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00:00:01
Games Your Kids Will Love (That You Will Too)
0 Playsin 10 hours
Andrew, a father of two and lifelong gamer, teams up with Brandon, a consumer psychologist and ex-pro video game coach, to cover video games, the way they are designed and how these design decisions impact the children that play them.
In this solo episode, Andrew goes over a handful of positive examples of games, and what makes them better choices for children.
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction to 'Dopamine Slot Machine' Podcast
00:00:11
Andrew Wilmot
Good morning, good day, good evening. Whenever you are, welcome to the Dopamine Slot Machine, the podcast that discusses what you need to know about the video games your children are playing. How are they designed to get your kids hooked?
00:00:23
Andrew Wilmot
How do they make money from your children? And what can you do to make sure that your child's relationship with video games is a positive one?
Andrew's Gaming Journey and Inspiration
00:00:30
Andrew Wilmot
My name is Andrew, I'm a dad of two and a lifelong gamer. Today I've actually been inspired to talk about some of the more positive gaming experiences that are out there.
00:00:39
Andrew Wilmot
I'm feeling super energised from an in-person, smart, and free childhood meet where I saw kids of all ages playing together as kids. Ours had a wonderful time, and it really made me feel that there is a point to doing what we're doing.
Roblox Webinar Announcement
00:00:53
Andrew Wilmot
There hasn't been an episode for a while, I know that. I've been travelling for work, Brandon is still absolutely snowed under, but I do have a cool announcement. We've actually sold out our first webinar.
00:01:04
Andrew Wilmot
It's Understanding Roblox, Risks, Realities and Resilience for Parents, where I will be showcasing real Roblox games and the harms they can cause live. I put up 50 places for this and this was filled like overnight.
00:01:19
Andrew Wilmot
To answer a couple of questions about it, yes, it will be recorded apart from a Q&A section at the end. Yes, I will run another session on it with a different set of Roblox games. There are so many Roblox games which are actively harm causing that I could run this as a series pretty much indefinitely.
Mobile vs Console Gaming
00:01:34
Andrew Wilmot
But this was an absolutely brilliant response and I wasn't expecting it at all. So a little bit of background for this episode. We are predominantly a console gaming family.
00:01:46
Andrew Wilmot
We've spoken about it in a previous episode, but just to cover it again, tablets and phones as a gaming form factor come with an additional set of problems aside from the games that you can't really get away from.
00:01:59
Andrew Wilmot
From the fact that they come with push notifications to being able to take it to bed or the bathroom.
Educational Value of Rollercoaster Tycoon
00:02:06
Andrew Wilmot
or the amount of low-quality, addictive trash, in lieu of a better word, on the app stores, or even the contextualisation issues that come with having a device that's used for gaming but isn't exclusively a gaming and device.
00:02:20
Andrew Wilmot
Gaming on tablets and phones is something I'd just recommend against. That said, this first game, some versions of it can be played on phone or tablet. I've enjoyed playing this on my phone, so let's talk about it. The first game want to talk about is Rollercoaster Tycoon, specifically Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic or Rollercoaster Tycoon 3.
00:02:43
Andrew Wilmot
So if you were a gamer in the late 90s or early 2000s, this should be a familiar name for you. It even came in cereal boxes at one point, right? It was really, everybody had it, everybody knew it. It's a really widely loved and played series.
00:02:58
Andrew Wilmot
Most of what I'm going to talk about now will apply to Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. ah but stay away from Rollercoaster Tycoon Adventures, which is just a bit of a disaster of a game. Nothing I'm talking about now applies to that.
00:03:12
Andrew Wilmot
Specifically, Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic and Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. These should be available in some form or another on most consoles, definitely on the PC.
00:03:23
Andrew Wilmot
But first thing to get out of the way this is an old game, right? I'm primarily talking about version, repackaged versions of the same game that I played as a kid, but it's held up beautifully.
00:03:37
Andrew Wilmot
There's something timeless about the art style, the gameplay loop is impeccable.
Family-Friendly Gaming with Cat Quest
00:03:42
Andrew Wilmot
The gist of it is you are in charge of building and managing ah theme park.
00:03:47
Andrew Wilmot
You place attractions, set ticket prices, build pathways. You've got to make sure there's enough food and drink vendors as well as enough toilets. Setting prices for all of these things, balancing the budget, balancing loans and income.
00:04:01
Andrew Wilmot
It's so simple in the way it's designed that even very young players can enjoy it. Ah, but then there's the depth to it. You can build your own roller coasters, right? Great.
00:04:12
Andrew Wilmot
Have you accounted for keeping G-forces within a fun zone rather than it being an overly intense spine rattler. I'm not kidding when I say in in these games, to build a successful roller coaster, you have to account for real world physics.
00:04:28
Andrew Wilmot
And then there's the finance side of things. And I say this without exaggeration, that was my experiences with RollerCoaster Tycoon that first taught me the perils of borrowing large sums of money, taught me about interest. See, you can borrow money to build your park.
00:04:43
Andrew Wilmot
But then you have to repay it with interest. So you better invest it well, you better spend it well, otherwise that alone can cause you, that park, to fail.
00:04:55
Andrew Wilmot
Content-wise, well, you can design things in a way that result in the death of your guests. You can even pick them up and put them in there in the water and drown them. So keep that in mind. But nothing about the game is driving you towards that, it's just...
00:05:11
Andrew Wilmot
a quirk of it as a simulation game. Other than that, there's really nothing here to worry about unless you're particularly screamish about vomit. Guests will vomit. You've got to have handymen that clean up litter, vomit, vandalism, so on and so forth. It's it's not a multiplayer game.
00:05:30
Andrew Wilmot
There's no communicating with people on the internet to be worried about. There's no addictive design built into it. It's just a really quality simulation game. There are very, very few games on tablets or phones that I would recommend for children for reasons that I mentioned earlier.
Responsible Mobile Gaming Strategies
00:05:47
Andrew Wilmot
Minecraft might be the only other one. And so I kind of wanted to put this on the list to illustrate that whilst though there are a handful of quality games available on these platforms, but I really wanted to use it as ah an example to contrast with the vast majority of games on these, which are actively designed to be trying to suck as much money out of your children as possible.
00:06:13
Andrew Wilmot
As a general rule, if you aren't paying for the game, if it's if it's on the App Store and it's free, they are trying to get money out of your child in other ways, much more underhanded ways. So if you are if you have given your child a tablet to play games on,
00:06:32
Andrew Wilmot
number one piece of advice you can do to minimize the harm is only select apps from the paid section of the app store. It is, look, sure you might spend a fiver.
00:06:44
Andrew Wilmot
So I mean, that there are games on there which will go for £10 plus, like I've seen the the old Total War games on there for almost the price of a full game. But the money you save by doing that compared to potentially risking,
00:07:00
Andrew Wilmot
ah if if the tablet or phone is inadvertently linked to your card and accidents happen, potentially risking your child accidentally spending thousands because they've been playing a game that's railroading them into doing so, it's you know it's a no-brainer for me. I would always rather pay for the premium experience than leave my child at the whims of quite unscrupulous to developers.
00:07:28
Andrew Wilmot
Now from one childhood, mine, to another. Cat Quest. So my daughter and I have together beaten Cat Quest 2 and 3. The first Cat Quest is single player only, so we haven't played that.
00:07:41
Andrew Wilmot
I did buy it for my daughter. It's perfectly fine as far as I can tell. um Having played 2 and 3 from beginning to end with her, I'm quite confident in letting her play the first one.
00:07:53
Andrew Wilmot
But I've not played it myself, so keep that in mind. Cat Quest 2 and 3 are available on PlayStation, Switch, Xbox and PC. And the first Cat Quest is also available on Android and Apple. So thinking back to the conversation I was just having about ah phone and tablet games, that might be another one to consider.
00:08:13
Andrew Wilmot
So the whole series is a real light-hearted, cat-pun-filled romp. and the last two are cooperative games as well that can be as easy or as hard as you set it. The themes and story are complex enough to not be underestimating kids, which I quite like, whilst still being light enough in its presentation as to be a fun experience rather than completely going over their heads.
00:08:35
Andrew Wilmot
For instance, Cat Quest 2 is primarily about the ongoing, I suppose, war, disagreement, animosity between cats and dogs. Now,
00:08:46
Andrew Wilmot
There's a lot of inherent humour to that. There's also opportunities to talk to your child about some of the perhaps more unfortunate or deeper real life events that are going on.
00:08:58
Andrew Wilmot
And having something that simultaneously is child friendly, but giving the opportunity for you as a parent to explore deeper, I think is great. If you're a gamer yourself,
00:09:10
Andrew Wilmot
The best thing I can compare this is to something like Diablo, but appropriate for Seven Yards. That's quite difficult to imagine, I know, but you know fundamentally it's a game where you customise your build by choosing your equipment, you go on in an adventure, you beat bosses, and you're going through a story that, to be honest, would make for wonderful bedtime reading in any other format.
00:09:33
Andrew Wilmot
It's full of references that will go over your child's head without doing so in that kind of Wink Wink Nudge Nudge way, which a lot of media that aims to appeal to kids and grown-ups alike does. To take an example, a boss in Cat Quest 3 comes to mind for this. A guitar-playing rockstar pirate cat called Captain Meow-Tallica.
00:09:54
Andrew Wilmot
If you've not really played video games before, this is a perfect one to pick up and start playing with your kid. As I said, it's the the easiest mode on it is really easy. And then you're just, instead of it being very skills-based, it's more of an interactive story. And you're thinking about the puzzles. And none of puzzles are particularly difficult.
00:10:14
Andrew Wilmot
The puzzles are aimed for relatively young children to be able to solve with if they put their mind to it. um Have this be your guys' thing for a while. ah They're not long games either, maybe taking five to six hours to complete if you're really focusing on the main objectives.
00:10:29
Andrew Wilmot
There is a lot extra you can do, like side quests and side stories. So that really expands the playtime. But even then, they're not large games, right? This isn't, you know, signing up yourself for a 100-hour epic.
00:10:44
Andrew Wilmot
They're also pretty cheap games. Cat Quest 2 is frequently under £5 on sale on any platform. Cat Quest 3, which is the newest, only came out last year, I want to say, costs less than £20.
Nostalgia and Skills in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
00:10:56
Andrew Wilmot
There's no DLC, there's no addictive design, no microtransactions and no online play.
00:11:03
Andrew Wilmot
I almost spoke about a different game here. And so I'm going to briefly talk about this one, ah just as a side note. And it's a game called The Plucky Squire.
00:11:14
Andrew Wilmot
um I'm still playing this myself. I think I'm about halfway through, and unless there's some major twists, I will probably let my daughter play it if definite she's interested in it. It's, again, a fun, light-hearted yet clever romp, gorgeously narrated, wonderful art style.
00:11:30
Andrew Wilmot
Again, themes that are complex enough to not be underestimating children while still being, on a surface level, light-hearted enough to for for children to just enjoy without having to think about it too deeply.
00:11:46
Andrew Wilmot
It's, as far as I can tell so far, it's great. Go watch a trailer. go Go watch a video on it. and don't want to talk too much about it. ah Ultimately, I figured I haven't beaten this yet. I can't comment. Maybe maybe in in the third act, it massively changes tone.
00:12:00
Andrew Wilmot
um That's not what I've seen anywhere online, but without seeing it for myself, I didn't really want to recommend it. But there are games like this Plucky Squire, to name one.
00:12:12
Andrew Wilmot
Cat Quest 2 and 3. We have spoken about the Zelda games before. I purposefully did not put those on this list just because we have talked about them before. But again, pretty much any of the Zelda games will be great.
00:12:23
Andrew Wilmot
But now, something completely different. We've had a single-player simulation game. We've had a two-player action-adventure game. Now, this... is a skill-based arcade game.
00:12:35
Andrew Wilmot
And that's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2, or coming out later this year is Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4. So the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series has been around, God, it's got to be about 25, 26 years.
00:12:51
Andrew Wilmot
Certainly it was out on the first PlayStation. And recently they've remade the older games for modern game systems. So these come in two sets. You've got Pro Skater 1 and 2 as a single game. And as I mentioned, later this year, Pro Skater 3 and 4 will be releasing.
00:13:05
Andrew Wilmot
um I actually had Pro Skater 3 and 4 on the PlayStation 2 as a child. ah So I'm quite looking forward to the remake. These will be available on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, Switch 2 as well, apparently, if you're considering that, and PC.
00:13:23
Andrew Wilmot
They're very simple in its idea. You're a skater in a massive skate park, normally themed in some way. So there's the skate parks built out of schools, there's skate parks that's maybe London themed.
00:13:37
Andrew Wilmot
I remember in three or four, there's a skate park set in a zoo, an Alcatraz. And you're just trying to do tricks. This sort of fun sandbox is super enticing for kids. You can skate everywhere, try out new tricks, and have fun without pressure to do anything specific.
00:13:53
Andrew Wilmot
But then there's a monstrously high skill ceiling. If you really want to work to get good at the pro skater games, you can put the effort in to get very, very good. But the other end, there's ways you can you can set up cheats, if you will, that mean that you never fall off. So, you know, every single trick you attempt and just generally make the game a lot easier.
00:14:15
Andrew Wilmot
So and that can be on a character by character basis. So, again, you can have in the same game somebody who proficient. really good at it, perhaps plays games maybe a little bit too much, maybe maybe they're 30 years old and have been playing games for 27 years, like myself, ah and then they're playing with their daughter.
00:14:37
Andrew Wilmot
it's It's great, but ah have being able to fulfill that spectrum of ability. But it really comes to life, though, when you play split-screen.
00:14:50
Andrew Wilmot
So this is the type of game that you might play when you invite a friend over. Now that might give some of you a reflexive, nauseous reaction because, ah, kids shouldn't be playing video games together when they could be playing away from screens. And I get it. I do.
00:15:04
Andrew Wilmot
But also some of my childhood childhood memories come from playing quality games with friends. And, you know, the chances are your children's going to want to play video games with their friends. And so much of what we talk about on this channel is how that's not necessarily a bad thing if done in moderation and with quality content.
00:15:21
Andrew Wilmot
And so, yeah, the key is moderation and what's right here will vary from child to child. But the other element to that is quality content. And this is that. It does this split screen party gaming brilliantly.
00:15:34
Andrew Wilmot
So in Pro Skater, you can be competing with each other to get the best high score or just vibing together in a digital space. I had a good friend come to visit recently and we had a couple of beers and we're just competing with each other to pull off the high scoring chain of tricks.
00:15:49
Andrew Wilmot
And that's fun for me. But then there's the soundtrack. And this is a bit of an odd one to talk about unless you know, unless you were sort of there when the original games were released.
00:16:00
Andrew Wilmot
So this was always one of the selling points of the Pro Skater series. In a pre-Spotify age, you only had a handful of ways of discovering cool music that your parents didn't know about. Maybe your friend had a cooler older sibling.
00:16:13
Andrew Wilmot
Maybe you had Sky TV and its music channels. I didn't have either of those things, but I did have the Pro Skater games. The first game has everything from 90s rap to ska punk.
00:16:24
Andrew Wilmot
I've played the accordion for many years now, including in a couple of punk bands, and there's an argument to be made that the first nudge I had in that direction came from the inclusion of Flogging Molly in Pro Skater 4.
00:16:36
Andrew Wilmot
Looking at the music list for the remake, I see Motorhead, Iron Maiden sat next to, you know, sort of more modern music right next to each other. and in a world of algorithm-driven Spotify playlists and marketing-led slop, there's something really nostalgic and old-school about the care and attention Pro Skater treats its soundtrack inclusions.
00:16:59
Andrew Wilmot
And again, going back to that, this is quality content. if you are If your child is playing video games, then putting aside the moderation part of things, this is the sort of game that is relatively healthy place to be playing. There is online play to keep an eye out for, but communication is not a major part of that. um And again, that online play isn't front and centre.
00:17:24
Andrew Wilmot
There's no microtransactions, there's no DLC, there's There's not really anything in the way of other nasties. It's not really much in the way of addictive design. There is a progression element where you... um you yeah All the levels are available to start off with for free play, but if you want to level up your character to make them a better skater, being able to pull off better tricks... When I say better skater, I don't mean that the game starts playing it for you. I just mean that you know They can jump higher, they can go faster, which means that you then as the player can then pull off more complex tricks.
00:17:58
Andrew Wilmot
So i actually consider that to progression element quite a positive thing rather than just what seems to be the modern standard where you just buy your way in. Once you bought the game, that's it.
00:18:09
Andrew Wilmot
You've got it all.
The Ethics of Gaming and Future Topics
00:18:10
Andrew Wilmot
So but those are the three games I wanted to talk about. And this was an important episode for me to make. These are three games that widely available, that are all popular, they're all successful games, and they show we don't have to make games to be exploitative of developing minds to be successful.
00:18:29
Andrew Wilmot
There's huge money to be made just by making quality games. The likes of Fortnite and Roblox aren't just bad for kids, but they're actively damaging the games industry itself, and they're it is that they are making a conscious choice to design themselves that way, to maximise that extraction from children.
00:18:47
Andrew Wilmot
It is not an anti-gaming position. It is not, it's not condemning it as an art form to be critical of the practices of these mega corporations.
00:19:00
Andrew Wilmot
And, I've started to see a little bit of sort of pushback in a few niche corners against the idea, like like saying that, ah it you know, you coming out as really against Roblox, for instance, well, it's just an evolution of gaming and gaming's fine. And it's just a, it's just a rehash of all the same arguments you had in the nineties about video games causing violence.
00:19:22
Andrew Wilmot
um But it's not that, it's not that at all. The choices they're making are actively harming the rest of the games industry. as well as our children.
00:19:32
Andrew Wilmot
But for now, don't forget that if you've got any questions for us, or if you or your children have been impacted by the issues we've discussed today, you can get in touch with us on our website, thedopamineslockmachine.co.uk, or find us on the Dopamine Slot Machine Discussion Corner Facebook group.
00:19:46
Andrew Wilmot
All links can be found in our artist profile, and we'd love to hear from you. That's all we have time for today. Thank you so much for joining us. We'd love to have you here with us again in our next episode where we're going to be covering EA Sports FC, previously known as FIFA, the virtual football game that's been in the news for the wild sums children have spent on virtual players.
00:20:06
Andrew Wilmot
This has been the Dopamine Slot Machine. Thank you. See you soon.