The Long Tail

A public diary on themes around my book

 

November 20, 2006

Gears of War is overrated (and other geekdad advice)

I was as psyched as anyone about the release of Gears of War, the while-you‘re-waiting-for-Halo 3 hit of the season for Xbox 360 fanboys. The trailers looked fantastic, the designer was top notch and the buzz was deafening. And when it came out last week the reviews were rhapsodic. So I‘m starting to wonder what‘s wrong with me for being so unimpressed. I haven‘t finished the game--I‘m a bit more than halfway through--but I‘ve gone far enough to see the gameplay for what it is: a totally scripted shooting gallery on rails. Even the fabled graphics are just more detail on the same tired post-apocalyptic cityscapes and hyena-faced baddies, all stuck on the concrete-gray side of the chromatic spectrum.

I was picking up my oldest son (9) from a birthday party at a bowling alley today, and is often the case the boys were playing crusty old arcade games. There was an old Area 51 machine there, and as I watched it go through its demo loop I realized why Gears of War felt so familiar: they‘re essentially the same game, advanced by little more than ten years of Moore‘s Law graphics acceleration and similarly improved character AI. Been there, done that.

I‘m going to quit GoW now and instead focus on what I think is the far superior game launched on the same platform at the same time: Call of Duty 3. This is the third installment of the WWII series inspired by Saving Private Ryan, and the battle is now in France, on the way to Paris. The graphics are jaw-dropping (to my eye, every bit GoW‘s equal) and the gameplay far more free roaming and tactical. Unfortunately it doesn‘t have a co-operative play mode, so it‘s online multiplayer or single-payer, but after the 9-year-old gets a bit further in the game he and I can face the ruthless hordes out there together on XBox Live in the sweet split-screen mode. I‘ll get my butt kicked charging into the fray while he hangs back with a sniper rifle and laughs his ass off at my mistakes. (Yes, I know the game is rated for T for Teen. I‘m a Bad Father.)

Finally, on that note, here are my latest top ten computer/game parenting tips for geek dads:

1. Try cooperative mode on any game that offers it. Best father-son bonding ever!
2. Make up your own mind about what‘s appropriate for your kids. I think Halo 2 is fine (cartoonish violence and fictional settings), and Call of Duty 3 is okay for my 9-year-old (accurate historical setting and a war-is-hell message) although not for the younger kids. But I think Gears of War, which is essentially a horror game, is too scary and full of bad language and adult themes, so they‘re not playing that. Other parents will come to different conclusions. You know your children better than the ratings agencies do--decide for yourself.
3. Give the kids old laptops and let them use the net, but keep those computers in public spaces (not in their rooms) and make sure the rules are clear.
4. Those rules should include: time limits, no computers until homework is done, and full discussion about how some websites are "inappropriate" and they‘re expected to avoid them.
5. The easiest way to do that is to limit the sites they visit to the bookmarks that you set. You can‘t stop them from typing URLs into Google, but you can at least make clear that this is a violation of the Rules.
6. As far as I can tell, all NetNanny and other "safe-surfing" filters are crap. They block as much legitimate stuff as they let through, which creates a miserable tech-support headache for you when things that should work don‘t.
7. That said, set their Google preferences to "safe search"
8. If they want to hang out with their friends online, encourage them to try kid-safe sites such as Club Penguin. The clever strategies there to make it both fun and safe are impressive, up to encouraging kids to become "secret agents" to help police the site. My eight-year-old daughter just passed the test to get such a designation and she‘s thrilled. My dismay that she‘s turned into a narc is more than outweighed by my admiration of the site‘s ability to get the community to keep itself clean.
9. If the kids are into games, see if they might want to try their hand at making a game themselves. The educational tools today are awesome, and programs such as Games Factory 2 completely submerge the code layer, making quite sophisticated 2D games a matter of dragging and dropping objects, setting their properties and scripting events.
10. Get Lego Mindstorms NXT. Permission to build and program cool toy robots is not the only reason to have children, but it‘s up there. If only the kids were as into Lego robotics as I am. Soon, my precious, soon...

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