Video Game's Joe

This is captain Joe back at it again! How are my gamers doing! I hope all is well. I wanted to discuss something that is very important. Family, number one rule is always respect your family.

My father was very aware of my hobbies of gaming, but he hoped I would overgrow it eventually. My mother was very supportive, but hoped I would give it up after I turned 18. Even if my parents don’t see eye to eye with my hobbies for gaming, I will always love them. Still they tried to understand my love for gaming when I was growing up.

If it wasn’t for my mother, I would have never played Crash bandicoot 2. I will appreciate the day my mother got me the Nintendo 64, I felt like I died and went to gaming heaven. If it wasn’t for my father, I would have never experienced those bootleg video game systems that had 999 in 1 NES games (Mostly 75% of the games were just duplicates) Thanks dad! My parents tried to play some video games with me growing up, but they weren’t really into it (I can’t blame them).

Anyway, I wrote this article to show you the significance between a parent and a child gamer. Why is so important for them to game together during their leisure time. Here are a few several reasons why gaming with your children is important.

(1) Spark their inner creativity

Don’t you want your child to get inspired, and become more creative? I’ll admit. There is a lot of games that isn’t kid friendly, but there are some games with great stories. Stories, that a child can learn. Maybe you can introduce to your children games such as crash bandicoot, or Overwatch for multiplayer madness (unless you want to get grounded for being better at the game than your father). Games like Mario Maker, can inspire your children to hopefully want to be a game designer one day. There is so much possibilities.

(2) Help them Learn about history, and culture through video games

kay we all know that Assassin’s Creed is a violent game. Still it has a lot of educational aspect to the game. Something your children will like to learn more about history, or culture. “Games can not only teach language skills, they can instill and propagate cultural knowledge, sensitivity and awareness. (Credit: certmag.com)” If you want a great example of video game teaching about culture I recommend show Never Alone to your children (Available for the PS4,PS3,XBONE, WIIU)

(3) Enhance their vocabulary through gaming.

Now this is a little tricky, because most games have basic structure in their dialogue. Characters, and stories displayed in gaming are often basic and understandable. Your children will occasionally encounter a hard word in a game dialogue and they may end up confused by it. This is your shot to show your children the dictionary book (or google). You want to peak your children’s interest in learning new vocabulary words that they noticed in the dialogues of their video games. I’ll give you an example. In Final Fantasy 7, Cloud strife was getting ready to fight Sepiroth (Basically approaching the last boss of the game) Cloud Strife quoted this in the game “All right, everyone, let’s mosey.” To tell you the truth I didn’t know what Mosey meant, so I looked it up and it meant to walk in a leisurely manner. If only my father threw a dictionary book at me to help me learn, instead I went on to face Sepiroth (and got my ass handed to me).

(4) Working together to achieve a common goal.

You’re the parent, and they are the children. So how do you teach them the satisfaction of completing a task/goal? Video games, of course (isn’t this article about that anyway lol). “often parents don’t understand that many video games are meant to be shared and can teach young people about science, literacy and problem solving. Gaming with their children also offers parents countless ways to insert their own ‘teaching moment. (Credit: Forbes.com)”

You see, a parent can have many educational advantages to teach their children. A child’s curiosity is often seeked with an answer for what is confusing for them. They make a wrong discussion as to say they fall of the stage, you can say something like “Well, that’s not how gravity works in the real world.” Something small like that can peak a child’s interest in physics, or math (if they are interested in learning the calculations behind gravity) but I digress. Playing a game like Super Mario 3D world, can help encourage cooperation and focus between the parent and children. Nintendo games are mostly children friendly, and co-op as well. You can’t lose here if you’re a parent to a curious gaming child.

(5) Teaching your children to behave, and be respectful.

Let’s be honest. Gaming with your children can be enjoyable, but you will soon start to see that they are impatient. Hell, I was an impatient little rude gaming pirate when I was young lad. I would tell my father that he was terrible at a game, and then before you know it I’m grounded for a couple days (That means I couldn’t watch Ren and Stimpy, and that was a big deal in the 90’s). If you ever see your children acting rude while you are gaming with them. This is your chance to teach them the ways of politeness. Just because they are not in school, doesn’t mean you should allow them to be rude. Doing this will benefit your children now, and especially when they have friends over. You don’t want to see them strangling each other with game controllers.

Here are some suggestions for education games that your children may like.

Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution