Crossplay Mailbag: When Is It Too Young to Play a Game like Call of Duty?
The eternal question in front of parents: "my friends are playing."
Welcome back to another Crossplay mailbag!
It’s been too long since one of these, but I’m happy to be answering questions again. Remember, if you sign up to become a paying member of Crossplay, you get an invite to a Discord, full of like minded people who are quite often parents and caregivers. A lot of questions that might end up in the mailbag end up getting answered there!
I’ll have a separate post about this, but Crossplay will be taking Thanksgiving week off. My other job, Remap, is taking the week, and I’m trying my best to sync up and…actually take time off. I hope that’s OK. I’m sure it is. Thanks for your support.
In the meantime, if you’ve got a question, send it to mailbag@crossplay.news.
Your thoughts/thought process on when you should buy your kid their own hardware verses letting them borrow yours (eg ipad, switch, etc)?
Patrick: Oh, this is a good one. The easiest way to describe it is “when they’re ready,” but I can walk you through how it’s worked with both of my kids the past few years.
The Switch was easy enough. My oldest kept stealing mine, and I had a spare one in the drawer from work. I almost gave her the Switch Lite, because it’s more colorful and prone to surviving unexpected drops, but you can’t detach the Joy-Cons and you can’t dock it with a television, so it felt like she’d still be asking to use my Switch.
I was lucky enough to upgrade to a Switch OLED when Metroid Dread came out, so I gave her my dusty ol’ launch Switch, ordered a unicorn-themed grip case that wraps around the Switch, alongside a similarly unicorn-themed carrying case. She doesn’t know the difference between LCD and OLED, so she’s been very happy with it.
“Doesn’t know the difference” was not the case with the iPad, however.
My oldest had been using a very old iPad that’d been kicking around, and it was fine for watching Disney+ and YouTube Kids. It was bad, however, at games. Specifically, it was bad at playing something like Roblox. She’d started playing Roblox with a friend, and even she could tell the frame rate was bad. We waited for a holiday sale, and picked up a beefier iPad, thinking we’d share the iPad between the two of us.
Uh, can you guess what happened next? It became her iPad.
When she brought that iPad down the street, her friend noticed how much better the frame rate was in Roblox—and complained to her parents. Soon, they bought a new tablet. Woops. (To be fair, it was pretty bad!) No matter what iPad you buy, though, Roblox chews through the battery like it doesn’t exist. Even my iPad Pro buckles to it.
We haven’t dealt with this problem with my youngest yet. She uses that same older iPad, and it suits her just fine. The most complicated games she plays involve painting nails and dressing up characters, so it works. She asks about Roblox, but the UI is too complicated, so she watches videos about Roblox instead. But that day is coming.
Hey Patrick not a parent but an older cousin who is around younger cousins all the time. Something that I’ve been having a bit of an issue with lately is trying to educate my aunts on video games to better understand what their kids are playing. For example, I have a barely 8 year old cousin who actively plays Call of Duty. Beyond the violence in the game I’m largely concerned about the messaging of these games. For some background, I completed my MA a little over a year ago and my thesis was looking to understand how video games function as military propaganda. So you can see where my problem lies here. But when I bring it up to my aunts I’m met with “it keeps them out of my hair.” Is this a fight I’ll just never win? Or is a there a better way to go about having this conversation? Thanks ahead of time, Carlos from Sacramento
Patrick: I’m permissive, as evidenced by letting my kid watch the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie. I’d have a much harder time saying yes to Call of Duty at roughly the same age. But my guess is your aunt is running into the same pressures that every parent runs into, which is social pressure. Is he playing these games on his own, or playing them with friends? I’d wager it's the latter, and it becomes a question for the parent on whether the desire to let your child socialize outweighs these problems.
Games do function as military propaganda, for sure. And so do…Marvel movies. And a lot of culture. What I’m saying, I guess, is that while Call of Duty ratchets up the propaganda by nature of its setting and gameplay, kids are surrounded by propaganda growing up. We were, too! Have you had a conversation with your cousin about the game, and what he thinks about it? Have you tried playing the game with him? In general, I find the best way to wrap your head around something that makes you uncomfortable is to get comfortable with it yourself. It’s what I did with Roblox when my kid showed an interest, and while I would still not advise parents to encourage their kids to play Roblox, if they’re going to play it, it’s better to understand first-hand.
As my kid rapidly heads towards being a teenager (less than 2 years away, yikes), I am having to make constant judgements about which video games are appropriate for them (mostly in terms of violence and "exposure to awful internet randos"). Some, like Fortnite, are both cartoony enough and have good enough parental controls, that I am comfortable for them to play, knowing the violence is relatively tame and I can block him from reading/hearing chat from anyone other than their friends. Others, like Call of Duty, are an absolute No for now due to the "realistic" first-person violence and toxic player behaviour. But there's a lot of grey area, like some new Early Access shooter than might be cartoony enough but might also have unfiltered player chat. How do you deal with your kids asking to play games that aren't appropriate? How do you decide what IS appropriate? Do you have to deal with "but my friends play it"? cheers, Roland
Patrick: Yeah, we’re in similar territory to the last question. The “but my friends play it” is powerful, but at the same time, shouldn’t be a catch all reason to say “yes.”
Saying no to Call of Duty is fair. Mortal Kombat is cartoonish violence, you know?
But I’d echo the same advice as Carlos: play the game. Play with them. Draw the line at player chat. As soon as my child’s reading comprehension crosses a certain threshold in the coming months, and she wonders why chat is turned off across her devices, I’ll explain why. Being old enough to read is not old enough to understand what’s being said, and in our house, player and voice chat is not something that will be allowed except in situations where you’re playing with friends and family.
We can revisit that when she’s older, perhaps a teenager! But that’s our rule now.
If you can’t turn off player chat, it’s a tougher crossroads. Any ideas, folks?
Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.
Also:
I’m glad I don’t have to deal with the Call of Duty question, because while it’s easy for me to type “no” in this mailbag, it’s always harder in reality.
My daughter has asked about Fortnite, though it’s a little too complex her for her at the moment. I don’t think it’ll be long before we’re dropping together.
Will I have to buy two Switches when the new hardware launches? I haven’t had to encounter this situation before, and I’ll be curious if my kid actually cares.
I have an 11-year-old niece who is now playing Fortnite with regularity. I think it's cool she plays it, but what worries me is her parents allow her to do microtransaction purchases, which is hard for me to see. (I had issues with purchasing items too liberally when I had Amazon Prime years ago!) I didn't bring it up with her parents because I didn't want to butt into their parenting decisions.
Even so, I worry about how the ease of purchase and the dopamine hit will affect her purchasing decisions in the future.
My niece is also a straight killer in Fortnite. She's utterly savage. She's very competitive, so she's very invested in victory.
I have a 12yr old, I started playing COD with him and some of his friends with MW2 last year and its been a lot of fun. Good way to bond with him doing something we both enjoy and also able to hopefully influence his peer group to not grow up to be "that kind of COD player".