26
Dec
2019

“I won’t defeat this boss for my kids.”

categories: personal; word count: 313 words

This is actually something that I have heard gamer (gaming?) parents say.

It’s usually also the ones who state that “anyone who uses walkthroughs is not a real gamer, or not a good enough gamer,” so the two kind of go hand in hand. I try to avoid these parents if I see them “out in the wild”.

They literally say, with their mouths, that if their kids struggle in a game that they will not help them. Or some of them say that they will, but that they “won’t help them with the final boss, because they have to do it on their own”. Do you know what kind of message that might send your struggling kid, especially if they’re young? Not only do the kind of parents that say these things tend to… carry it over into other aspects of parenting, but this is a really fantastic way to make your child want to give up on gaming (which is another thing that these parents, the Patrons of Gaming, would probably seethe over if it happened in front of them).

Tell me though, what is so bad about helping your child when they need it?

What is so bad about helping your child when they need any sort of help from you?

Because that sends the message that they can come to you for help for any reason and that you will be there to help them no matter what. And this will achieve exactly what you want to achieve but are going about trying to achieve in the worst possible way — your child will remain interested in video games and might pass that interest on to their children. (Or, you could do exactly what you’re doing now, cause your child not to be interested in video games at all, and stop that with this generation. This is your call here…)

24
Dec
2019

Ways that I accommodate for my disabilities.

categories: personal; word count: 165 words

These are just some of them, and I thought I would share them here.

· wearing sunglasses in the house, or indoors, as necessary
· keeping lights in my area of the house dimmed (sufficiently on, but dimmed)
· keeping the brightness setting on my cell phone suitably low
· running fl.ux on my computer in Cave Painting mode
· taking medication for migraines at the very first signs of a migraine, rather than questioning it
· setting up posts to queue when I’m feeling alright, just in case I have a particularly bad migraine (for me)
· getting as many non-daily chores done as I can when I’m “having a good run of things”
· trying to limit screen time (especially so I can “use those spoons” on video games for Bub as needed!)
· keeping the volume low, or even off, on things unless it absolutely needs to be on for whatever reason
· making sure that I get plenty of sleep each night, and making the conscious effort to do so

23
Dec
2019

Walkthroughs are not a bad thing.

categories: personal; word count: 357 words

In so many circles have I seen walkthrough use lamented as the actual bane of other people’s existences — the idea that other gamers might need enough help to use them, or the idea that other gamers would use them. Allegedly you are not a “hardcore enough gamer” if you need to use them. Some people devote way too much of their time to defining what is a “hardcore enough gamer” to come up with arbitrary requirements as to what this… entails, and I try to avoid these conversations and associating myself with these people, but I’ve seen enough peripheral complaining about walkthrough use that I had to mention it.

You are not a bad gamer, or “not hardcore enough of a gamer”, if you need to use a walkthrough.

Even if you need to use a walkthrough for every single game you play, that does not define you as a gamer.

You are not “less than” for needing assistance in games.

This is an insiduous form of gatekeeping, and I dislike it a lot. God only knows that I’ve used walkthroughs when playing games, especially with Bub, to cut down on the amount of screen time that I expose myself to in the name of not giving myself an unnecessary migraine. If I can plan out what I’m going to do in a game when, I can shorten my exposure to the screen, which is an extremely good thing. This allows me to continue to enjoy something that I love, let me play video games with Bub, all while not walking myself into a particularly severe migraine — for me — because I spent hours wandering around lost in a video game.

So far, walkthroughs have allowed us to enjoy games in that they allow us to shave off time that would otherwise have been spent wandering around absolutely lost causing a migraine for no reason. We achieve short objectives, frequently save the game just in case, I monitor for symptoms, and we continue from there…

But there is a reason that there is the ongoing joke that our backlog is far taller than Bub. No shame in that.

22
Dec
2019

Please watch your children online.

categories: personal; word count: 478 words

As a child, I never thought that I would actually make this blog post as an adult…

But as a child, the only way that I had to get online was America Online, and most of my formative years were spent on dial-up with my parents having an idea who I was talking to, not quite approving of the “crowd of people” that I associated with for most of that time, but never really doing anything about it. I lived in the day where it was forbidden to give my full first name, or even my last name, to my friends, did so anyway to “rebel against my parents”, and had my so-called friends “use my name against me” whenever I did something that they did not like. Now, with the advent of Facebook, everyone knows your legal name (unless you’ve intentionally created an account where you’re not using it), so that’s almost absolutely moot.

But since you can do so much more on the Internet now, I feel like more parents need to be aware of what their children are doing online… and that more children don’t need to be given significant, unfettered access to the Internet. Even if it “makes their children mad”, mad is safe. As long as they’re young, they don’t need to have social media accounts in their own name, at least not unless their parent is friended with them on that account, has access to it themselves, and knows precisely what they are posting. Children do not need to have “safe spaces” on the Internet where they can share things away from their parents’ eyes, because this usually leads to bad things. They need to use age-appropriate sites that are either monitored by adults and used in an appropriate capacity, or they need to be monitored by their own parents to ensure that they remain safe online until they are old enough not to require monitoring. This is how we keep children safe.

Facebook has an age requirement for a reason. So do several popular chat programs.

But this doesn’t mean that parents should let their children “have at it” and not monitor them on their own.

Even if they’re busy working, they should either at least know what their child is doing or install parental control programs on their computers at home to ensure that their children can only access safe, age-appropriate websites or use the Internet at certain times or only for a certain number of hours per day.

“Worst-case scenario,” there is also the possibility of placing a password on the computer and putting it in themselves when they are around to provide monitoring, if that is absolutely something that has to be done.

Sure, a lot of the Internet is good. Most of it may be. But there are plenty of places on it that are not good.

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