Imaginary things have such real meaning to kids.

Playing Minecraft, Calfgrit8 gave Calfgrit12 a diamond sword. A diamond sword is made by crafting three diamonds with one stick of wood. Now, diamonds are not easy to find in Minecraft, but I can get a couple or so just about every time I mine deep — which is pretty much every time I play for an hour. We each have several diamonds saved up. I could make probably six diamond swords right now, but I don’t really need anything better than iron.

Anyway, so CG8 gave his big brother an imaginary item in an online game. Big brother hung the item on a wall in his imaginary house in the online game. A little while later, CG8 had giver’s remorse, and wanted the item back. Well, actually, he wanted stuff in exchange for the diamond sword. CG12 argued that it was a gift, not an exchange. But what CG8 wanted for the sword was stuff so easy to collect, bones and seeds — stuff you can accumulate accidentally in 30 minutes of playing. Even so, CG12 argued that he shouldn’t have to give anything in exchange for a “gift.”

So CG8 went to his brother’s imaginary house in the game, and took the sword off the wall and back to his own house. And all hell broke loose in our real home.

“You stole my diamond sword!” CG12 shouted.

“No, you stole it from me!” CG8 shouted.

“You gave it to me!”

“I wanted to trade!”

Now it should be noted that Calfgrit8 plays on the computer upstairs, and Calfgrit12 plays on the computer downstairs. So the shouted argument was loud enough for them to harangue each other 30 feet apart, around walls, and up/down a stairway. I let it go on for a couple of minutes, thinking, (read: hoping, praying), they would solve it without my needing to get involved. But it kept going. Then CG12 came upstairs, and CG8 met him at the top of the stairs, where they continued shouting and threatened physical violence on each other. I had to step in at that point.

I had to shut down the Minecraft play time to take each boy separately into another room to ask exactly what had happened and was going on. They both told me the situation, but of course with their own personal twisted perspective. At the time I stepped in, CG8 had his diamond sword. I ruled that he keep it and CG12 should just let the incident go. CG12 didn’t need the sword — he had just hung it on the wall of his imaginary house for decoration. If he actually wanted the sword, he could trade what CG8 wanted for it. But no, he decided it was the principal of the matter, and he refused to trade even the easy trash his brother was asking for.

You know, parenting is hard enough when arguments and fights break out over real world toys. But it gets absurdly difficult when the struggles are over completely imaginary things that can so easily be duplicated and replaced by just continuing to play the game they’re playing for fun.

Bullgrit

Calfgrit11 discovered Minecraft a couple of months ago. I knew of Minecraft, had heard of it, for many months, myself, but I hadn’t investigated it. I had seen some screenshots, and watched some videos, but it didn’t look particularly interesting to me. Plus, I was already busy and just didn’t have time to take up a new game.

CG11 got so enamored with it when he saw it at a friend’s house that he actually started saving up money to purchase it for himself. That’s a real sign of strong interest. When he downloaded it to his mother’s computer, it became an obsession. He showed me the things he was doing and building, but still I wasn’t enticed. Calfgrit7 also became interested in it, and played some on his brother’s account. After a few weeks, I decided to study up on it a bit. I learned that I could set up a server and we could play together. So I eventually bought and downloaded my own copy, as well as the server files.

I had the server working a few days before I told anyone about it. I wanted to build something impressive to surprise the boys with when they logged in. I built a castle floating in the sky, above the clouds. When I announced the existence of the server world, both boys were excited. And they were blown away by my castle construction. I was declared a master builder.

Now, I’ve seen screenshots and videos of some amazing structures, so I know my own castle is not anything near a master design. But I still basked in the admiration from my young sons. I left the server running so they could play on it as they were allowed to use “electronics time” during the week, (mostly on weekends). I told them they could do, destroy, and build anything and anywhere they wanted on the server so long as they left my castle alone. They could visit my castle, see what I’ve built, (and I kept on adding to my design), and if they asked permission first, they might even be allowed to add some stuff, (like beds and chests).

Then one night while Wifegrit and I were at Calfgrit11’s school to meet his teachers, we got a call from home. (Wifegrit’s mother was sitting the boys.) Calfgrit11 called to let me know something terrible had happened. He and Calfgrit7 were distraught. Calfgrit7 had been “griefing” his brother, (something I said was not allowed on my server), and things got out of hand. Lava had been spilled on my castle! Yes, lava had been spilled on my castle.

When the “accident” happened, both boys immediately tried to stop the lava with pouring water on it and with piling stone on the flow. But damage had been done, and there was now a long fall of both lava and water pouring from my castle. Plus, stones had been piled and added to my structure. Both boys were very upset, even crying. I explained over the phone, while standing in the school hallway, that we’d fix everything when I got home.

This is what I came home to on my server:

The lava flow had started on the top, glass, area of the castle, and the boys had managed to push it off and repair most of the damage by the time I got home. But there was still a tower of stone, water, and lava running down the side. The grassy land below the castle was a pile of destruction, and flooded with water on one side and burning with lava on the other. I was both amazed and dumbfounded. How the heck had they managed that mess?

Well, it took a few hours over the next few days to get the mess cleared up. I put out the lava. I incorporated the water fall into my castle’s design. But the ground remained an area of devastation, so I just used that devastation as an excuse to create a cavernous hole in the ground all the way down to the void.

I used this situation to teach the boys a lesson about dealing with mistakes. I calmly explained how to take a problem and think about 1- how to solve it, and 2- consider if it can be turned into something good. I want them to, instead of panic and get upset over mistakes and problems, to pause, think, and figure out how to handle it.

But, even with the lesson, the rule now is that neither of them can even go on/in my castle without my permission right then. I’ve considerably expanded my structure since that day, and I really don’t want to have to spend anymore time repairing anything. Now I’ve become completely addicted to this game.

Bullgrit

I came across this article:

Is Bulletstorm the Worst Video Game Ever

I had heard of this game recently, before the above article, and thought really nothing of it — it’s just another shoot-’em-up game. I like first person shooters; FPS is my preferred game style. But because I don’t have much free time lately, I’m not looking for a new game. And even if I was in the market for a new shoot-’em-up game, this doesn’t sound like something made for me:

There’s an excess of profanity, of course, including frequent use of F-words. And Bulletstorm is particularly gruesome, with body parts that explode all over the screen.

I don’t mind games taking realistic language and violence a little over the top, but when it is gratuitous and/or fantastic, it looses my interest. So I’ll not be getting this particular game. But. . .

And with kids as young as 9 playing such games, the experts FoxNews.com spoke with were nearly universally worried that video game violence may be reaching a fever pitch.

First off: “kids as young as 9 playing such games….” What the hell? These kinds of games are designed for and meant to be played by adults.

Some “experts” have been crying this video-games-are-too-violent warning for years. DOOM was the first target for this expert attention back in ’93. Video game violence has not caused a break down of our society in all these years despite the many tenuous attempts to attribute heinous crimes to these games. Violent video games are not a societal problem.

“If a younger kid experiences Bulletstorm’s explicit language and violence, the damage could be significant,” Dr. Jerry Weichman, a clinical psychologist at the Hoag Neurosciences Institute

Well how about parents pay attention to their kids and don’t let them experience anything with explicit language and violence? Huh? Is it too much to expect parents to be friggin’ parents and attend their children?

“Violent video games like Bulletstorm have the potential to send the message that violence and insults with sexual innuendos are the way to handle disputes and problems,” Weichman said.

So don’t let the kids get exposure to this stuff! Holy crap! How is this not completely obvious?

Hey, an axe has the potential to hack off fingers, toes, limbs, and heads! Oh noes! This is why caring and attentive parents don’t let 9 year old kids play with axes.

“The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games,”

According to the Department of Justice, “Rape rates have been stable in recent years,” and have actually decreased dramatically in the years video games have existed. Holy moly, look what actual facts show!

“Games without sufficient quality of gameplay — games that include highly objectionable violent or sexual content — often pump up the level of this kind of content to gain media attention….” said Billy Pidgeon, a video game analyst with M2 Research.

And when the over-the-top violent game gets media attention, the Chicken Littles jump into the fray to get their own media attention. It’s a virtual daisy chain of media whoring.

Video game advocates say the existing warning system [ESRB] works fine: Parents are responsible for deciding whether their kids can play games, not the government.

Hell yeah! But it’s a shame that anyone who says parents are responsible for their kids gets labeled an “advocate” for the things kids shouldn’t be exposed to. I’m not an advocate for things like torture-horror movies, (I don’t like them), but I still recognize and say that parents are responsible for keeping kids away from such stuff.

Show me a 9 year old kid who plays some game like Bulletstorm, and I’ll show you a pathetically irresponsible parent.

Bullgrit

I’ve watched people play Guitar Hero (and Rock Band) a few times, here and there, over the past year or so. It’s a lot of fun to watch — the graphics, the animation, the music (especially the music). I love just about every song I’ve heard and watched played.

But I’ve never felt the interest to try and play the game, myself. The whole interface of the fake guitar (and the other instruments for the other game) just looks unwieldy. It doesn’t look like really playing a guitar (which I can’t do, anyway), and it doesn’t look like playing a game controller (which I, at least, used to could do). So I’ve never even tried to play the game.

During Calfgrit9’s recent birthday party, I gave it a try. Adventure Landing (where we had the party) has a big game area with all kinds of arcade games, including a two-player Guitar Hero game. I had a pocket full of extra tokens for the games, and so I thought I’d finally give GH a play.

Since it was my first time with the game — I’ve never even held the guitar/controller — I chose the “Beginner” level. It said Beginner level doesn’t require pushing the color buttons, only strumming. And I chose “Rock You Like a Hurricane” by Scorpions.

Strumming to the visual cues of the game felt nothing at all like playing anything like the song. I couldn’t even get the rhythm by following the visual cues. After only about 30 seconds into the song, I had lost all interest in the game. I was scoring with my strumming to the visual cues, but it felt like just touching a button while an unrelated rock song played.

After about a minute, a 30-something man walked up beside me and suggested I tilt the guitar to really rock it out. I commented back, without taking my eyes from the screen, “This is my first time, and it’s taking all my concentration to strum.”

The man beside me was a fan of the game, and explained, after I complained about the strumming not following the song, that the Beginner level skips notes. This seemed to make sense in one way: not having to hit every note on time should be easier. But it made the game harder in the same way: I couldn’t play the controller to the rhythm of the music I was listening to.

Had the visual cues, and my strumming, matched what I was hearing over the speakers, I could have kept the rhythm, and it would have more felt like actually playing the song.

I gave up. I took off the guitar strap from around my neck, and handed the controller over to the man beside me. He said, “No, you finish it,” but I told him I wasn’t interested.

“I’m just going to let it play out on its own if you don’t take over.”

So he took the guitar from me, put the strap around his neck, and rocked out. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy the last half a minute of the song. More power to him.

At least now I can say I’ve tried Guitar Hero. I didn’t like it, at all, but I did try it. It’s kind of ironic that maybe playing at the Beginner level is what actually turned me off of the game. Maybe if I had tried it at a higher level, and been able to strum with the actual song I was hearing (rather than seemingly random visual cues), I might have liked it Ok.

Bullgrit