> Jake particularly liked the Final Fantasy and Soulcalibur series: “Anything with killing,” says Dee, wincing.<p>This line lost the author a bit of benefit of my doubt. Certainly there is violence in those games, but they’re not particularly gory or murder-oriented. Seems like this article was written by and for people who have never played any video games.
Even ignoring all the "EvilCorp spending $billions to make video games even more addictive" stuff...what else are current-day western children allowed to do, that feels like useful work, and provides short-term senses of agency / accomplishment / self-worth?<p>In my childhood, we were at least free to roam the neighborhood - which contained plenty of good child playmate prospects, with similar freedom. Or help dad to build & maintain our house. (I can't recall that he ever brought in an electrician / plumber / HVAC tech / whatever, even for major stuff.)<p>But that mid-20th-century suburban idyll was still a huge self-worth downgrade from my parents' childhoods. They did farm & domestic labor, at scale, in economic circumstances where kids being good workers was very obviously important to their family's access to food, shelter, and clothing.
Slight tangent to the article, but I wanted to bring up a style of game my son plays, rng games, that are very popular on roblox and other places.<p>The basic idea is there is very little actual gameplay involved. The user sits in the game, often AFK (often overnight), and the game does rng rolls over and over. You have a very low chance to win "auras" in most of these games (chances can be 1 in a million, but they have all magnitudes of odds). Auras are just visual+audio effects that are on your player that other users can see.<p>I think we know gambling (can be) bad for people, especially developing brains, and I see very little difference between gambling (slot machines) and these games. The major difference is you cannot win money (at least not directly) with these games. However, what is the defining quality of money that makes gambling different from these games? The users win auras which are social credit, which can be just as important for users in these age brackets.<p>I worry about my son playing these games. I know the knee-jerk reaction will be: "if you're concerned just don't let him play them". However there is cost to that, as his friends play them so him not being able to play them causes a lot of friction. So I don't want to overreact.<p>Note: I've loved video games since as long as I can remember, and still play them.
I remember playing JRPGs late into the night growing up and reading GamePro magazine. Those were my first experiences reading for fun and eventually led to me reading other things, like Dostoyevsky and PKD.