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Let's Grab Coffee!

Let's Grab Coffee!

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Posted byEilisin/lets_grab_coffee-Jan 07 at 10:15 PM

Were video games an integral part of your childhood?

  • Poll

Just curious!

Tell us about your memories of how you played as a child!

Tell us how it's affected you!

Or anything else :)

Comments33
  • hfwang18Jan 07 at 11:37 PMΔ

    Without question. They were the only company I had in a very lonely childhood, in which I was bullied at school and saw turmoil at home. I even ended up academically benefiting from those games, especially in history since I enjoyed historically-themed strategy games like Age of Empires and Medieval: Total War. Even the original Call of Duty had a lot to teach me about World War II and such.

    My (single) mom didn't have the time to regulate my video game playing, and though she wanted to, I'm glad that she didn't, even after she found the time. She realized that I could both manage to succeed academically (I made straight A's through middle school and got a 3.9 unweighted in high school, am about to graduate college with honors and go to medical school) and play games, at least in some level of moderation. I wasn't even limited in terms of the games' rating...I played M-rated starting from age 12 and T-rated games since age 9.

  • PipsyJan 07 at 10:25 PMΔ

    Wasn't allowed video games! I played a bit of FFXV at my friend's house the other week and it was the first time I'd ever used a PS controller in my life, lol. It does mean I couldn't join in on the video game conversations my friends had in the classroom and people are often shocked when I say I never played on a GameBoy or N64 or any of those other things. Likewise, I was never allowed to watch the cartoons on TV after school or the same TV shows as my friends. I do actually feel pretty sad about it because it distanced me from some of my classmates as a result, since we didn't have these things in common. I understand my parents' reasoning behind it but I think a little access to popular culture is actually a really important thing as a tool for developing social relationships.

    • zhemaoJan 07 at 11:10 PM

      I can understand wanting kids to concentrate on schoolwork, but banning it outright seems overly strict to me. When I was a kid, my parents set a rule that I could only play video games on weekends and even then only in moderation. So I played plenty of video games as a kid, but I still got high marks in school. Definitely think that exposure to pop culture can be beneficial in building social relationships with peers. Also, a lot of socialization happens in video games now (especially among boys), so there's that part of it as well.

      • PipsyJan 08 at 1:00 AM

        That's precisely the sort of thing my husband and I were discussing when we were having a conversation today (triggered by this post) about the right kind of balance between anime/manga/games and studying. His parents either didn't go to high school or stopped studying after finishing high school, so they were never particularly study-motivated and therefore never set any real rules with him on that front, but we reckon a halfway point between his parents and mine is a good way to go. You're right that in-game socialisation is a fairly big thing now! Although given the kind of language and topics that get touched on during in-game conversations, were I a parent I would automatically worry about that too, lol.

      • EilisJan 08 at 7:13 AM

        Yay, conversation from a post!!! That's so exciting 😊

      • PipsyJan 08 at 7:15 AM

        I had a feeling you would be pleased to read that!

      • EilisJan 08 at 7:17 AM

        😃😃😃

    • hfwang18Jan 07 at 11:42 PMΔ

      That's...in my opinion, misguided from your parents, at best. I was given (or, more accurately, left alone to) full freedom when it comes to video games - my (single) mom didn't have the time to regulate my video game playing, and though she wanted to, I'm glad that she didn't, even after she found the time. She realized that I could both manage to succeed academically (I made straight A's through elementary and middle school and got a 3.9 unweighted in high school, am about to graduate university with honors and go to medical school) and play games, at least in some level of moderation. I wasn't even limited in terms of the games' rating...I played M-rated starting from age 12 and T-rated games since age 9.

      I actually ended up academically benefiting from video games because I liked historically-based strategy games like Age of Empires and Medieval: Total War. Even the original Call of Duty had a lot to teach me about World War II and such.

      I think it's better to give your kids full reign but demand results (for me, straight A's, until high school when AP classes started piling up) - that way kids know how to manage themselves while doing what's required of them, and it gives them a sense of self-discipline and ownership over their time allocation, which helps them manage their time later when they don't have parents telling them what to do.

      (@Pipsy: Just fyi, since you're a Brit, AP classes are university-level classes taken in high school, sort of like but a bit easier than A-levels in Britain.)

      • PipsyJan 08 at 12:54 AM

        While I may not have been allowed video games or TV shows, I was allowed to use the internet from the time we got it at home (so, for almost 19 years now) and have subsequently been exposed to Americans for long enough to know what AP classes are ;D

        Actually, since all my parents were teachers and I did have a fairly large amount of access to the internet (though not unlimited; bedtimes etc were still enforced!), I could do plenty of reading and search up on whatever took my fancy. I am happy for you that games helped support your education but am against the idea (which I admit you are not touting) that it is only through games that this can be achieved.

        Additionally, while I respect your opinion and am glad for your personal success, I do have to admit to being uncomfortable at somebody outside my family criticising my parents :P You know how families are about that sort of thing!

      • hfwang18Jan 08 at 1:10 AMΔ

        I apologize if I came across as a bit condescending. I just felt a bit baffled that parents would completely disallow video games in a way that wasn't part of abusive control tactics. I know a few kids whose parents did that and it was part of an East Asian-style "tiger parenting" regime (idk if you see it in Japan) which was nothing short of abusive.

        The freedom that I got with video games was by accident; it was entirely because I had a single parent who had to work late into the night and thus didn't have time to supervise my behavior. Fortunately, I was extremely self-motivated to achieve academically and knew how to keep my grades up - but I know not having boundaries and not having restrictions is disastrous for many kids who didn't value their education as much as I did. I believe that the experience of not having effective restrictions taught me to manage myself and give myself the responsibility of doing my work without someone telling me to, which came very much in handy by the time I entered university, but it doesn't work for everyone.

        I guess I'm just a bit puzzled by your experience given what kind of freedom I had - though I can't say that I was particularly happy to be "free" especially given that it was coupled with a turbulent, financially unstable, and occasionally even violent home life. Video games were my escape (I could have been doing a lot worse things...), and I treasure them still for that reason.

      • PipsyJan 08 at 1:22 AM

        Oh man we absolutely do have tiger parents here, especially in Tokyo! It breaks my heart to see elementary-school kids travelling back on the train after cram school at 9pm or sometimes even later. My parents were strict, but I would never say they were anything short of entirely loving, supportive and committed to making sure I was equipped to succeed where possible. The fact that I couldn't play video games is potentially the only thing I might complain about on that front, lol. The books they gave me (and the subsequent internet fandoms I joined based on those books) have put me where I am today - literally, I would never have come to Japan had I not met irl some of my internet friends! And my parents supported that every step of the way - in fact, it was my stepdad who told me I absolutely should come here because if I didn't I'd regret it for the rest of my life, and it turns out he was right all along.

        I know everybody's lives come with their own sets of obstacles and mishaps, and I'm sorry you had so many other things to give you grief. I'm really glad that you had games to help you keep your head above water! For me, that was the internet. Seems like we both turned out okay in the end ;D

      • hfwang18Jan 08 at 1:35 AMΔ

        Everyone talks about how Japan has the highest academic standards in the world, but I know from my own experience with that kind of culture (Chinese, but comes from the same roots) that it often comes at a high price and at the expense of the kids' mental health. If I often struggle with anxiety over academics as someone who was never pushed to be perfect, merely because I had set my own goal of wanting to get into medical school and don't want to come up short, then I can only imagine what kids in those kinds of environments go through.

        My mom had wanted to be a tiger parent at one point...but, to my benefit, she did not, because she felt like she had better things to do than to obsess over every little mistake I make, at least academically (she has been tough on me as of late when it comes to social conventions and manners; I'm an awkward person and she's worried that I'll alienate my future colleagues if I act weirdly).

        I'm glad that you had supportive parents all throughout your life; it was something that I was afforded as well but as I've mostly grown up with only one parent her abilities were limited. I've had a lot of struggles in my life stemming from that and other things, such as finances and the process of achieving my own goals, but you are right: at least we turned out fine.

      • zhemaoJan 08 at 1:40 AM

        elementary-school kids travelling back on the train after cram school at 9pm or sometimes even later

        What do elementary school kids even need to study that hard for? Here in the US, we hardly learn anything substantive until late middle school. Do they have entrance exams for middle school or something? Just mind-boggling. I'm not really surprised, though. That kind of academic culture is common in China as well, and even among Chinese living in the US. But what end does this achieve, it just seems like a huge rat race that gets pushed earlier and earlier in life. When do they even have time to socialize with other kids and explore their own hobbies and interests? It hardly seems like an effective way of preparing kids to be productive adults and good citizens.

      • zhemaoJan 08 at 1:51 AM

        that it often comes at a high price and at the expense of the kids' mental health. If I often struggle with anxiety over academics as someone who was never pushed to be perfect, merely because I had set my own goal of wanting to get into medical school and don't want to come up short, then I can only imagine what kids in those kinds of environments go through.

        Right? And it's not even clear that such a rigorous academic regime is even necessary to get good results. Canada and Finland rank very high in PISA but don't have nearly as intense a curriculum. It's also not clear that all that work is teaching them anything beyond how to take a test.

      • zhemaoJan 08 at 1:58 AM

        Like Hanfei, I also apologize if I seemed to be attacking your parents. I actually know several people whose parents did the same, so it's certainly not abnormal. Though oddly enough, it seems to mostly be girls who are raised this way.

      • hfwang18Jan 08 at 2:19 AMΔ

        Their justification is that it's worth it because they beat out Canada and Finland and dominate all the STEM Olympiads.

        That being said, I have less of a problem with rigor than with perfectionism in Asian cultures. I think exposure to advanced material in which students have to think at a high level never hurts, and helps children learn more deeply. Going beyond rote memorization and being demanding helps if you want really skilled, innovative people in the workforce eventually. Singapore and Hong Kong do this extremely well in the education system, but have a toxic underlying culture among parents.

        That underlying culture is the obsession to be perfect in everything, and is what's wrong with Asian educational culture. Life isn't perfect. Nobody can get everything right every time. To berate and shame children for making minor mistakes is just a recipe for insecurity and needless anxiety in their future. They should instead be told that they made a mistake, and to do better next time.

        So, in short, I'm all for making school very hard and challenging (the US is way too easy except in AP and IB), but ditching the culture of perfectionism and instead embracing a culture of grit and resilience. They can still do well with the PISA stuff because of the rigor, but they won't have such an issue with mental health like they do now. I blame the parents on this, not the educational system.

      • EilisJan 08 at 7:14 AM

        Tiger parenting, I've never heard of that!

      • EilisJan 08 at 7:16 AM

        So true!

      • hfwang18Jan 08 at 9:55 AMΔ

        @Eilis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_mother

        It comes from the book The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. In it, she details what she did to her children, who were subject to a strict regimen of no fun activities or free time, in the pursuit of academic excellence.

        While the "tiger parent" stereotype is seen by some as racism against Asians, I see it as a serious problem, as it is nothing but child abuse in the name of making your kids achieve the best grades and getting into the "best" (e.g. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, etc.) colleges. It's sacrificing your children's childhood and sense of self-direction in the pursuit of the parents' own vanity that their kids got into a prestigious college.

        While I wasn't a son of tiger parents, I knew kids who were. The parents were some of the most despicable people I have come to know; they cared nothing for their kids' mental well-being so long as they can get into those highest-ranked colleges. They berated people like my mom as "irresponsible" and "undisciplined" because she actually gave me freedom to do what I want with my time (so long as I still did very well in school; my mom didn't really have the time to supervise me). They then gloated that they got the last laugh because I had "only" gotten into Vanderbilt (ranked #15 on USNWR) when their own kids got into Columbia (ranked 4th), MIT (7th, but #1 for engineering and many other STEM fields), Yale (3rd), Princeton (1st), etc, which I either didn't apply or didn't get into, "proving" that their methods were superior to the more liberating and free ways I was used to. They're prestige whores, plain and simple, and there are few kinds of people I hate more than them. They're a shame upon the immigrant community in the United States, and one of the darker aspects to how East/South Asians have become a model minority. People like Amy Chua should be ashamed of themselves - and though Chua herself expresses some level of remorse and have since reconciled with her kids, plenty of others have not.

      • zhemaoJan 08 at 12:09 PM

        Their justification is that it's worth it because they beat out Canada and Finland and dominate all the STEM Olympiads.

        It's that useless competitiveness that is the heart of the whole problem. Who cares if you inch ahead in the PISA rankings? They aren't meant to be a competition. It's just a way of gauging the effectiveness of your educational policy. The point of education is to better yourself, not to out-compete others. East Asian countries seem to lose sight of the purpose of education.

        That being said, I have less of a problem with rigor than with perfectionism in Asian cultures.

        I don't have a problem with rigor. I definitely think students here in the US could stand to be exposed to more challenging subjects, especially at the lower grade levels. My problem is with the amount of work. I frequently hear stories of students in China studying until late at night. That's just counterproductive. How can you function at full intellectual capacity if you exhaust yourself like that? I took a lot of AP classes in high school and did well in them without going to such extreme lengths, so I don't see why it's necessary.

        And I think the real problem with tiger parenting is the competitiveness, and not perfectionism per se. Perfectionism is just a symptom of this need to look better than everyone else in meaningless academic status signifiers. It's all about who gets the best grades, who gets the best test scores, who gets in the best college. That's such a poisonous way of thinking. It pushes the idea that your accomplishments only have value in comparison to others and removes any intrinsic motivation.

      • hfwang18Jan 08 at 3:10 PM

        @zhemao I agree that perfectionism is a symptom of excessive competitiveness. When you're in that mindset, you sacrifice everything to get that little edge; while that is necessary for, say, elite athletes who love what they do and want to win competitions, it is wholly unnecessary for ordinary people trying to have a nice career. They aren't merely trying to do well; they're trying to be #1, which may seem to be pointless, but given that university places in East Asia are very limited, they think that they have to.

        Again, a culture of strong academic rigor can be imposed without a mental health epidemic, if the attitude was one which emphasized learning from failure, resilience, and self-control/discipline instead of perfection at all costs.

      • zhemaoJan 08 at 3:49 PM

        They aren't merely trying to do well; they're trying to be #1, which may seem to be pointless, but given that university places in East Asia are very limited, they think that they have to.

        Sure, I certainly understand why they push themselves so hard. In a system built around high stakes competitive testing, of course they are going to try and get any edge they can over their competition. I'm not blaming the students or parents, but the system itself. As for limited university spots, that's true for the elite institutions like Qinghua and Fudan, but less so for the second tier universities. So the problem might be a large gulf in education quality and/or academic prestige.

      • hfwang18Jan 08 at 3:54 PM

        They can't do anything other than testing because anything else is prone to corruption. But I still blame the parents; it is still prestige whoring on their part considering that the material benefits to a prestigious school are not as large as advertised. And as for the ones who still do this in the West despite full knowledge of the different system here? That is inexcusable and utterly despicable.

      • zhemaoJan 08 at 4:07 PM

        They can't do anything other than testing because anything else is prone to corruption

        Even testing isn't free from the problem. Cheating on the gaokao is a huge issue and they keep instituting harsher penalties for it (now including jail time), but when the stakes are so high, what do you expect people to do.

        I still blame the parents; it is still prestige whoring on their part considering that the material benefits to a prestigious school are not as large as advertised

        I don't know, I think in China, the material benefits of a degree from an elite institution are actually quite large. The major firms tend to recruit heavily from the big name schools. There's also a great deal of peer pressure from other parents and even pressure from teachers and school officials (students who do poorly and their parents are often publicly shamed in front of the entire school). So I can't entirely blame the parents for going along with it.

        But I agree that, in the US, such parenting would be inexcusable.

      • EilisJan 08 at 5:47 PM

        That kind of abuse to anyone from anyone sounds awful. But children are so vulnerable as they are under the protection of their parents, how terrifying to have no choice in that exhausting cycle. :(

      • ZorkJan 08 at 10:29 PM

        Tiger parenting isn't as cute as it sounds 🐯

      • zhemaoJan 11 at 11:07 PM

        Well they don't call it kitty cat parenting, now do they.

    • wolfpurplechaiJan 08 at 4:49 AM

      omg while we were allowed video games (though mostly educational ones when we were younger) my parents were similarly strict with TV/cartoons! We had a schedule of one or two afternoon shows we could watch each day after school, and Blue Peter was one we were made to watch.

      Also I wasn't permitted to go out with my friends much - which again can make learning to socialise difficult. Though I was in a few after school groups like brownies, guides and then scouts.

      Actually I think my younger brother got to play more video games than I did, he had a gameboy and a playstation and I just messed about on our PC! And yet now it is me that plays a lot more games XD

      But of course it's important to have some level of discipline especially once kids start having homework to do, but entirely banning all entertainment is probably counterproductive.

  • MrPicardJan 08 at 2:42 AM

    My mother initially was very much against video games and getting me the latest fancy thing back then, a Game Boy. But then my cousin lent me hers for a few days and my mother saw that it wasn't evil and that I still did my homework before sitting down to play. So I got a Game Boy for my 7th birthday in 1990, and a few years later a SNES and then later an N64. My mother's only condition was that I didn't play games that were too "violent" (first person shooters) but Nintendo isn't really the company for that anyway. These days first person shooters are among my favorites though. When I was younger, however, Mario was my best friend. Video games have been with me for a very long time, and they still are.

  • CobiSJan 10 at 6:47 PM

    In some ways, yes. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the first game I have any memory playing, and it remains my favourite game to this day. As a child I played a lot of games, but never beat them. I remember playing Pokémon, Jak and Daxter, Spyro... Beat a total of 0. I probably didn't beat a game until I was in my teens.

  • Daredevil22Jan 08 at 2:58 AM

    Oh yes! Very much so! I play waaaay to much, now as well as back then :D

  • ZorkJan 08 at 10:53 PM

    I loved videogames. I grew up during the rise of videogames.

  • SleepymachineJan 08 at 6:00 AMΔ

    I feel I'm still undergoing change, like a child. :)

    And actually, someone here got me into video games this year. :P I played videogames before... but they always seemed disappointing compared to what their boxes promised. Never felt liberating. Instead: mechanical, status quo.

    Now they're bloody useful to knock my mind off whatever track it was on.

    One problem (or benefit!) is I can't easily automate them. So if you're playing Starcraft 2, I basically feel the need to think like a computer: give a time-slice to developing & deploying my army, a time-slice to an attack, a time-slice to mining... There's very little automation. (You can give units paths, queue up units & that's it... I know that Starcraft will allow some kind of automation this year.)

    Also, I learned that the point of games is it's framed off from ordinary life. In almost any other part of human existence, the rules are ambiguous. "The hardest thing of all is to understand the rules. In almost any situation we find ourselves in, there are rules—even in casual conversation, there are tacit rules of who can speak in what order, pacing, tone, deference, appropriate and inappropriate topics, when you can smile, what sort of humor is allowable, what you should be doing with your eyes, and a million other things besides. These rules are rarely explicit, and usually there are many conflicting ones that could, possibly, be brought to bear at any given moment. So we are always doing the difficult work of negotiating between them, and trying to predict how others will do the same. Games allow us our only real experience of a situation where all this ambiguity is swept away."

    But unfortunately, the only way for me to find liberating experience is in activism... Toying with the rules of the environment I find myself in. They're almost always awful.

Let's Grab Coffee!

Let's Grab Coffee!

Gather here to chat about your day & have fun with all your Imzy friends!

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