How Games Change The World with Jane McGonigal

R3LF_13

I actually find this conversation really interesting as a parent. My daughter is almost 7 and she has a DS and plays E rated games on my PS3. My experience with her and games is both positive and negitive.

I agree that games can teach the leasons of trying again in spite of failure. When she first tried LittleBigPlanet it was the hardest game she had played up to that point. She got very fustrated and wanted me to do it for her when ever she got stuck. It was a great oportunity and i took advantage of it to try and teach her that you have to keep trying. That is fun because its hard. The fun comes in the accomplishment and if it was easy there wouldn't really be a point. Using games as a tool for teaching this leason has been great. Games are also great as a reward. Be good, listen, get your chores done and you have time for games.

The downside though, and i would be interested to hear Jane's take, is the downside of overstimulation. We limit her gaming, but still games are so stimulating and exciting that something like math homework or 1st grade reading is from her perspective incredably boring. I laughed the first time she told me she didn't want to go potty before bed because "going potty is boring," but I think that is a product of our society as a whole and kids of all ages are perhaps being negitively affected by our culture of overstimulation all time. This of course would be expanding the conversation beyond just games.