Even in a game as innocuous as Skylanders, sharing the gore has a way of minimizing its impact
I probably don’t need to tell you at the top that we’ve never played Assassins Creed, Black-Ops, or even Super Mario Brothers (aside from the original game on the original Nintendo box many moons ago when I was a boy.) The benefits of this way of life for a young family should be fairly obvious: my young daughters are not playing shoot ‘em up games of pretend, they rescue, not crush, worms on hot blacktop, and still have a sensitivity to exposed blood. The primary downside of our lack of gaming cred is sheer confusion at Comic Con.
But then on the 7th day, the gaming gods created Skylanders. As anyone who has played either the original Spyro’s Adventure or the Giants version of the hit Activision game knows, there isn’t a lack of cannon fire, blade work, fire play, and evil undead characters lurking within. Maybe I am slipping in my advancing age or was charmed to pieces by the Skylanders launch party I attended in the fall of 2011, but I didn’t think twice about introducing this game, and the idea of gaming itself, into our home. Fortunately, what my wife and I did think about was to make our virgin foray into video games, and video game violence, a family affair.
We have played Skylanders roughly 75 times, and on every single occasion all four of us were actively involved in the fun. While only two characters can be on screen at any one time, we accomplish full family gaming by allowing our youngest daughter, age 5, to be the ‘portal master.’ She keeps an eye on the energy levels of our characters and is in charge of swapping out weakened allies for healthier alternatives in the nick of time. Her older sister, age 9, and I handle the shooting and movement of one of the characters, while the wifey controls the other on her own.
This is how we have managed to place a natural limit on the exposure to, and time spent in front of, games and the violence contained inside: their mother isn’t home when school is finished for the day, and I am not available while making dinner each night. The result is simply: we end up not playing often, maybe once a week on average, and yet the kids are still cool with this arrangement, never panic-begging to play solo. Not only does the rarity of gaming keep the violence to a minimum, it also results in more of a special event atmosphere when we do play, and serves as family bonding time, too. Granted, it is bonding over slaying baddies, but still, bonding nonetheless.
The violence in Skylanders, while decidedly cartoonish is still extreme in spots, yet has never been shocking to my girls. When the goons are exterminated you don’t step over their bloodied corpse, they simply vanish. This softens the destruction in a similar way of me, as a child, watching Wile E. Coyote never actually perish at the hands of his always-malfunctioning ACME products. It is innocuous, not gratuitous violence.
My daughters go as far as to refuse to consider an exhausted Skylanders character “dead,” preferring to think of them as resting up until we make it to the next chapter in the game, which is, technically speaking, an accurate representation of their fate. The personal relationship they have formed with the Skylanders and their unique personalities (real and imagined,) offline and on, has served to cushion the blow of what basically amounts to mass video game murder on our part.
Skylanders brought gaming violence into our home, but I’d be lying if I said this was our first time dealing with the ripple effect of, in movie language, characters in peril. My oldest daughter, when she was age 4 or 5, would cower into my armpit or run out of the room completely during cinematic moments where she felt ANYONE was in ANY kind of danger. The funniest manifestation of her fear for fictional folks in family films was the not at all frightening pie-in-the-face scene in Singin’ In The Rain. This was her first-ever favorite movie, but when Kathy Seldon smashes a cream pie into Lina Lamont’s face, as she was want to do, tears would flow and the flick would be paused until emotions and order were restored on the couch. And then there’s the time I punched my baby in the face, a sentence I surely never thought I’d type upon becoming a father. My brother had just gotten Kinect for his Xbox and the combination of a wayward drifter of a child and her overzealous heavyweight champion dad nearly brought a call to Child Services. Is there a worse kind of video game violence than actually connecting with an uppercut to your 4-year-old daughter’s chin?
See, we’ve always done video game violence together as a family, only now we use Tree Rex’s fists, not our own.
Skylanders is AWESOME. Funny, I’m obsessed with it more than my son and daughter are. It’s usually a 2 player tango for us (I wish it was 4), but I admire your family’s ability to make a night of it for the whole fam. Brilliant! Thanks for this. Fun cartoony violence that brings the family together, what’s the harm in that? (Halo and Black Ops, now that’s another article–one I’d like to read as well…) With a life-long dialogue between parent and child regarding such controversy, the fam can go where no fam has gone before. In light of this… Read more »
I think you’re right on-track because you’re doing it as a family. Now, if you were just leaving your kids alone to play endlessly, then wondered why everything in your living room was broken – that’d be a different story. But just being there with your kids during the violence, however benign like a pie in the face, or cartoony, like a tree character smashing things, will help your kids put only the correct amount of worth into things. We can’t expect our children to be regulated by the game developers and can’t expect to let them dictate with how… Read more »
Hi Joanna, Flashwing is a girl, yes. There are a number of great female Skylanders, but you are right, none are meaty and strong in a physical sense. Even Ninjini, she appears to be more mentally strong and crafty. I have to admit to never thinking about this particular issue before. Rather, my girls and I have been relishing and praising Activision for their continued dedication to giving us females from the very beginning. We adore Stealth Elf, Hex, Chill, and Cynder and they way they each attack and fight. While not physically imposing, they are smart, fast, and fierce.… Read more »
Okay, Jeff. You and I need to talk about Skylanders. We LOVE Skylanders and I love the figures and how many female character there are (or female-ish? Is Flashwing a girl?), but up until Ninjini just this last month, there were no powerful girl characters! Sprocket is pretty kickass, and Drobot, but they don’t have good “bash power” (as my kids call it)! That really bothered me, and it seemed like they made such an effort to be inclusive of different types of girls and boys, but they didn’t make any STRONG female characters… Do you have thoughts on whether… Read more »
Video games wiggled their way into our house when I was seven. My grandmother was living with us and ill and it was purchased as a good distraction. Similar to your arrangement, the rule was I only played it with my dad. We got a GameCube and Super Mario Sunshine. We played that one game for hours and hours. Growing up with such a brilliant game gave me an appreciation for only the best, most well designed games. I am 16 now and I still have yet to play any of the popular violent games that the media pushes so… Read more »
The same could be said for Disney princesses, right? If you watch it as a family and choose to talk about the topic, then it’s good for the kids, right? Or am I to avoid Disney at all costs?
Do video games cause gun violence? Do princess movies make growing up awkward for girls? Yes, if you’re a lousy parent they do. In the end, you can really do what you want with your child, as long as you talk to your kid about the pros and cons and don’t let it consume them and their behavior.
Thanks for the kind words, Chris! Skylanders is a blast — great family gaming. Here’s to hoping your son’s savings soon turns into a purchase (a good sale would help!) and that you both enjoy many hours of Skylandering together.
Jeff, Great post. My son is saving his allowance for Skylanders and I look forward to playing it with him. He draws the characters in his free time and talks about the strategy of each character, so it sounds pretty cool. We have a Wii, and there have been many accidental fists of fury while playing some of these games too. I laughed pretty hard when reading that.
Eva, I am curious how you handle visits to friends houses? Are you afraid they will binge on gaming away from home? You know, those kids who never are allowed chocolate and then balloon when they get the first taste of freedom (by the way, that is TOTALLY not why am a big guy!)
It’s funny. I am SO not that kind of mom. We have an open door policy on snacks, but I am a bit of a control freak when it comes to TV watching (weekends only) and gaming. Instead I take them to the skatepark and let them fall on their faces. It’s weird. It’s just that I remember when Game Boy first came out and I would go to sleep and see the Tetris blocks in my dreams. They play ipad apps and I notice that they don’t have this compulsion to keep going, as they do when they are… Read more »
We don’t have any gaming consoles of any kind at our house because my kids become obsessed. It’s ALL that they want to do. Even if I reserve it for special occasions, they become infatuated. I so much prefer LEGO, although that is certainly not a cheap alternative.
Gaming has been around since man could pass on the knowledge. Over the most recent years, they have developed a rating system. This rating system, “since no one said anything about it on the show that I had seen” is a system based on what goes on in the video game. Sex, Violence, Use of drugs or alcohol, ect. The rating system is set to warn parents of kids who are unaware of the games content aware of what the game consists of, so your not selling kids games way to mature for them. But to take violence out of… Read more »