Category: Parenting

Kids and Games – Inspired by Penny Arcade

I like video games. Not just in the sense of spending a few hours a week playing them, but the development and design of them, their history in popular culture, and the unique ways the medium allows us to experience new places and characters like nothing before.

I’m also a parent with a daughter I love dearly. Which, as you can imagine, can create friction between the two interests. Kari loves video games too. We play Minecraft together – exploring caves and looking for diamonds and avoiding monsters. She knows what kind of games she can play – and why she can’t watch dad play his more mature games.

I’m lucky, I grew up with a Gameboy in my hands and had supportive parents that looked over my shoulder every once in a while. Some parents didn’t. I know folks whose first interaction with video games was via the unrelenting requests of their children to buy the latest Sega Super Mega Ultra Station 2000 for Christmas.

I was inspired by Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade and decided to reach out to my daughter’s principal to see what I could do to help educate other parents on video games. Below is the email I sent to her this evening. If you’re an adult who cares about young people growing up in a positive gaming culture I urge you to do something. Communication and education is far more powerful than talking heads and fear mongering.

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Dr. Vogelsang,

I’m Chris and my daughter, Kari Koerner, is in Ms. Parker’s 1st grade class.

Lately there’s been a lot of talk about video games in mainstream media. Katie Couric just did an hour-long piece that, while she has good intentions, makes video games look like something the devil came up with. Here’s a good retort if you’re familiar with the piece. The whole thing is a bit crazy and like most things, the truth lies somewhere in between.

I want to talk to other parents and teachers about video games. Not some boring 45 slide PowerPoint, but an honest chat with literal examples of what games are really like, how to find games that are appropriate, and how to guide our children to the right games, in the right context, at the right time.

This past March my family traveled to Boston for Spring break. Kari, Jackie and I went to a convention called Penny Arcade Expo or PAX for short. It’s a huge gathering of 70,000 gaming nerds from all walks of life. People who love board games, Dungeons & Dragons, card games, classic video games and yes, even the modern blockbuster titles we hear about in the news. People traveled thousands of miles to see new games and hang out with people who share the same interests. And you know what? It was the most amazing group of kind, interesting people I’ve ever met.

The guys who started PAX are behind a webcomic called Penny Arcade. It’s a series that is always mature and sometimes offensive, but spares no victim in being brutally honest about video games and the culture that surrounds them. They are very outspoken on issues such as this and just this morning posted an article about an idea they had. You can read it here (Warning: strong language). The gist, if you don’t wish to read it yourself, is that one way we can help is to educate other adults on the ins-and-outs of video games. They inspired me to reach out to you to see what I can do for Bowles and the Rockwood School District.

It’s awesome to be a nerd and I’d like to share my knowledge and enthusiasm with other parents and teachers. I threw together a rough outline that I hope might give an overview of what we’d talk about.

  • Explain what ESRB ratings mean. Show them how to use these ratings to determine appropriate purchases (There’s also a free and pretty awesome ESRB app for smartphones).
  • Demo some recent games of various ESRB Rating Levels.
  • Show what it’s like to play certain games (walk through a level from a couple different games).
  • Talk about hand-held gaming like Nintendo DS and Apple iPads. These systems too have very mature games (like Resident Evil) alongside Mario and Pokemon.
  • Talk about online gaming, like Xbox Live. What will kids hear when playing with anonymous strangers.
  • Talk about parental restrictions. All systems released in the past 7 years have some from of parental restrictions, many associated with the ESRB ratings.
  • Talk about social pressures. Kids want to be popular and included.
  • Talk about what impact parents can have on other children when they visit their house (to play video games).
  • Talk about how to educate other parents in a polite manner about video games, the ESRB and the implications of inappropriate gaming.

Let me know what you think. I’d love to grab lunch and chat if you’re up to it. If you have any ideas of a potential opportunity to get a group of interested parents/teachers in a room I’m all for putting something together.

Yours,
Chris Koerner
clkoerner.com

Guns.

I’m getting this off my chest as a parent and citizen. I grew up around guns and those that favor them as a thing to own.
1. Getting help for mental issues should not make people, especially men, feel ostracized.
2. These services should be abundant and readily available.
3. No one should say “not my problem” when introduced to individuals who visibly need help.
4. Assault rifles are unnecessary for civilians. This is 2012, not the 1700’s. The tyranny of any government is a self-induced fantasy.
5. The argument that we need guns to protect us from our democratically elected government is absurd. Even an assault rifle is useless against jets, missiles, rockets, etc. You might as well argue we should be able to strap those to our trucks, cause you know THE EVIL GOVERNMENT.
6. You’re right, signs don’t stop criminals from doing crazy things. Neither does gun locks, the cost of bullets, gun laws or a society that encourages violence and fear to perpetuate the celebrity of asshats that do stuff like this.
7. You know what does help? Removing access to portable metal contraptions whose sole purpose is the killing of living things. Make it as hard as PHYSICALLY possible for people.
8. You know you don’t need that gun. You just want it to be cool and live out some lame male Rambo fantasy of being a badass – knowing, of course, that truthfully our lives are more safe and predictable than any other time in human history.

My First Pixel Art

My daughter and I spent Saturday editing sprites to make our own Pokemon. Her idea, I just helped her use the pencil and select tool in Photoshop.*

Above is a Pikachu with Keldeo’s tail…actually they all have Keldeo’s tail. The yellow Reshiram is our centerpiece.

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*and some Match Color for fun.

 

Can’t Tell Them What They Don’t Know

Having far surpassed my early formative years, I look back at the advice I was given in a different light. I now find myself sometimes in the role of advice giver1 and I try to be a good role model for those that come after me.

There are a few times in your life when you can tell someone about an experience you’ve had in hopes of giving them some insight into their own future.

The three that I can think of off the top of my head are as follows:

  • A teenager about life in general – specifically about being yourself and love/relationships
  • A first-time expecting parent on what raising a child is like
  • A person starting at a new company

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As girls became less of a weird fascination and more of a “Hello there” <insert Flynn Rider voice> interest, my father would often repeat the following nugget of advice.

“They’re (women) are just as afraid and nervous about talking to you as you are of them. Go talk to them. The worst that could happen is they say no.”

Looking back, this is some of the best advice I’ve ever been given. I wish2 I would have learned to put aside my fears of talking to people – especially people I liked – and just go and say hello. Not just in romantic relationships either, but for all situations where a simple hello would have gotten me much farther than awkward shoe-gazing.

Case in point. Last summer I got to meet a designer and all around excellent guy at a conference where he presented. I, a grown adult, was sweating bullets as I approached him after his speech. I introduced myself and said that I was jealous of the city from which he hails and that I’d love to visit it again someday. He said thanks and invited me to contact him if he was ever in town. This summer I hope to do exactly that.

Had I not made such a simple effort I would have regretted it much more than any possible ‘no’ of embarrassment. I need to do this more often.

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The feeling of watching over your daughter as she sleeps can be explained in great detail, but it isn’t until you experience it for yourself that the impact can be felt. There’s a feeling that no tale can invoke and all attempts to are shallow and pale. But I shall try.

Knowing that a decision was made that led to, out of billions of possible outcomes, the life of this little thing. A being who at one moment can amaze you with naiveté and a depth of curiosity, frustrate you with misunderstanding and shorten your patience in the space of a second.
That’s part of being a parent that can never be explained in a guide to parenting or book about child development. It has to be experienced.
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The expression “the grass is always greener” is perplexing. I understand the meaning, but in my experience it’s more like “the grass is always grass”. They are all different, but the same in so many ways.
I joined a much larger non-profit than the prior one I worked at. 10x larger in the number of employees across 4 states instead of two campuses and in a totally different sector of business. Yet some of the same struggles I faced in the smaller and more tightly knit community I see in the larger and more dispersed organization.
When you’re thinking about joining a new organization you hopefully can do some legwork to find out more about what the organization does, what kind of people work there and what the general culture is like. You’ll compare it to past jobs, past relationships and past experiences in general. It won’t be until you’re at the new place of work for some time until you fully realize what you’ve gotten yourself into.
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After getting the nerve to ask someone on a date and having it go well – you get this feeling.
When you read your child a familiar story and they laugh at a joke they missed before – you get this feeling.
After stressing about your role in the organization and the boss congratulates you on completing a project or task at work – you get this feeling.
That feeling is important. It’s you leveling up. Experience is gained. The kind that can’t be read from a guide or bypassed with any shortcut.