In which I deny my son an Xbox

On Twitter, @JoshDaws asked me to explain my reasons for not buying my son an Xbox and I figured it was too involved to do it in a few 140-character messages, so I’m putting it here.

Everyone is a consumer. Everyone consumes culture of some kind, whether it’s radio, TV, games, books, movies, theater, whatever. For some people, it’s Honey Boo Boo. For others, it’s sitting on an overturned bucket in a warehouse while they watch a play about women in Afghanistan. For others, it’s that one Merle Haggard album they just can’t get enough of. And for still others, it’s a whole weekend shooting zombies on the Xbox.

Now, I don’t have a problem with any of this, right? God forbid, considering some of the movies I’ve wasted portions of my life on. Consume what you want. Enjoy it. With my son, he’s latched onto things that I thought were dumb enough to kill brain cells (like Garfield books) and other things that were mostly a waste of time. But he enjoys them and I don’t want to make a big deal out of it.

However! When he came to me to say he wanted to buy an Xbox–with his own money–I told him he couldn’t. (FYI: he’s 11.) He was pretty upset (and is still trying to wear us down) but I was adamant. It’s not that I dislike video games. He has some right now and has played them ever since he was small; Minecraft is his current obsession. Yes, it can be difficult for him to stop when we ask him to, but that’s true of any kid doing any activity that they love. We also have a Wii (which was supposed to be used for the Wii Fit, but nevermind) although he doesn’t much like the games we have.

It’s not that the games are violent. There are plenty of sweet, non-violent puzzle/platform/whatever games. Besides, we’ve watched every episode of Burn Notice and he’s played Call of Duty (and #2) on the iMac.

The question is: how much of his life is spent consuming, and how much is spent creating?

See, when he was small, he would spend hours making things. As a toddler he would make endless lines of tiny blocks all through the apartment. As he got older, he made comic books, then baked goods, then finally short animated Lego movies.

And they were all terrible. The comics, actually, had some effective layout and design, but the food he made was a random mix of whatever he could grab and it tasted like poison. “For you, Mom!” (and she would always taste it.)

The Lego shorts were always busy but there was never a plot that made sense, half the snaps would be out of focus.

They were good for his age–actually, they were excellent for his age. Look at the “novel” of his I published last year on the blog; I couldn’t write with that much verve at his age.

But he lost all that when he went to school. The biggest lesson he took from public school is that “fun”, “projects”, and “learning” are all separate categories. He still likes to make things, but only in Minecraft and it’s been a long time since he set aside several hours to create something. At best, he’s been putting in an hour or two a couple times a week with Garageband to make electronic music.

I don’t much care what he wants to do with his time, as long as he spends a good portion of it making things. Any asshole can spend every weekend of his life shooting baddies in a video game (and I’ve been that asshole, sometimes). I want him to have more than that. It’s not enough just to consume products made by some corporation, even if they’re cool products. He has to turn that around, too.

To that end, we’ve suspended regular homeschooling so he can work with me on a “book trailer” for THE WAY INTO CHAOS. We’re shooting it in our living room with Lego figures. It’s completely inappropriate for the tone of the novel, if you know what I mean, and would be terrible marketing if I were remotely impressed by the marketability of trailers anyway.

Still, it’s a project. He’s throwing himself into it with his old enthusiasm, and I love him for it. I just wish we could return to the days when this was a habit.

Anyway, that’s why I won’t let him buy an Xbox. He has games already, and Netflix, and DVDs from the library, and books, too. That’s a lot of opportunities to consume. I don’t think he needs enough to fill his whole life.

Experience Music Project Fail (or Let me share my pain with you)

Last night I took my wife and son to the Experience Music Project for the opening night of their “Game Nite” exhibit, which is their new video game project, I guess. Let’s start by saying it didn’t go well.

My wife has zero interest in video games at all, and I really enjoy them but try to keep my distance. I can be a little obsessive about things, and video games sometimes take over my whole life. However, my son loves them and has been making noises about creating some. Unsurprisingly, we want to support that.

The main feature of opening night was a series of talks given by game professionals and educators who teach game-making. That page is gone from EMP’s website but you can see the Google cache while it lasts. We were especially interested in this one:

So You Want to Make a Video Game?
Raymond Yan, Senior Executive at DigiPen Institute of Technology
Jason Pace, Executive Director at University of Washington Center for Serious Play

Now, I know there are resources online for creating games. I’ve looked. We were especially interested here because it was two guys who were local to us and because they would have a chance to bounce ideas off each other. I wanted to see a contrast between them. I also wanted to ask questions.

To that end, we skipped the tour of the actual games and got in line early for the keynote speech. We even got ourselves some good seats. The keynote was fine if not life-changing.

Unfortunately, because there was a line of people waiting to get in to the theater, they make the audience exit the room and get back at the end of the line. Because we had good seats we were one of the last out. The line went around two corners and up a flight of stairs.

We did not get into the one panel we most wanted to see.

Much of our time was spent standing beside game stations waiting to play one of the DigiPen games on offer. All the games were made as student projects and they are all hand-coded–no engines at all. You can play any of the games in their gallery for free. Most of the kids were playing a driving game I didn’t learn the name of, but “Solace” and “Nous” were other good ones.

My son did get to play some and so did I. My wife was interested in eavesdropping on some of the sound designs but nothing more beyond that. However, the largest portion of our time was spent playing a board game in the lounge. Pandemic. Damn, that’s a great game.

Anyway, I sent an email to EMP pointing out how frustrating it is to drop $35 on an event and then be barred from the think you most wanted to do. With luck they’ll post video of the event and someone will have asked the questions I wanted to ask.

Twenty Palaces, the tabletop rpg

It’s no secret to anyone who follows me on Twitter (@byharryconnolly) that at one time I was talking about licensing the Twenty Palaces books for a tabletop rpg. It’s also no secret that I told the company they shouldn’t bother: the series had already failed and no new books would be coming out to support the game release.

What’s more, I wanted to move on. I was pretty bummed that Twenty Palaces didn’t do well (still am, in fact) and I had no desire to go in-depth on the way the magic worked or the history of the Twenty Palace Society. It felt like dragging a dying dog outside to force him to chase a stick.

What I suggested to them and to others, was that they should just file off the serial numbers and release something similar. It’s what I did with the books themselves; I dumped the tentacles and the consonant-salad names to recreate Lovecraft after all.

I’m extremely pleased to say they did.

Now, it’s not *actually* a Twenty Palaces rpg, but it’s as close as anyone is going to come. If you pop over to that Kickstarter, you can download the game rulebook for a donation as low as $1. The only thing the core rulebook won’t have is the artwork (which is what the Kickstarter is about).

Once you have that, you can also download the “Magic System Toolkit” which has just been made available today in Update 19. The toolkit is a short demonstration of how to create different magic systems (5 of them) within the Fate rules, and the last one, Void Callers, is very similar to the Twenty Palaces system. I even played a (very small) part in spitballing ideas for one of the listed ~~predators~~ malign creatures who can be summoned from the void.

So, there isn’t going to be a Twenty Palaces game you can play, but this is as close as you’re likely to get, and it only costs a dollar for the pdfs. Of course, if you pledge at a higher amount, you’ll also get a Fate book called “Crime World” from LEVERAGE co-creator/writer John Rogers about grifting and stealing, along with a lot of other stuff.

Check it out.

Randomness for 1/10

1) The Macroeconomic effects of Smaug on Middle Earth. h/t James Nicoll

2) A Wikipedia hoax page about a fictitious war that stayed on the site for five years was not (NOT) the longest-running hoax page on the site.

3) Real astronaut tweets with Star Trek actors.

4) Visualizations of mass transit in major cities. This one is for Seattle.

5) Father hires in-game “hit squad” to kill his son’s PC.

6) Only sexy women in stylish boots can protect society from the threat of sharpened scissors.

7) Spagetti Gotham: Gotham City characters in the old west.

Giftmas report

Let’s start by saying this was a Card Kingdom Giftmas. Between the three of us, we must have dropped almost $600 there for card and board games, plus the never-ending Pokemon purchases.[1] Curious what we got? Here’s a pic.

Except that’s not everything. We forgot to include HIVE, which is a two-player game best described as “nature chess” except with fewer pieces and no board. The other game we forgot is FRIDAY, a solo deck-building game about a Pacific Islander who finds himself saddled with a hapless European shipwrecked on the island. You have to teach him how to survive and defeat pirates (by building the deck) in order to rid yourself of him. [2]

Also, the pic does not include the Pokemon stuff we go, including an entire booster box which went over… well, see footnote 1.

We haven’t played all the games yet, but there isn’t a dud among them. Some of the new Dominion cards are brutal, Munchkin Apocalypse is just as funny as the base game, and Guillotine is a surprise favorite.

Dixit is great but will play better with four players. 7 Wonders promises to be great fun but we shouldn’t have tried to play it when we were so exhausted. And even though Gloom promises to be great fun, I would have never bought it if I’d known the cards smelled like perfume. It’s a sunny day today, maybe I’ll air them out outside.

We finally replaced our ailing 19″ CRT television with a 32″ flatscreen; that’s not as large as most families have, but to us it’s a huge treat. Naturally, the first thing we watched on the big screen was the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (I received the extended editions last year)[3]

After that, we hooked up the Wii. My son got DJ Hero 2 and I got Lego LOTR. Yes, we’re hardcore gamers over here.

The two best-received gifts were (first) the Sensu iPad paint brush we bought for my wife. Theoretically, the art programs on her tablet should let her make art anywhere and anytime, but she hated using her finger because she couldn’t see the mark she was making. With the brush, that’s all changed. It will be a challenge for her to work on such a small surface, but that’s a challenge she’s willing to face.

The second gift was the laptop my son received for his birthday. He was born on Boxing Day, and we do our best to carefully separate the two celebrations. Anyway, his new computer is better than either of mine and he’s already pushing for Call of Duty or Skyrim for it.[4] In it’s way, this is also a gift for me, since he won’t have to do his schoolwork on my desktop all damn day.

So that’s why this blog has been dormant lately: holidays and birthday. Plus I’ve been working hard on EPIC SEQUEL WITH NO DULL PARTS. Sorry if I’m not around as much as I normally am but there’s work to do and fun to be had.

[1] Or is there an end? The boy is taking a break from Pokemon; he’s bored with his deck and bored with the game. As much as he likes the kids he plays against, it’s just not doing it for him the way it used to. We’ll see if he’s permanently moved on or if he just needs some time off.

[2] I’m convinced there’s another game that we left out, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it would be.

[3] I’ve decided I prefer the extended editions. There’s more room for nuance in them. Boromir is not just this desperate, untrustworthy character, he’s also the hero who offers words of kindness to Frodo when their needed. And he has scenes with Aragorn, a ridiculous omission from the theatrical releases. However, I could have done without the avalanche of skulls bit and the orcs who use grapple attacks in the middle of a battle.

[4] As if his mom would let an 11yo sit in his room playing first person shooters. As if.

Only creeps and fools make fun of Lawful Good

Okay, it’s not just creeps and fools. People who hate rpgs makes fun of it, and so do people who hate D&D. That’s legit. Then there are people like me, who think the whole idea of “alignments” as an organizing principle is a terrible idea. I’m a fool but not for that.

However, you also have people who write articles like this: The Best Dungeons & Dragons Character Alignments.

See? He’s cool with the idea of alignments in general, but he says this:

If heroes are Neutral Good, what does that make those who are Lawful Good? Paladins, i.e. assholes. Paladins and other stick-up-their-ass good guys try to do good within the system, and are invariably limited by it…

And there’s this sort of humor (which is funny, but still).

You know who qualifies as Lawful Good? The cop who gathers evidence legally to convict a suspect. He doesn’t plant evidence on a guy he’s sure is guilty. He doesn’t abuse his authority. He follows the law. Who else? Judges who make sure people get a fair trial when they could easily lean on the suspect they think is guilty.

And so on. The law limits us, yes, and sometimes (too often) the law is wrong and needs to be changed, but that’s a good thing. Only a creep or a fool longs to toss off the rule of law.

Black Friday

Tomorrow (or today, depending on when you read this) will be Black Friday, a day of doorbuster sales, consumers trampling each other for bargains, and sales at gigantic corporate retailers who undercut independent stores.

Or they would, unless the stores beat them at their own game. If you insist on doing some shopping, I’d like to point you back to my previous post about an indie game store that’s local to me, called Card Kingdom. They’re offering great prices and free shipping on some very popular board and card games. Check it out.

If that doesn’t seem like the right place to shop, you can check out this post from a few months back, Things I Would Buy Myself If I Were An Idiot for some unusual gift choices.

Yes, I’m going to do some shopping. Writing, too. Try not to get trampled.

Supporting independent stores at Giftmastime

Don’t hate me because I’m putting a Giftmas post ahead of Turkey Day, I’m not doing this because it directly benefits me. I don’t get anything for posting this except to drive traffic to a worthwhile, independently-owned store that deserves your business. Do you want to throw your money at Target or Amazon? I sure don’t, especially when you can pick up gifts for your friends and loved ones at great low prices with free shipping.

The store is called Card Kingdom and they have added a bunch of board and card games to their online store.

Did I mention low prices and free shipping?

Okay, I’m going to list the games I’ve already bought and intend to buy for my own family, and if you think they seem interesting, you can watch the game being played on a recent episode of Wil Wheaton’s online show Tabletop. But I’m going to put it behind a cut.

First, a message for my wife: I love you, sweetheart, but stop reading this post right now. I know I don’t have to say that to my kid, since he couldn’t be bothered, but I know you visit occasionally. Also, for anyone who knows her or is related to her, please don’t spoil her gift.

A cut! Continue reading