Adult themes in media, and my family

Over the last month or two I've been churning my thoughts, regarding adult themes in media, and my comfort level with exposing these themes to my kids.  At first I thought it was going to be really complicated. 

Nope.

The basic tension is pretty simple for me. Comes down to two things really.

First, is this going to traumatize my kid?  I'm not playing Gears of War with  my 9-yr-old daughter, I know her well enough to know that it would give her nightmares.

Second, when my kid sees an adult theme in media (games, tv, etc), how likely are they to emulate it in real life?

If you know your kids, the first point is almost a no-brainer. It's so automatic for me that I wasn't even going to mention it at first.  Sure, sometimes there'll be mis-steps, but live and learn. 

It's the second that has been creating tension in me lately.  Why am I completely relaxed when playing Gears of War with my oldest son (and we have a *blast*, by the way), but I get uneasy when watching Big Bang Theory (BBT)?  Here's why:  in Real Life, my son is not going to carry around a giant gun/chainsaw weapon and mow down 'roided out aliens with it.  He may, God forbid, within the next couple years wake up with a hangover and a girl in his bed and think "Oops, what happened?" (a trope in many a sitcom aimed at 20- to 30-somethings..we've seen it in both BBT and The Guild). This is also why I've never let my son play Grand Theft Auto.. the action is over the top, sure, but at it's base, it just some dude on a shooting spree. I've seen that too often in the news to call it fake or imaginary. No thanks.

One more note. Underlying both points is a basic assumption: I know what my kids are playing/watching.  If it's a game that's rated M, it's off limits even to my oldest, unless I've played it with him. 

What do you think? What litmus test do you parents out there use?

Geek TV

My son Nathan and I have some great laughs watching geeky TV shows together.  Nathan is only 13, and most of these shows target an older audience, but have enough geek references that he appreciates most of the humor.  Our top 3:
1) Chuck.  I've been watching this one since the beginning. Added Nathan into the loop about a year ago (Netflix great for this).  Both Chuck and Morgan are great characters, a lot of great laughs in this show.
2) Big Bang Theory.  This one has the most adult/sexual humor and situations per episode, I think. But still, the quirky/smart/nerdy characters are a lot of fun.
3) The Guild.  Not a TV show per se, but seeing as how we watch a lot of TV through Netflix anyway, the distinctions blur.
All these shows aim for a 20-30 demographic (I'm guessing), so I can't recommend you watch any of these with your kids, that's up to you to decide. With all of these, I've watched first, then allowed Nathan to join me.
It has forced me to think though: Why do I have no problem playing a rated M game like Halo, or even Gears of War with my 13-year-old, but I'm hesitant to let him watch when there's a show with couples sleeping together?  I have some answers (for myself, at least) that I'll likely share in a future post.

What's some of your favorite TV that you share with any/all of your kids?

Zombie Dice

Here's a fun little game you can play with almost any age of kid.  My daughter was 7 when we started playing it, and 2 years later she still likes it now and again.

The goal is to get 13 brains.  On your turn you draw 3 dice from the cup and roll them.  The dice will have one of three results : brain, shotgun blast, or roll again.  Get 13 brains and you win.  Get 3 shotgun blasts and your turn is over AND YOU LOSE ALL YOUR BRAINS!  Variability is added via 3 colors of dice : red, yellow and green. Red has the most shotgun blast sides, green has the most brain sides. Hence, green dice are preferred.

The most enjoyment comes from seeing how far you can push your luck.. Say you have 2 shotgun blasts so far, and 11 brains.  Your opponent has 1 blast, 12 brains.  Most green dice have been used, so it's mostly red and yellow dice left in the cup.  Do you push your luck with one more draw this turn, or hope your opponent pushes her luck and loses all her brains?

Simple game, plays quickly. Check it out.

Thoughts on "The Guild" and "Big Bang Theory"

It's kinda cool, kinda weird, how much crossover there is between The Guild and Big Bang Theory (my favorite network sitcom).  I think Guild came first, had Wil Wheaton as an antagonist first. Then Season 4 last episode has cameo by Simon Helberg (Howard Wolowitz in BBT). Also funny how Wheaton plays as a total jerk in both series, when I hear that in real life he's anything but. 
Just this week I and my oldest son found and watched the first 4 seasons of The Guild on Netflix. We'd already been sporadically watching Big Bang Theory over the last 6 months or so.  Our nerd tv fandom started (and continues) with Chuck.  The Guild is the perfect completion for our NerdTV trifecta!

Fluxx sucks

One of the pitfalls of gaming with your family is that you'll hate a game that the kids love.  And so I present Fluxx.. a card game where the rules change as you play cards.  Fluxx comes in a myriad flavors. We have Family Fluxx and Zombie Fluxx, and mostly play the latter.  There's also Monty Python Fluxx, Martian Fluxx, Eco Fluxx.. bleh.
My daughter likes Fluxx because it's simple to learn. The game starts with one rule "Draw a card, play a card".  The cards themselves have either new rules on them (like "Draw 3 cards", replacing the "Draw a card" rule, or a new winning condition, or a new object required to achieve a winning condition. For example, a card called "Stroll in the Park" might have the winning condition "Possess Tree card and Grass card to win the game". 
The issue I (and most adults I've played Fluxx with) have is that it's mostly random.. hard to have any strategy.  The winning condition constantly changes, the rules constantly change. Last summer I played the Monty Python variant with some adults, and it dragged on and on. Eventually a couple of us were begging the group to end it, and we started collaborating to give the win to someone, anyone, just so we could move on.
To summarize: kids love the randomness, adults hate it.

A blast from the past

A  month or two ago I played Clue: The Great Museum Caper, where players take turn being the thief, invisible to the other players. Player who steals the most paintings wins. I found the game mechanic of being the thief to be fairly cumbersome.  I expect the winner of that particular game didn't actually follow the rules correctly to begin with, not from deliberate cheating but from the complexity required to track movements.

This got me to thinking about a game I played as a kid, Stop Thief, that was somewhat similar, except that a little hand-held gadget handled the thief's movements, while all the players were competing to be the one who collared the criminal.  My mom had stored many of our neater games, lo all these years, so last time I was at her house I checked and sure enough, Stop Thief was still there! (She'd also kept Dark Tower.. If only the titular Tower hadn't been destroyed by a corroded battery, but I digress).  The kids, grandma, and I have played Stop Thief several times since, it's now one of the new "things we do at Grandma's house", and have found it holds up very well.

One game to rule them all

Although there are many games our family has played together over the last year, there's one game that, once we started it early spring 2011, we've never left.. Minecraft.  It's not so much a game as an open sandbox to explore, harvest resources, and build stuff.  We aren't the only ones who love it. The game started official beta at the beginning of the year (oh yeah, it's STILL in beta), and by January 11, 2011, it had already sold more than a million units.  Not bad for a little independent developer!

What led us to this game was not the number of users or popularity, at least not directly.  Early last year I bought a 4-pack of a game called Terraria. We played the heck out of this game. My son found a wiki on it, and became an expert in the game. We kept reading here and there that it was a spiritual successor to another game called Minecraft. We'd often heard it called "a 2D version of Minecraft", or "a sidescroller/platformer version", etc.  Once we'd all maxed out our equipment, killed the toughest monsters in Terraria, we moved on and the rest is history.

I find Terraria a little easier for the younger player, at least initially. It was a perfect progression for my daughter Mary. I think had she started Minecraft first, she might've been overwhelmed.  Having mastered Terraria first though, it was an easy switch.

So check them out. Try both, they're two of our families favorite pc games this year.

It's been such a long time

Shoot, I did exactly what I hoped I wouldn't.. got busy with work and life, etc., and totally neglected the blog.  But the gaming never stopped! A couple cool developments in the last year...

• started GMing my first Pathfinder campaign
• Started a Descent: Road To Legends game with my son Nathan and family friend Jonathan.
• Joined a couple local meetup.com gaming groups (Placerville and Sacramento)
• Got Kinect for our Xbox 360
• My oldest son Nathan bought my youngest son Luis a Nintendo DS

So lots of stuff to discuss, but where to start. Hmm...

Shrek Forever After

Just got back from seeing Shrek Forever After, with the kids, in IMAX 3D.  I don't think the IMAX 3D is necessary for this one. Good wrap up to the Shrek series.

Steam

The kids have been enjoying a bunch of PopCap games that I bought and downloaded from the Steam service, including Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies.  Bejewelled 2 is another favorite.
My wife and I also enjoy Bookworm on the iPhone.
I think if we didn't already own so many PopCap games, I'd just buy the complete PopCap collection for $100.

Frustration

I just spent an hour trying to get Wiimotes to work, only to realize that the sensor bar became slightly unplugged (still plugged in ALMOST all the way).  Arrrrg

But will it make my kids sleep like that?

These look really cool

Champions Online free weekend

Champions online is free this weekend. I wanted to see if my oldest might be interested, but then again we've got a bunch of outdoors demo/yard work to do, so mebbe not.
Installer can be found here.

Wizards 101

My oldest, Nathan, has been playing Wizards 101 lately. I recently asked him to talk a little bit about it.

It is a kid's version of World of Warcraft like Toontown.  For the classes (something Toontown doesn't have) you fill out a form that needs no personal information just what you would rather prefer or think is more destructive.  After you fill out the form it will give you a class (which you can change).  The class gives you free spells of that type and lets you wear special clothes that only certain classes can wear.  After that you do quests to level up your character.  Eventually you have to pay to get into certain areas.  It's a pretty good game overall.

Kids on the web

We've decided that my oldest son, Nathan, is responsible enough to have an email account, and to have limited internet access.  There were a couple of situations he came across that we've had to educate him about

1. Just like in real life. DON'T TALK TO STRANGERS! Gmail's email accounts for minors handle this pretty well. Nathan doesn't get any emails except from those people on an approved list.
2. Don't participate in chain emails. You know, those "send this on to 5 friends and you'll have a special day", emails.  Nathan has received several of these from friends, and we've told Nathan how they're the digital equivalent of landfill.
3. Any site that requires registration must be approved by us, the parents, first.  This is a no-brainer, really. But even then, we have to be discerning. Recently my son was invited by friends to join some site called Lockerz, where supposedly you win prizes by recruiting more friends, logging in regularly, etc. Just a big marketing scheme to get you on more spam lists.
4. Be careful of what browser-based games they play. Again, we have him run it by us beforehand. Even then, there were a couple I let him play until I learned better.  See this article

My Games

As an official member of the Hoffman family, I'm going to talk about my gaming here as well.  Like below, I mentioned Assassin's Creed, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect, none of which are appropriate for consumption by young minds. At least, not by the young(elementary school-age) ones in my house.
My oldest, Nathan, is in middle school, and he has occasionally watched me play these games. I usually avoid the "romantic interest" parts anyway. The violence.. well, that's a whole other debate.

Games the kids are playing

All the kids love Pocket God for the iPhone. Nathan has his own iPod Touch, we let the Mary and Luis use Jen's or my phone.
Mary has been playing on the WebKinz portal quite a bit.
Nathan bought Plants vs Zombies recently, for both his iTouch and the PC I believe, and is enjoying it quite a bit. It's a tower-defense game, with a macro card collection game wrapped around it.
And of course Boom Blox on the Wii is a family favorite. Great game to play together.

Video games I'm currently playing

I'm on an RPG kick lately. Just finished Assassin's Creed. Finally. After playing off and on for 2 years. My impetus for finishing was my desire to get to Assassin's Creed 2, which is a rare case of the sequel being better than the original, from what I hear.

I've been playing Dragon Age on the PC. I started on the PS3, made a bunch of different alts, didn't even get past the beginning segment with most of them.  Playing more on the PC these days, for various reasons. Great story, great production values, great game.

Playing Mass Effect 2 on Xbox 360. This is my favorite game of the moment, lately getting much more time than Dragon Age. Some have protested how this game is more "action-y" than the first. But I love the changes. They've done away with most of the tediousness, streamlined it down to the good stuff.  Combat seems to be closer to Gears of War in this one.. without cover you're toast. The story is somewhat hit or miss.  I'll try not to spoil here, but I've gotta share my main gripe so far in the story.  Of course the main plot deals with saving the universe again, no surprise there right? Part of preparing for that is finding all the people you want on your mission, like how you had Ash, Tali, Liara, Garrus, Wrex, etc. in the first one.
Every single one of these characters has unfinished business, a side-quest that needs to be resolved for that character to fully reach their performance potential (it unlocks a unique special ability for each). The story emphasizes that you're running out of time, but then all these characters need X, Y, and Z. You don't have to do every one of them, but still, it's a bit cheesy. Personally, I've just _got_ to see the side stories for all the characters, so I can't help but think about how long it's going to be until I proceed forward again in the main storyline.  In spite of that minor quibble, I'm loving this game.

First family game report: Dominions

Played our second game of Dominions last night. Players were: Mary, age 7, Nathan, age 11, and myself.
The kids are catching on to the game pretty quick, especially Nathan, who ended up trouncing us. It's a card game, where you build your deck over the course of the game. By the end of our short game (there are things you can tweak in game setup to make ending conditions come quicker) Nathan had 23 victory points, Mary had 9, and I had 6. Hey, I was focusing on teaching Mary the game, what can I say?!  Also, the endgame came quicker than I'd expected.
Anyway, once the players catch on to the basics, play goes very quickly. I'm looking forward to playing more.