Generally, when a religious magazine or book comments on gaming, they do so with what can at the most charitable be called an impressive innocence of the topic they are opining on. I can think of a few exceptions– Jimmy Akin, for example, informed himself about Dungeons and Dragons to the point I was startled to learn he doesn’t play, maybe other readers can think of a few more.
“The Godliness of Gaming” is a refreshing difference from that norm.
Quote:
The best-selling title of the pandemic, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, is a case in point. Download it, and you’re instantly transported to a sunny island populated by friendly and starry-eyed anthropomorphic animals. You build yourself a modest home, then make it bigger. Small tasks earn you local currency, which can be spent in the local shop. It’s community in which the metrics of flourishing are those imagined by the most charitable among us. The game invites players to exchange a real world in which no one knows your name for an unreal one where you’re cared for and loved. And, thanks to the blessings of internet connectivity, your real-life friends can stop by for a visit whenever they wish by directing their animated avatars to your corner of cyberspace.
Even if you believe, like that old German philosopher Immanuel Kant, that from the crooked timber of humanity nothing straight will ever be built, spending a few hours in Animal Crossing’s brightly-colored, pixelated paradise should leave you immensely hopeful. Prance around your island for a bit, and you’ll see that video games, like all rituals, are an exercise in deepening our comprehension through repetition. These games don’t rely on your brain, that easiest of all organs to burden with bad information and fraudulent ideas. They appeal directly to the human spirit, which wants not to understand but to do. Do you want to see what the world is like? Walk around. Do you want to understand others? Share their space. Do you want to know yourself? First, get out of your own head by making decisions that affect the weal and woe of others.
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We game with our kids– both in the sense that they’ve sat in our laps and watched the pretty worlds, and in the sense that two of them have earned up to the point where they are in our gaming group in Final Fantasy XIV— and even those games played when they’re not around have included some that were returned for store credit because they were just wrong.
Hope you enjoy!
Quite literally while I was proof-reading the post, the Princess asked if I could log in and help her level.
Foxfier-To my knowledge I have never played a computerized game. Yes, I had and have all sorts of prejudices against them. But you have made me think: this can be family time. Thank you. guy, Texas
The advantage of computer (or console) games is that they can be played with people all over the world and not just in your own household. When I was younger, my dad and I would play games while he was away on business trips. I currently play games not just with my own kids, but also old military buddies all across the globe; including one who is now a quadriplegic that is still able to use a stylus to play several games.
My “gaming” knowledge is pretty pre-historic and basic. I’ve fond memories in my childhood of hanging out with my cousins and trying to get to the next level of a Super Mario Bros without loosing the raccoon-suit to reach Koopa.
It began when my brothers Godfather bought him Nintendo Duckhunt with the orange gun and over our childhood we bought the next Nintendo, and next which came out- we loved Street Fighter, Mortal Combat, Castlevania (the old one), Tetris, Terminator, Zelda…they were good memories. These days the graphics are awesome on these.
I bought an original mini Nintendo for my kids recently with 100’s of pre-loaded games (we used to fork out money for a single game and thought it was gold). I sat and played Super Mario 3 with my 8 and 10 yr old and literally remembered the secret shortcuts from over two-decades ago. Good for keeping the mind exercising. Good post.
Ooh, I loved Duckhunt!
I’m terrible at reaction-based games (part of why I like Massively Multiplayer Online, MMO, games is that they are keyboard based for most of it, and there are entire areas of the game that I can just stand up and walk off without hurting myself or others) but that one was very fun.
I sat and played Super Mario 3 with my 8 and 10 yr old and literally remembered the secret shortcuts from over two-decades ago.
giggles madly because that is just NEAT Hope your kids appreciated it– or at least did the wide-eyed “Wow!” thing.
We got that adorable little Nintendo Mini as well, my husband plays it more than the kids…. 😀
Right now there is a big migration in online games– a lot of people are leaving World of Warcraft (high school to early college type culture, not exactly toxic but not very supportive/rather immature and atomized; people will be friends but don’t have a lot of loyalty) and are moving over to Final Fantasy 14, which is a much more normal-life type gaming culture; the designers even make an effort to make sure that you see children and old people in the game, not just as color-flavoring but important to the plot, and the in-game social system is set up to encourage networking, even across servers.
The narrator for Heaven’s Ward is old enough he has several adult sons older than the same-race character that goes around with your character, fighting giant monsters. One of those sons mentors your character for a while.
I can count on one hand the number of times I had people be truly nasty in FFXIV, with fingers left over; it was an every-other-dungeon event in WoW. (Two of them were probably actually one guy, who was playing on two computers. Badly. When one was attacking, the other was standing there, and his ranged was in melee, didn’t get out of AOEs… oops, slipped into jargon, mild apologies. 😀 )
Here’s an example of where that culture springs from– the guy on the left is “Yoshi-P,” the guy who was brought in to fix the game when the original was… not good.
https://youtu.be/e_i6mjiGerU
He has an in-game character who is a bard and does a bunch of quests… basically, they respect the players, and the rules reflect that respect.
The unstated reason for this video is that WoW has a very strong ‘efficiency’ culture, where people will build and play their characters with an eye to having larger numbers on metrics, even if that actually injures the over-all group. FFXIV is focused more on working as a team to manage a thing– many of the damage classes have spells that don’t do damage, or that increase everyone’s damage, to reach the goal.
So they made this video in order to preserve the existing culture of FFXIV, while welcoming the huge new influx of players. (Thank God!)
I hear a lot of good things about FFXIV, including the fact that they deal with griefers and nasty people not by insta-banning them (unless there’s cause), but by throwing them in character jail for a while, and often by having GMs talk to them about how to do better. And not in a self-righteous way. People can also mount a defense of their actions to GMs, and GMs can check the logs; so if it’s a misunderstanding it can be cleared up with no hard feelings. I don’t even play the game and I’ve heard about this stuff, and about how positive people feel about the GMs’ savvy at sorting things out.
You should play Trails of Cold Steel 1-4
Amazing game!
I love that language of integrity that gamers have. The creativity and out-of-the-box thinking is just refreshing. I watched that YouTube (with zilch knowledge of FF14) and those guys are cool- a real unspoken respect about the rules around what’s acceptable and what’s not. Love that. Your kids are going to have the best memories when they are older of how “mum used to help us in the tricky parts.” It’s Priceless.
I was sent this article by a friend and really appreciated it. Gaming is the big shared hobby in my house. The kids may have different activities, but they all come together to play Minecraft, Mario, and Zelda. One of my former coworkers is a huge FF14 fan and has been trying to get me in. It is always intimidating starting an MMO. My wife and I were pretty big Destiny 2 players, but it has become so much of a grind we fell off. I miss our gaming sessions after the kids go to bed. Might need to finally jump in…this thread is getting me excited…
A couple of our FC (Free Company– the player organized social groups) members are former/now infrequent Destiny 2 players. Never played, but I’ve heard a bit. 😀
Right now, the servers are packed— to make a character, you have to be on a server that doesn’t have a wait to log in, which right now means you design your character, save it, then log in for the formal creation the next morning. You will want to be on the same server as your friend. BUT the first entire expansion is free to play, although with limits like you can’t join an FC, invite people to groups, or use the in-game sales board. You can be added to folks’ friends list, and you can be in a private chat channel. It’s basically limits to keep people from abusing the system with either selling in-game items for real money (RMT- it’s against the rules, and usually sourced from stolen accounts) or otherwise abusing the system in a way that would hurt the fun of the community.
Our eldest was very excited to try a race that isn’t available in the base game, then sad because she couldn’t, then happy again because they sell these things called “Fantasias” that let you recreate your character’s appearance exactly like when you were on the character start screen. And they give you one for free during the level-up process, before you need to buy the game.
If you do join, before you buy the game get a “Refer a Friend” code from your friend– they get a mount, you get a leveling crown, and some other nice stuff.
Yucata is a great free site for playing board games online with rules enforcement. I heartily recommend the game on the French and Indian War, A Few Acres of Snow.
https://www.yucata.de/en