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Children Deserve Better Video Games
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Why has gaming not had its Bluey Moment?
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Transcript
Introduction to Dopamine Slot Machine
00:00:11
Andrew Wilmot
Good morning, good day, good evening. Whenever you are, or 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?
00:00:22
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? My name is Andrew, I'm a dad of two and a lifelong gamer. And I've been reflecting on one of the stats I saw just before Christmas that I mentioned in a previous episode.
00:00:37
Andrew Wilmot
that in-game currencies are now a more asked for Christmas presents than video games or new consoles.
Impact of In-Game Currency on Children
00:00:44
Andrew Wilmot
Furthermore, I saw in a report from Ofcom the other day that Roblox now has a reach of 61% of children eight to fourteen in the UK and that 58% of children said that they spent money online in the past month.
00:00:58
Andrew Wilmot
Apart from the damage that the games that rely on in-game currencies do to kids, it made me sad for a different reason. You would be forgiven for thinking that I was really anti-gaming if you've only listened to a few episodes of this podcast, but I am actually a huge fan of gaming as a storytelling medium. you know I start every episode by highlighting the fact that I am a lifelong gamer.
00:01:19
Andrew Wilmot
There are storytelling techniques you just can't do through books or films that you can through a video game. There's sort of interactive environmental storytelling techniques.
Game Quality and Children's Options
00:01:27
Andrew Wilmot
A game like Elden Ring, although it is getting a film adaption, is never going to have the same depth or breadth of storytelling if it was done through a different medium.
00:01:38
Andrew Wilmot
Just as I talk about the damage video game addiction can do, I've also had some brilliant experiences with friends through or with video games. But the domination of games like Fortnite and Roblox is an existential threat to video games as we know it.
00:01:53
Andrew Wilmot
The thing is that the games on these platforms, they're just bad games, right? Roblox is slop. And I'm sorry if it comes across elitist, but it is absolutely low quality slop. It's drivel. The sort of games that nobody would ever pay for, but are popular because they are freely accessible.
00:02:09
Andrew Wilmot
and And this is something Roblox does really well, is it gives children an infinite choice to find the sorts of games they do want to play. For child, Roblox might be the only place where they get that sort of free choice. I mean, what, you're going to give a child free choice to buy every game on the PlayStation Store? No.
00:02:25
Andrew Wilmot
But Roblox, they can go and try everything. They've got that choice.
Shifts in Gaming Culture
00:02:30
Andrew Wilmot
I compare the games that are popular on Roblox, just to highlight a few though on the Roblox charts at the moment. Steal a Brain Rot, Escape Tsunami for Brain Rots, My Fishing, Brain Rots, and Bee Swarm Simulator. There's bit of a trend going on there, isn't there?
00:02:45
Andrew Wilmot
To games that were popular when I was a child. So Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, which by the way, there's a great re-release out recently that ah I've been playing with my daughter. The Halo games, the Zelda games. And I'm not saying the last were perfect experiences or that there weren't bad games because, my God, there were bad games. You had the classic movie tie-in games that most of the time were rubbish.
00:03:08
Andrew Wilmot
But at least they were all created with a degree of care. And many of them had a huge focus on being able to have multiple players on the same screen, either working together or competing with each other.
00:03:19
Andrew Wilmot
That meant You had to have friends over to play multiplayer. It was a social event, the way that even playing together but over the internet could never be. Additionally, these games, even the worst... There was a name for it, Shovelware, because it would be shoveled out cheaply. um But even the worst of those examples couldn't have microtransactions. They didn't rely on addictive design. It simply wasn't possible to. There was no benefit to utilising addictive design of the quality gameplay mechanics.
00:03:47
Andrew Wilmot
there's an interesting section in Oxford University's 2021 gaming and wellbeing study to summarise. Enjoyment and psychological satisfaction weren't tied to hours played, but motivation.
Purposeful vs. Distraction-Oriented Games
00:03:59
Andrew Wilmot
Gamers who described gaming as a chosen enjoyable activity reported of better wellbeing than those who described it as a habit or an escape. Games like Roblox and Fortnite are designed to be distractions and escape.
00:04:10
Andrew Wilmot
Games with a campaign that you can complete, the goal to achieve, are more purposeful games. Now, you can absolutely play those for distraction, and you can absolutely take games that are on Roblox and assign the goal, but oh fundamentally, they are structured different. and The difference between Roblox and a game like Zelda Breath of the Wild is like the difference between TikTok and a Pixar film.
00:04:31
Andrew Wilmot
There is hope,
Focus on Quality Game Development
00:04:32
Andrew Wilmot
though. the other end of the age spectrum, we have the increased popularity and recognition of games that are doing it right. Sven Vink, founder and CEO of the video game company Larian Studios, which won Game of the Year in 2023 for its game Bulger's Gate 3, said this in his acceptance speech. I'm just going to quote it verbatim because it's a really fantastic speech.
00:04:54
Andrew Wilmot
It turns out that not only will I be the first one who will know which game wins tonight, I'll actually also know which game is going to win next year and the year after. Now, how do I know this? Well, an oracle told me.
00:05:05
Andrew Wilmot
She said, change is coming. It's a modern oracle, so she made me sign an NDA, but I trust all of you. I know you can keep a secret. You will never leak it. The oracle told me that the game of the year 2025 was going to be made by a studio who found the formula to make it up here. It's stupidly simple, but somehow it keeps on getting lost.
00:05:23
Andrew Wilmot
The studio made their game because they wanted to make a game that they wanted to play themselves. They didn't make it to increase market shares. They didn't make it to serve a brand. They didn't have to meet arbitrary sales targets or fear being laid off if they didn't meet those targets.
00:05:37
Andrew Wilmot
Furthermore, the people in charge forbade them from cramming the game with anything whose only purpose was to increase revenue and didn't serve the game design. They didn't treat their developers like numbers in a spreadsheet.
00:05:48
Andrew Wilmot
They didn't treat their players as users to exploit, and they didn't make decisions they knew were short-sighted in function of a bonus or politics. They knew that if you put the game and the team first, the revenue will follow.
00:06:00
Andrew Wilmot
They were driven by idealism and wanted players to have fun. They realised that if the developers didn't have fun, nobody was going to have any fun. and they understood the value of respect, that if they treated the developers and players well, those same developers and players would forgive them when things didn't go as planned.
Quality Concerns in Children's Games
00:06:17
Andrew Wilmot
But above all, they cared about their game because they love games. It's really that simple, said the Oracle. I love that speech. It's really optimistic. And as a gamer, hope it comes true. Now, Baldur's Gate 3 is not appropriate for children. I'm not recommending you give it to your children. It is a brilliant game, but it's got explicit sex scenes. It's very complicated, very deep and broad in terms of the mechanics.
00:06:46
Andrew Wilmot
And ah violence is an inescapable part of it. But it is a masterpiece of a game. It's a real work of art. And Sven was right. The year after Game of the Year 2023, sorry, the Game of the Year 2024, the winner was Astro Bot, a game that I'm very happy for my kids to play. and one that I enjoy myself, itself a real celebration of the history of video gaming.
00:07:09
Andrew Wilmot
The year after that was Claire Obscure, Exposition 33, which I've talked about before here. It might be the single most compelling story of any medium this decade. Again, not an appropriate game for children, but it's proof that there is an alternative to making junk.
00:07:22
Andrew Wilmot
So why this contrast between what's popular with adults and the quality of what adults are playing and what's given to children? Firstly, I do have to acknowledge that live service games continue to be made that do heavily utilize addictive design and are popular with adults. So this isn't necessarily a strictly convenient binary between the two.
00:07:41
Andrew Wilmot
um Games such as EA FC, the Battlefield series, Call a Duty series, for me, use a lot of the design mechanics that I do not approve of at all.
00:07:55
Andrew Wilmot
That said, putting that aside, Depending how old your children are, one of two shows will have been the dominant shows of their childhood, Peppa Pig or Bluey. Peppa Pig isn't the worst show in the world, but it is difficult to appreciate as an adult, and I wince at the behaviour of the children, particularly the incompetence of Daddy Pig, and I certainly don't enjoy it if it's on.
00:08:16
Andrew Wilmot
Bluey, in contrast, is a celebration of family, warts and all. There are multiple episodes that I've shed a tear at, be it at ah Bingo's impotent anger and frustration when she realises that selling the house means moving away, or at Chile, the mum's admission that she wants her dad to look after himself because she still needs her dad.
00:08:35
Andrew Wilmot
It doesn't belittle underestimate children, nor does it get moralistic or turn into a lecture. It tackles themes such as infertility, divorce, death, the struggle of trying to do something that you're finding really hard, It even has a couple of episodes that tackle phones. And as much as the the parents aren't perfect, they have their flaws, um they are certainly parents the sort of parents that are you know you really aspire to be like.
00:09:09
Andrew Wilmot
Bluey has been successful because it is a quality children's media created with love. And that extends from the animation, the music, the plot, the themes, the dialogue.
00:09:20
Andrew Wilmot
it's it's ah It's a multi-billion dollar IP. There's money to be made in doing it right. So why has gaming yet to have its Bluey moment?
00:09:31
Andrew Wilmot
So firstly, Bluey is in some sense freely available. There are episodes on YouTube, it's on iPlayer, and it's on Disney+. plus So there's often little to no additional cost in choosing Bluey over another show.
00:09:44
Andrew Wilmot
I talk very positively about the game Cat Quest, both 2 and 3. a game that Both games I've completed with my own daughter. But as of writing, Cat Quest 3 is ยฃ18. It does go on sale, but it's ยฃ18 now. ยฃ18 per game is cheap,
Economic and Media Literacy Challenges
00:09:59
Andrew Wilmot
right? New AAA games, AAA being the acronym for the the gold standard in terms of money spent big budget blockbuster might be the equivalent term for films.
00:10:10
Andrew Wilmot
They can go for 70 pounds these days. And that's without considering the cost of a console, which is going to be several hundred pounds minimum, an additional controller, if you're going to be playing games with your child, you're looking at another 50 pound purchase, you compare that with the cost of giving a kid Roblox and an old phone or tablet, or even buying a tablet that the Amazon fire tablets go for what like 30 40 pounds on sale.
00:10:32
Andrew Wilmot
The raw economics will push parents towards Roblox, where there are an infinite variety of free games. I mentioned earlier, Roblox has thousands, tens of thousands of games. You can't replicate that by giving your child free access to everything on the PlayStation Store. I know there are subscriptions like PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass, which do massively increase the variety of free games, including quality games.
00:10:56
Andrew Wilmot
So they're that you would otherwise pay for. is kind of like a Netflix subscription. But even then, the sheer variety of roadblocks is something that can't be replicated elsewhere.
00:11:10
Andrew Wilmot
So just the raw economics will push parents towards roadblocks. There's then the fact that a lot of parents simply don't play games themselves or haven't in years. I started this podcast because I kept coming across parents who did not have the gaming media literacy to identify for themselves harmful games, if those games didn't contain explicitly sexual or violent content.
00:11:31
Andrew Wilmot
There games being released than anyone could ever play, more than anyone can ever be aware of. And so I certainly don't blame parents who have never gamed, who then give their child a platform to game on, that they hear that all their child's peers are on. They speak to other parents who say they've got no problem with it. ah You know, I'll just make sure that he can only play an hour of it a day, that sort of thing.
00:11:51
Andrew Wilmot
And Roblox at first glance looks juvenile. So does Fortnite for that matter. And then there's the time economics of it. Handing a child a tablet with Roblox on to distract them whilst you get on with the housework is fundamentally a very different proposition to sitting down and playing a game with your child for an hour.
00:12:09
Andrew Wilmot
I say over and over and over how valuable it is to actually sit down and play a video game with your child, but the reality is that's a hard ask and will inevitably come at the cost of other activities you could do with your child.
Parental Involvement in Gaming
00:12:22
Andrew Wilmot
If you are not a gamer, the chances are your child is a better gamer than you. So is sitting down being frustrated at a game at the expense of say, reading together, doing a puzzle together, or you know watching a show together, worth it?
00:12:35
Andrew Wilmot
despite that setup there, I say absolutely it is worth it become acquainted with games, better understand both the media your child consumes and actually your child as well through the medium of games.
00:12:45
Andrew Wilmot
It is worth putting the effort in if you can. But I understand why a lot of parents would find that difficult.
00:12:53
Andrew Wilmot
So gaming hasn't had its bluey moment, and I don't see its bluey moment coming anytime soon. Yet children do deserve better games. I've talked a lot about what we can do as parents, making more informed choices. And I like to think that if you're listening to this podcast, you're at least taking the first step towards that.
Proposed Societal Changes
00:13:10
Andrew Wilmot
Playing games actively with our children and encouraging couch co-op over online play. You know, if your child's big into Minecraft, I've spoken about Minecraft Realms being a decent alternative digital third space that you can make a lot safer than Roblox. So if you are looking to get rid of Roblox, Minecraft Realms is, I think, the best way to make that transition as painless as possible if they're using Roblox as a way to interact with their friends online.
00:13:37
Andrew Wilmot
But what these are all individual choices. What can society do? What can we ask politicians to do? So just a few points in no order for me would be to expand the definition of social media to include video games with online interactions, giving these games the same responsibilities as social media.
00:13:56
Andrew Wilmot
It also means that they are then, bit it can pass them under any regulations, restrictions, or bans. Australia's ban doesn't extend to Roblox. It has made it so that Roblox has to introduce some, frankly,
00:14:11
Andrew Wilmot
lacklustre restrictions on children being able to message adults on Roblox, which is one of those things where you're like, Oh, what they could do that before they didn't stop that themselves. um But by bringing video games with online interactions under the same scope as social media, we can then more effectively regulate them the way that we choose best.
00:14:36
Andrew Wilmot
Secondly, push for truly smartphone free schools. I will keep banging this drum. I am unapologetically supporter of smartphone free childhood. I do not believe that phones are appropriate devices for children.
00:14:48
Andrew Wilmot
That said, with parents make suboptimal choices for all sorts of reasons, and I'm not going to get into the, I'm not going to start judging parents for that choice. But with schools, it should be zero tolerance on site.
00:15:02
Andrew Wilmot
No, put a phone in the pocket switched and you know pretend that it's switched off because we have the stats there. That doesn't work as a policy. Yonder pouches and similar, we we know are better solution than our out of sight, out of mind policies, but still hugely flawed.
00:15:20
Andrew Wilmot
You want to protect kids? You need those phones not with them on school transport. So bricks-only policy, zero tolerance, has to be collected by an adult. This is a free policy to put in. There can be difficulties when it comes to school transport. But it gets kids talking together on school transport than staring at their phones. And a lot of, you know, I used to take the bus to drop my youngest to a nursery quite frequently, and I would very frequently see secondary school kids playing Roblox games on their phones, probably.
00:15:50
Andrew Wilmot
I remember one particularly harrowing time seeing children gambling on their phones, right? You remove phones from that space, then you are sending that message that you want kids to actually be talking to each other instead.
00:16:04
Andrew Wilmot
Expand the provision of youth clubs, giving children a real third space instead of pushing them onto unsafe digital ones. This is ah a dual thing. We have to acknowledge that games like Roblox and Fortnite aren't just popular because they're addictive. They're popular because we as a society have pushed children out of the public space.
00:16:22
Andrew Wilmot
There isn't really anywhere that we let children be children with... um without having all the activities be organised for them. We need to bring those places back.
00:16:36
Andrew Wilmot
Now, with youth clubs, there's also the as aspect, a youth clubs will have things like games consoles, and so it does give an opportunity to for youth club leaders to emphasise healthier choices of video games, to emphasise couch co-op or games like that, as opposed to playing online against each other.
00:16:54
Andrew Wilmot
So there's there's dual benefits there. And finally, update age ratings on video games to account for addictive design and online interactions. Currently, online interactions are not rated at all. So you can have a game that is a considered 3+, but then you go play online, you've got people shouting slurs at each other.
00:17:12
Andrew Wilmot
um It also doesn't account for addictive design. EAFC, a game which I repeatedly warn about, is considered a 3+.
00:17:21
Andrew Wilmot
we should account for di if if a game is heavily utilizing addictive design, it should be advertised on the front the same way as if it had sexual content, portrayals of drug use, or violent content.
00:17:34
Andrew Wilmot
So that's, um I don't think any of those are particularly extreme. The age ratings one, we do rely on an industry body for that. There's questions about whether that's appropriate or not. But,
00:17:47
Andrew Wilmot
All of these things are things that we could implement without a huge amount of cost, without a huge amount of restructuring of society. Youth clubs is probably the most expensive thing, but we've previously had them.
00:17:59
Andrew Wilmot
It's something that has been lost over the past 15 years.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:18:02
Andrew Wilmot
It's something that as individuals we can get involved in and start making a difference locally. But that is all we've got time for today.
00:18:11
Andrew Wilmot
Don't forget that if you've got some questions for me, or if you your children have been impacted by the issues we've discussed today, that you can get in touch with us at thedopamineslopmachine at gmail.com. Thank you so much for joining. This has been the Dopamine Slop Machine.
00:18:24
Andrew Wilmot
Thank you, and see you soon.