The Elder Scrolls Online...With Kids! - MMORPG.com

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The Elder Scrolls Online...With Kids! - MMORPG.com

Red Thomas hauls his nephew into Elder Scrolls Online in order to please his readers. Red discusses his nephew’s first real experience with an MMO and some of the challenges readers might run into while introducing kids to a similar game.

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Astropuyo

Formatting wonky as hell here man.

Makes the text almost unreadable.

Nanfoodle

Kids should not be playing a 18+ M rated game. Just saying.

Sovrath

Nanfoodle said:

Kids should not be playing a 18+ M rated game. Just saying.

I would say it depends on what makes it an 18+ M rated game.

Having played the Elder Scrolls Online there is nothing a 10 year old couldn't handle (not sure how old this nephew is ... was it ever mentioned? seems important)

Remember, it's not the "18+ M rated" that's important it's the "why" is it rated that way.

None of the game stories or violence or themes are going to freak out a 10+ person today. I'd be more concerned with interaction with other people.

black9ice

The first parts of the article about how he never experienced an in-depth game is probably the reason why a ton of new games get negative reviews. These younger generations of gamers are so trained on short game play loops and very simple games. The moment you step away from a BR type of game/play style they are a bit lost.

As for the mature rating, etc as the other comments above me, it all matters on the situation. We are raising kids these days in a digital age. If you are an engaged parent/adult with said activities that are not in an inappropriate realm for the children then there is nothing wrong with it.

Red_Thomas

Nanfoodle said:

Kids should not be playing a 18+ M rated game. Just saying.

As was pointed out, that's just a recommendation and you have to examine WHY it's rated that way before you can really say one way or the other.  In this case, it's not the game that's rated 18+, it's the online community.   Other than MMOs that make a very specific effort to limit player interaction, I don't think you could find an MMO that's not 18+.  Yet, if you examine the content, it's uncommon for the actual game content to approach anything resembling mature.

Red_Thomas

Sovrath said:

I would say it depends on what makes it an 18+ M rated game.

Having played the Elder Scrolls Online there is nothing a 10 year old couldn't handle (not sure how old this nephew is ... was it ever mentioned? seems important)

Remember, it's not the "18+ M rated" that's important it's the "why" is it rated that way.

None of the game stories or violence or themes are going to freak out a 10+ person today. I'd be more concerned with interaction with other people.

I think I implied, but never said it explicitly.   He's 14, and a very mature 14.  It's always his parents' call, but I think he's easily responsible enough for nearly any mature content short of some of the sexual situations you get in a game like the Witcher series.

It's his inexperience with the genre that I was most interested in observing.  I'm thinking I might even explore that in a future article.  I've realized there's a bit of a gap between the MMO that we older folks like and what the younger folks are expecting from their games.  It'd be interesting to explore that a bit more, I think.

Red_Thomas

Astropuyo said:

Formatting wonky as hell here man.

Makes the text almost unreadable.

I'll grant you that.  I'm in the middle of a few new contracts and don't have the time to really construct articles the way I do typically.  I normally try to work in a few puns, some alliteration, and a few nods towards an old song, book, or something.  For instance, I might borrow lines from Hamlet for the subject lines or reference Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations" obliquely throughout.  That stuff takes some time I don't have just now.   Wrapping up in a couple weeks and then I'll be back to taking a day off from work each week to do fun stuff like these articles. 

Thanks for calling me out for not meeting the standard.

Sovrath

Red_Thomas said:

Sovrath said:

I would say it depends on what makes it an 18+ M rated game.

Having played the Elder Scrolls Online there is nothing a 10 year old couldn't handle (not sure how old this nephew is ... was it ever mentioned? seems important)

Remember, it's not the "18+ M rated" that's important it's the "why" is it rated that way.

None of the game stories or violence or themes are going to freak out a 10+ person today. I'd be more concerned with interaction with other people.

I think I implied, but never said it explicitly.   He's 14, and a very mature 14.  It's always his parents' call, but I think he's easily responsible enough for nearly any mature content short of some of the sexual situations you get in a game like the Witcher series.

It's his inexperience with the genre that I was most interested in observing.  I'm thinking I might even explore that in a future article.  I've realized there's a bit of a gap between the MMO that we older folks like and what the younger folks are expecting from their games.  It'd be interesting to explore that a bit more, I think.

14 is a freshman in high school? I think he's ok.

Even for the Witcher.

I would say it would be a good parenting moment. At 14 he's going to be curious about sex anyway, might as well put things in perspective then.

edit: obviously it's up to the parents and how they want to raise a child. If I was inclined to have children it wouldn't be a big deal.

Bigger deal for me would be having a child balance video games with other activities.

Hariken

It's amazing you got a 14 year old to play an mmo period. They really don't like them because they are slower paced games.

Scot

Hariken said:

It's amazing you got a 14 year old to play an mmo period. They really don't like them because they are slower paced games.

And that considering the ding fests they now are. That said I never played MMOs when I was 14, they may well have seemed overly complex and slow to me then, not sure.

Red_Thomas

Sovrath said:

14 is a freshman in high school? I think he's ok.

Even for the Witcher.

I would say it would be a good parenting moment. At 14 he's going to be curious about sex anyway, might as well put things in perspective then.

edit: obviously it's up to the parents and how they want to raise a child. If I was inclined to have children it wouldn't be a big deal.

Bigger deal for me would be having a child balance video games with other activities.

Probably, but it's really up to his parents, anyway.   Even then, I'd be a little cautious.  I'm just a little leery of hyper sexuality in teens.  Hormones create enough stupidity without being encouraged.  lol

God knows I was dumb at that age.  No need to encourage my nephew in his attempts to take the record for stupidity away from me. 

Red_Thomas

Deyirn said:

Same for me. I was 13 in 2004 when WoW came out and I all wanted to play was:

Need for Speed Underground 1
Star Wars Battlefront 1
Star Wars Republic Commando

The only "fantasy" game I ever played as a kid were Diablo 2 and Heroes of Might & Magic 3, the whole concept of an highly immersive 3rd person game where you use swords and magic, there are orcs and dragons seemed very foreign and not even remotely interesting to me at the time.

I remember I was entering the internet cafe one day in 2004 to play one of the above mentioned games and I saw a guy and 2-3 others hunched over him. He played something that looked like an Orc Shaman or Warlock running through Ashenvale, I didn't knew that at the time. I stopped for a few minutes to look what he was doing, but apparently he was traveling from point A to point B as all he did was walked and I thought to myself "What a boring game".

It was only in later 2006/early 2007 that after hearing my classmates talk about this game called WoW that I started to poke around it. I started playing it full time in summer 2007 and little did I know, I'd play it for the next 12 years almost religiously and dumping more than 25,000 hours into it.

=======================================

But more on topic, I think kids today have shorter attention spans and are interested in those instant gratification games like Battle Royale which are completely different from what we played at their age. Our games were just you and the gameplay. Now it's skins, microstransactions, in Fortnite, stuff like ugly skins and idiotic dances or emotes. Worst thing is I've seen those kids pick it up and dance or act like they have sever brain damage and it makes me concerned when these kids are 40-50 years old and are running the world what it's going to be.

That could be true, but then I look back to the games that I liked and they were the most action-packed of the day.   Doom and Quake were the original click-fests, and when Duke Nukem and Lo Wang: Shadow Warrior came out, my friends and I were almost constantly in death match mode shooting each other in the face.

I was probably late teens or early 20s when UO and EQ came out, and that really did change my preferences in gaming dramatically.

Sovrath

Red_Thomas said:

Sovrath said:

14 is a freshman in high school? I think he's ok.

Even for the Witcher.

I would say it would be a good parenting moment. At 14 he's going to be curious about sex anyway, might as well put things in perspective then.

edit: obviously it's up to the parents and how they want to raise a child. If I was inclined to have children it wouldn't be a big deal.

Bigger deal for me would be having a child balance video games with other activities.

Probably, but it's really up to his parents, anyway.   Even then, I'd be a little cautious.  I'm just a little leery of hyper sexuality in teens.  Hormones create enough stupidity without being encouraged.  lol

God knows I was dumb at that age.  No need to encourage my nephew in his attempts to take the record for stupidity away from me. 

Well, that's why I'm saying it's a teaching moment.

I knew about the "birds and the bees" by 1st grade, was completely prepared by the time my body kicked in and knew the consequences of having children before one can reliably take care of children. but sure, it's up to the parents.

The thing is, they WILL find sexual content when they want to. Heck we did and there wasn't an internet.

Elaland

I enjoyed the perspective of the article, and I had my own slightly different experience with 2 separate teenage grandsons (one now an adult). As they reached pre-teen and teen ages we would keep them for a couple of weeks in the summer. The majority of the days involved MMO's. Grandson 1 we played Guild Wars 1 with, and later SWTOR. Grandson 2 we played SWTOR and ESO with. What I witnessed was they loved the time spent with "Grandma and Grandpa" and would engage in the MMO's with us. They had no issue learning the games; mostly because they could ask us questions directly since we were gaming on different computers in the same room. However, when they returned home they would mostly go back to console gaming - predominately FPS's, but Grandson 2 still plays ESO on his own on PS4. The main point to understand is that the joy of the young comes from the sharing of time by the old(er) and receiving attention regardless of the venue.

Red_Thomas

Elaland said:

I enjoyed the perspective of the article, and I had my own slightly different experience with 2 separate teenage grandsons (one now an adult). As they reached pre-teen and teen ages we would keep them for a couple of weeks in the summer. The majority of the days involved MMO's. Grandson 1 we played Guild Wars 1 with, and later SWTOR. Grandson 2 we played SWTOR and ESO with. What I witnessed was they loved the time spent with "Grandma and Grandpa" and would engage in the MMO's with us. They had no issue learning the games; mostly because they could ask us questions directly since we were gaming on different computers in the same room. However, when they returned home they would mostly go back to console gaming - predominately FPS's, but Grandson 2 still plays ESO on his own on PS4. The main point to understand is that the joy of the young comes from the sharing of time by the old(er) and receiving attention regardless of the venue.

Kids in my family are similar.  We're the cool aunt and uncle, so they all cycle through each summer.   From May to August, we have kids pretty constantly.  They all bring their PCs when they come, and we play a lot of games.  For the younger ones, we do focus more on the simpler games, but the older kids tend to lean more towards something more complex.   I definitely think that GW1 and SWTOR are both great games to introduce kids to MMOs through.  City of Heroes/Villains was good too, I think.   Anything that has a little more action and a little less on the mechanics tends to do well for kids, I think.

Hariken

Does anyone here remember a game called Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun? That was my first game and it kept me up late at night. I bought it because the box looked so cool to me.

Red_Thomas

C&C, man....  Those were the days.  "Nuclear launch detected...."     Fantastic memories.