The Internet touches every aspect of your children's lives. Where you might look up an unknown word in a dictionary, your kids are more likely to use dictionary.com. Where you use the phone, they use instant messenger. An even bigger difference can be found in how they play games. Where the games of their parents' generation involved a board, cards, or the most sophisticated console system, the games your kids play online can be much more complex. They mine gold, expand empires, fight dragons and aliens alone or with dozens, hundreds, even thousands of their teammates. It all adds up to a confusing mix of names, places, lingo and lingo that can leave you with no idea what your kids are actually doing and a vague sense of unease that some part of it might not be good for them.
What is right for your children is a decision only you can make. How much violence they are exposed to, how much time they spend in front of a screen, and how often they are in contact with unknown faceless people, both common on the Internet, are all questions that you have to wrestle with and ultimately decide for your family. . While we can't help you make these rough decisions, we can certainly help you get the information you need to better understand your children's hobbies, both to make informed judgments about what they should and shouldn't be doing, and to help you achieve another part of their life that previously might have seemed like something of a puzzle box.
Easy stuff
The simplest type of online game is the kind of Flash or Java game you usually see running in your web browser. This type of game tends to be relatively simple compared to the standalone games that will be discussed later. Common examples include Bejeweled, Zuma, and Diner Dash. These games are almost universally single-player and don't have the kind of violent or adult content that keeps parents up at night. If these were movies, they would be rated G, with the occasional game that might stretch up to PG. If this is the type of game your kids are into, then relax first. Then try the game. Many of these games can be a lot of fun for even the most demanding players. Some, like Bookworm, even have actual educational content. These games can be just as much of a bonding and learning opportunity as throwing a baseball in the backyard, and they have the added bonus of making it much easier to get your kids to sit down and play.
FPS: Finding something to shoot.
FPS stands for First Person Shooter. They are first person in the same because it can be a story. This means that the player sees the world through the eyes of one character and interacts with the game environment as if they were that character. Shooter is based on the primary goal of most such games, shooting everything that happens to be the bad guy. FPS games are among the most popular online. Common examples include Doom, Battlefield:1942, and the X-Box game Halo. From a parent's perspective, these games can be cause for concern. It varies greatly in the amount of realism, degree of violence, language and overall attitude. The only way to get a good idea of content issues is to watch a specific game. If your kids don't want you to watch them play, start the game yourself sometime when they're not around. There is considerable variation in how violent and how personal FPS content can be from game to game. For example, the single-player portion of Halo has players fighting alien invaders with mostly energy weapons and minimal realistic human suffering. In contrast, WWII-themed games tend to show realistic violence. Due to the theme, it is suitable for the game, but it may not be for your children. Online gaming presents a potentially bigger problem. The goal of online FPS games is almost always to kill other players. While some games have different modes where this is a secondary objective, they all give the player a weapon and encourage them to use it on characters representing other people. Simulated bloodshed and the use of violence against others to achieve goals may be things you do not want your children to be exposed to. Again, these are your decisions, but we encourage you to make them with as much information as possible. Talk to your children. Find out what they think, in their words, in the game. Make sure they see the line between what's happening in the game and what's happening in the real world, between what's okay to simulate and what's okay to do. The answers may surprise you. If your kids understand the differences, seeing real violence as deplorable and simulated violence as part of the game, then FPS games, even online ones, can be a perfectly healthy way to have fun and blow off some steam. Ultimately, it's up to you to make sure that what your child gets out of the game is good for them.
Next time we'll talk about RTS and MMORPG, two other common types of commercial online games, and touch on the two demons of addiction and predation.
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