Our children will n'er know the beginning, will not remember first and second generation videogames.

[pigeon_of_doom]

I'd like to point out here that I am 22 years old, my sense of generational integrity is not so far removed from my peers.

I think you're not grasping the intention behind my initial inquiry. I'm not saying that the old days of concrete win in all ways over the new day of marble, I'm just curious as to how people feel the present era of videogames will shape their children, if they feel it will shape them any differently at all.

This is not a flame war.

It was only a semi-serious reply, as I said: I just felt like having a bit of a rant. I didn't quite grasp what you were trying to get at in the OP, so I just flew off the handle at a few parts I took issue with. Your OP did strike a chord with me, I've met a few gamers who haven't met Ocarina of Time. Really was an eye-opener.

 

[Mjolnir07]

This is precisely what I am saying. Games back then ripped eachother off but still maintained a fancy for avoiding the mundane and repetitive. Cartoons back then had sincere morality in them, sincere. They were just molded in a way that children could relate to and appreciate, There are scarcely any cartoons present today with these qualities outside of PBS, but PBS force feeds it to its audience and therefore it's not entertaining. The subtlety is lacking in all areas. Not to bash PBS or at all claim it is in any way not what it wishes to be, just that it's never been part of this discussion.

Before I can answer this properly you're going to have to tell me what PBS is (tried looking it up but I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're not talking about a Pharmasuetical Benefits Scheme).

Public Broadcasting Systems. I'm not even sure if they're still around, but they were well known and even notorious for their telethons and crispy clean though painfully bland television programs. They used to beg for money half of the day. If you've ever heard "Paid for by viewers like you" then you've been exposed to PBS. It was a cable channel, one of the very few which was not privately funded.

 

[Aerodynamic]

i doubt my kid will be a gamer, im the only one who is a gamer in my family, and if they do play video games, it will be the Nintendo Stuff i grew to hate after the 64.
In the case he is a gamer i will show him the games i Loved, stuff like Tekken, Half-Life, COD 1&2, Counter-Strike, Portal, Crash Bandicoot, the first marios, Fallout 1-3, Syphon Filter, Ratchet and clank, Jak and daxter, TF2 And spyro

 

[lostclause]

This is precisely what I am saying. Games back then ripped eachother off but still maintained a fancy for avoiding the mundane and repetitive. Cartoons back then had sincere morality in them, sincere. They were just molded in a way that children could relate to and appreciate, There are scarcely any cartoons present today with these qualities outside of PBS, but PBS force feeds it to its audience and therefore it's not entertaining. The subtlety is lacking in all areas. Not to bash PBS or at all claim it is in any way not what it wishes to be, just that it's never been part of this discussion.

Before I can answer this properly you're going to have to tell me what PBS is (tried looking it up but I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're not talking about a Pharmasuetical Benefits Scheme).

Public Broadcasting Systems. I'm not even sure if they're still around, but they were well known and even notorious for their telethons and crispy clean though painfully bland television programs. They used to beg for money half of the day. If you've ever heard "Paid for by viewers like you" then you've been exposed to PBS. It was a cable channel, one of the very few which was not privately funded.

Right, thanks. I'm not sure how much I can comment on bad snes games because, unlike the good ones, people don't still talk about them much and so I'm less likely to have heard of them, much less played them. I have to admit I'm at a disadvantage there so I'll have to concede this round to you. I'm sure there were some bad ones because they're inevitable in any console generation but I don't know about them.

 

[f1r2a3n4k5]

I am indeed personally insulted, and I yet still disagree. Bugs bunny tricks daffy duck into blowing his beak backwards for a REASON, the reason mind you is usually to escape danger. This entertained children AND delivered them a coefficiently proper and challenging scenario involving well thought out euphemisms and direct parallels to problem solving. Spongebob Squarepants beats on Squidward to Squidwards comic annoyance, this entertains children and nothing else. The substance is behind the motivation of the characters.

http://teachingtechnology.suite101.com/article.cfm/spongebob_versus_scooby_doo

Now, there was no bigger fan of Scooby Doo than I was. But in essense, entertainment has always been first in the children's television industry, now or then. Any additional values are ancillary.

 

[Irridium]

I will start them out with my N64, then move onto the PS1, then the Dreamcast/PS2/Xbox, then the current generation. I would go older than N64 but my old SNES died a few weeks ago

My children/Child will learn to know what came before them, to respect them, and I will not let them turn into mindless FPS addicts with no sense of decent story or gameplay.

And if my childen EVER asks "What is Beyond Good and Evil", I will slap them and make them play my old copy.

The same goes if they don't know what Stranger's Wrath, KotOR, Psychonoughts, and Monkey Island. No one should go without playing one of those games.

They will learn and respect what came before them. I will make sure of it. And for television, I will pull out my old VHS collection of Looney Toons and 3 Stooges, because I will make sure that they never grow up watching the crap that is on TV nowadays.

 

[Cortheya]

-
To use your TV analogy, I don't see Bugs Bunny as all that different from Spongebob. Comic antics. It's a different generation, same content.

Bugs Bunny had to use wit, though wit that is aimed at a young audience, to outsmart a man who was hunting him. He had to display a charisma and charm that directed his attacker at Daffy Duck instead of himself. He had to perpetually reinvent himself to keep himself out of Elmer Fudds hands. He did all of this while maintaining a coy and everpresent zen. Spongebob Squarepants pisses his brown shorts and runs around smacking things and crying. Bugs Bunny used comically oversized objects to annihilate his foes, or atleast apprehend or dissuay them.

I am insulted that there is a single person who cannot see the difference between Bugs Bunny and Spongebob Squarepants.

Fred Flinstone and George Jetson dealt with common dilemmas handed to them by their clearly adult lives at work and at home, but found solutions that fit the betterment of their familys. All while doing so in a way that subtly taught children their principles of family character and yet keeping them entertained. Spongebob Squarepants simply entertains children.

You are personally insulted that I can compare on a large-scale? Intense.

If you want to get into semantics, we can also say that they are different because one is a rabbit and the other is a sponge and one takes place in a forest and the other takes place underwater. At their core, they are the same however. You're got an anthropomorphic animal engaged in a situation which they resolve through the use of classic prop antics towards their antagonist. Whether Bugs Bunny tricks Daffy Duck into blowing his beak backwards with a shotgun or Spongebob nets Squidward with a sampling gun, the goal is the amusement of small children with antics.

Personally I can't stand spongebob nowadays the goal seems to be stupidity for the sake of stupidity.

 

[PrimaVita]

Its not fear but apathy that grips me in this. Children will have integrity and value if it is taught to them. If it is not taught to them, then they will not have it. Parents are responsible for the world they give to their children as well as the children they give to the world. People have to learn to be human or else their just animals pantomiming humanity. If everything goes awry then we will get to see characters of the people that spawned them,and a world that was a hideous reflection of what it once was. But I doubt it, hopefully.

(By the way PBS stands for Public Broadcasting Service. http://www.pbs.org/)

 

[squid5580]

There was more focus on story back then? Really?

You consider that stories like Mario and Battletoads, and pretty much almost every game from back then actually had a deep story? Most didn't. I'd even argue that there were more completely story-less games in those olden times then there are today.

They did have some gameplay value, of course - but otherwise, it was pretty much garbage.

And don't even mention the superhero junk, or at least most of it.

Also, Spongebob is hardly a terrible kids show. If I had kids, it'd probably be one of the few things that I might've let them watch - but then again, fuck the whole "TV-as-a-parent" idiocy so many people have accepted as normal today. If you don't have time to raise a child yourself, don't fucking get one - condoms and even more successful "pills" are there for that.

Don't forget the amazing story of Final Fantasy 1 and Dragon Warrior lol. Even the games that required good stories were crap compared to todays standards. I am glad my daughter will never have to suffer through a Colecovision with the numberpad controller and insert that was garbage. Or a 2 button controller and a half hour game that she saved her allowance for months to buy.

 

[Ajaysallthat]

For a time I was concerned that my children, of which I am not too many steps behind beginning to have, will not know a world before the instant gratification of mass media and the world wide web. My worry extended to how the world as we know it now will shape them if they weren't around to know it before became what it is today- a giant net of free exchange between information and what I like to call Spongebob Squarepantsosity- or mindless, unreasonably unfounded primal-ly unrefined garbage intended to stroke no sense of morality or pressure a higher class of response from its audience than fart humor and bald tragedy.

Anyway, then it occurred to me that I could give a fuck less about that, what about when they first awaken to the world of videogames no shorter advanced than holographic? To me it seems that in much the same way that at one point in time, atleast a decade and a half ago, videogames had a greater depth in them because there was less focus on visual presentation than on making a well thought out story entertaining to interact with as in that same era were dying the final notions of when children's television programs always had a clear protagonist with a definitive moral dilemma which in the end taught a life lesson. I speak of course about Batman.

Thoughts? Our children born after the NES, even the Nintendo 64 and I might even go so far as to the say the Dreamcast and Sony Playstation 1, do you fear for their sense of value and integrity? I know I do.

I might sound very naive but i was born and raised on the N64 and SNES and i have to admit that we have advanced for the better, in comparison our technology has advanced to supertech levels! and frankly im willing to live it and love it

 

[Ajaysallthat]

I used to, but now I don't care cause if they EVER say Zelda sucks, there getting a boot up their ass. XD

EDIT: Hmm maybe I should of used a better example, because chances are Zelda will be around FOREVER

AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER...

We can only pray my friend!
may it be with us forever!

 

[Guitar Gamer]

*shakes cane* DAM KIDS and their holographic visual stimulation! why in my day you had to use a phisical controller with BUTTONS to control what you did and saw , none of this "virtual reality " jibber jabber

 

[LewsTherin]

I will preserve a N64 controller, and whenever they whine about poor controls I shall show it to them, and smile as their little pudgy faces cringe in fear.

 

[Ashtovo]

all i know is that if i have kids im forcing them to play at least an hour of oldschool games a day. and 3 hours on the weekends.

 

[thiosk]

The question was do you think your children will be shaped by an incapacity to remember a time before the technology that will be available to them when they are raised. It wasn't a statement of "L0l a11 g4m3z b4 1994 r00l and 4ll after suX." Troll.

wow you take offense easily. My recollection of an thread from days of yore was meant as an example that not only will the younger generations not remember technology before their time, they will not be interested in the roots of the gaming experience.

I'm really perplexed how you considered my participation in the topic to be trolling. Although wording it the way you did, how the hell is someone supposed to remember something when they were born after it happened?

now if you will excuse me, I have a busy day ahead of me. I must send a letter to the territory of California via pony express, listen to an elvis album on 8-track, and prepare a piping hot beverage in my Mr. Coffee.

 

[Mjolnir07]

The question was do you think your children will be shaped by an incapacity to remember a time before the technology that will be available to them when they are raised. It wasn't a statement of "L0l a11 g4m3z b4 1994 r00l and 4ll after suX." Troll.

wow you take offense easily. My recollection of an thread from days of yore was meant as an example that not only will the younger generations not remember technology before their time, they will not be interested in the roots of the gaming experience.

I'm really perplexed how you considered my participation in the topic to be trolling. Although wording it the way you did, how the hell is someone supposed to remember something when they were born after it happened?

now if you will excuse me, I have a busy day ahead of me. I must send a letter to the territory of California via pony express, listen to an elvis album on 8-track, and prepare a piping hot beverage in my Mr. Coffee.

Forgive my presumption.

 

[Music Mole]

There was more focus on story back then? Really?

You consider that stories like Mario and Battletoads, and pretty much almost every game from back then actually had a deep story? Most didn't. I'd even argue that there were more completely story-less games in those olden times then there are today.

They did have some gameplay value, of course - but otherwise, it was pretty much garbage.

And don't even mention the superhero junk, or at least most of it.

Also, Spongebob is hardly a terrible kids show. If I had kids, it'd probably be one of the few things that I might've let them watch - but then again, fuck the whole "TV-as-a-parent" idiocy so many people have accepted as normal today. If you don't have time to raise a child yourself, don't fucking get one - condoms and even more successful "pills" are there for that.

Lol, battletoads.

 

[Mr.Pandah]

Well, isn't it up to the parents to teach their kids whats awesome and whats not? I personally will hold onto my classics and have my kids play those before they jump into this new generation of gaming. Those games may be harder, but they are much simpler. Lets be honest, 2 buttons, A+B. Doesn't get much easier then that to teach kids.

 

[VonKludge]

My worry extended to how the world as we know it now will shape them if they weren't around to know it before became what it is today- a giant net of free exchange between information and what I like to call Spongebob Squarepantsosity- or mindless, unreasonably unfounded primal-ly unrefined garbage intended to stroke no sense of morality or pressure a higher class of response from its audience than fart humor and bald tragedy.

videogames had a greater depth in them because there was less focus on visual presentation than on making a well thought out story entertaining to interact with as in that same era were dying the final notions of when children's television programs always had a clear protagonist with a definitive moral dilemma which in the end taught a life lesson.

If we can go back on the subject of videogames and parenting rather than the whole "are old stuff better than new" debate. You must remember one thing : you are the parent, if videogames and television programs are shaping your kids into something wrong, then you are doing a terrible job at being a parent.

Kids learn if you teach them, you can just let them go lose playing GTA XII and other instant fun games. It's even a good thing that they try it, but it is your job as a parent to show them more meaninbgfull or morally correct tittles so they can see for themselves.

When I was a kid and started playing GTA II, my father introduced me to StarCraft. He even took the time to show me how to play and to even play with me. I was still playing GTA II but I knew what it was : instant fun.

And remember having a holodeck in your basement doesn't mean you can't show your kid the good old games daddy used to play on his "PC" contraption. I still loved commander Keen after playing Duke Nukem.

Cheers!

Edit : I forgot to add, as a kind you can't really tell how things are amazing, but seing the amazment (I dont think it's a word) in my father's eyes when we watched the final fantasy movie (the one with the ghosts)... they created CG hair that looked realistic, DO YOU KNOW HOW AMAZING THAT IS?

 

[Daichi217]

The good news is, if proper diligence is applied, the truly grand and magnificent classics (by opinion) will survive. There are museums with some of these games in them for pity's sake. There's always roms and emulators on the net. Beyond that, it is up to individual parenting to make sure that children, if introduced to and attracted by gaming, are properly acquainted with the classics, IN THE SURVIVING FORMAT if at all possible.

Hooray for blind optimism. Who knows? Maybe I'm setting too much stock in humanity. Maybe this is just the tip of the iceburg, and all that remains is the speedy, slippery slide to the bottom, the descent into ignorance of history's importance and relevance to gaming culture.

Time will tell.