used to the new routines and introduce him to the world. My son was learning the basics of life: hunger needs food, tired needs sleep. I was learning that virtual experience points mean NOTHING compared to real-life experience points. My level 86 Final Fantasy 7 characters mean NOTHING when I start up Final Fantasy 8 for the first time, but as we prepare for another child, I think that, while unique, certain leveled experiences (I'm a lvl. 76 diaper-changer and I'd say a lvl. 27 crib-assembler) will come in rather handy when the new one arrives.
As my son got older, he wanted to know what we were doing before he could talk. So his reaction to this was to try to join in with us. I might have a group of four friends over to do some multiplayer. When my friends came for a "guy's night", my wife would watch my son, but I would NEVER bar him from the room. He would try to grab my controller, so I'd give him one...unplugged. That worked for a while, until I started seeing him yank my controller out of the port so he could plug in his. He knew that the social experience somehow involved this strange box and being hooked to it... My son learned cause and effect; I learned his love of social interaction.
One Christmas, he was introduced to Fisher-Price's GeoTrax set. A simple model railroad. We set up the world's largest track (Thanks Grandma for chipping in on THAT one) and handed him a controller. We would wiggle the stick and watch the trains go. He was interested, but didn't make the connection until a few hours later. I still remember his face: he crawled toward the trains and the controller hit the ground, moving it into reverse. Train stops and turns around. He sits up, train stops. He looked at the controller...at the train...grabbed the navigation stick...*hmm....if I do this......* The joy he saw in realizing he was in control was astounding. We couldn't get him off of the trains for the rest of the holiday season, and to this day, we still build tracks. My son learned that a simple controller could affect something else that day, and it quickly meshed into Daddy's videogame controllers.
Then, I began trying to get my son into my hobby. He's old enough to get more involved in activities that take longer, so I head to GameStop. This was the time when they were clearing out PS1 games for literally pennies. I go to the bargain bin, and they have some Genesis games in there! As I sift, I find Toy Story and Thomas the Tank Engine for the Genesis. A happy Dad picks these up and brings them home.
I boot up Toy Story, thinking "He knows these guys, he's gonna have a blast!" Recognizes characters, is excited to see Woody, and grasps for the controller. I hand it over, but his experience so far is a forward/backward lever, and that's it. He hits jump. Woody jumps. He laughs. He hits jump again. Woody jumps. He laughs. His other thumb hits the down arrow. Woody squats. He laughs. First-time parent Ryan is trying to say "see, this makes him go this way, this makes him jump, this makes him swing his string..." He wants to jump and duck and run into bad guys and let the timer run down....for a second I get impatient, perhaps even frustrated. "This is how you're supposed to be playing!" I think. But then I learn my lesson: as gamers, we are getting into a completionist mindset. We buy a game to beat it. Once its done, we often will throw it on the shelf to collect dust and say to friends "yeah, I completed that. Had level 86 characters, final boss never even got to attack (happened with Sephiroth, BTW)"
And here was my son was getting entertainment out of watching a guy jump. It changed my attitude toward a lot of games: I don't have to 100% find everything unless I find it fun! How many times do we gamers do that search mission, trying to find the 100th hidden package, when about 30 packages in it stopped being fun, just to say we completed it? A Video GAME...is a GAME. Not a JOB. Thanks for the important lesson, son.
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Comments
my kid is 3 now and i still have all my old consoles collectiing dust .. but now and then ill go back to them and have a blast with old games like astal and sonic 2.. these games never get old... iv personaly never completed sonic 2 but love it so much.. my kid loves to look at the intro to radiata stories and play around with the controllers.. she always ask me to put the book game on ( radiata stories),,, kids are so simple... and i look at games today and i realize it's not about having fun... but just completing a game for the stories sake,,, good graphics dont make a good game,,,
And yeah even though all he could do was make that whiley little red bandicoot spin some-what schizophrenical ly around the screen and eventually into a space doc with a sword he loved it!
I have never been a completionist and always explored and appreciated the entire game, otherwisei feel bad for the devs and im glad my little bro is enjoying every part of the games he plays too...
We both loved dive bombing jets and flying under the bridge without crashing into the sea in ace combat 3.... hours of giggling!
I don't know if this will get referred to you, John, but Episode II is up now, as of last month. Check it out, and keep looking! I'll be posting, I'd say, once every couple of months as my son develops.
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