Video Games

 Post holidays and the house is slammed with stuff. New stuff, some still unopened, that makes me feel an awful guilt. And not the sort of listen to NPR while driving to the Root Cafe to order a fair trade coffee sort of guilt. Or some holy piety simplistic less is more guilt. I feel dumb for buying my kids stuff they look at once and then dive back into YouTube. Extra dumb for thinking they need more as a way to make up for how much I suck as a father. Also a hurt because I want my kids to be like me with these toys, particularly video games and collectibles, but I need to let them be themselves. My son does not play with Legos like I did. Instead of building your own fleets of vehicles and hero rides (after all the formal instruction sets succumb to entropy. Maintaining Lego sets as designed and built requires a combination of real estate and patience saved for the single, the cat-less, or maybe those monks that make Chartreuse) he keeps piles of specific bricks on the floor. These are used to build hand held widgets of modular geometry. Six long eight stud flat planks joined on top of each other and then snapped to the back end of a Lego velociraptor. Motorcycles with the front wheel pulled out and replaced with a set of two rectangle bricks. 

On video games I want them to max them out. Its likely due to the success of the medium (The Fear of the Blank Page is on team video games are art) but its not just the volume (We had volume back in the 80s and 90s just a limit on where to get) but the accessibility. You needed to fork over cash to the guy behind the counter at Babbages or KB Toys and ask for the game. Now, just download or snap onto your phone. Maybe because my experience was so formally procedural (Thank you merchant for this good. This piece of plastic and silicon I will take back home once my mom grabs me from the mall) that I needed to really max these games out. I honestly don't recall ever beating too many games as child but I remember playing them often enough if just to feel they were earned. A great example of this is Mario is Missing a game that is quite the lie. 

I bought this game. or, well i made Mami buy it after some negotiation or possible reward. maybe she felt bad to albeit she actually grew up with struggles. And this looked sweet. Luigi is the hero!? No fucking way!

That said, the game is educational. Its a point and click geography game (And I LIKE geography) with a bit of world history and globe trotting. Where in the Mushroom Kingdom is Carmen San Diego kind of thing. The educational aspect is not bad (Oregon Trail was educational. Putt Putt games were educational) but its boring and clunky and slapping the Mario moniker is a betrayal. But, I played it because I had maybe ten games and that was sne and damnit lets play it. And I beat it finding Mario in the Forbidden Palace in China! My kids have maybe 20 Switch games and we have Xbox game pass so I can download games on the fly. Its a bounty that to me and my 90s sensibilities seems still perverse even after years of "modern" video gaming. 

However, when we gave my daughter a Switch (Something meant to save on arguing and teeth barring fights over the OTHER switch my son dominates AND the Xbox with the Minecraft game) so she can play Minecraft on her own. And she loved it for maybe two days until know the Switch is missing (like Mario!) and she is just still on YouTube. Steve and Alex couldn't top Cookie Swirl C, I guess. 

And this makes me upset. "Do you know how much this costs!"

"Well...its from Santa, right?" Which comes out with a bit more venom than this post can imply. 

And then I am "Well...fuck" Maybe the big guy will feel bad then!

There games are played in pieces. Maybe it is because of mobile gaming? Social media? Just progress. My own horrible parentage? Likely it is me just romanticizing my own nostalgia and not wanting to remember I could not get past first few levels of Super Ghosts and Goblins. I want my children to be like me, but only the good parts, and not the crappy part (Which we are all doomed to carry from our parents anyway) while hoping to let them build their own "good parts." I should just let them play.