Playing Video Games With My Kid Hasn't Gone How I Expected

To me, challenge has always been an inextricable part of video games, even when some of those games were, in retrospect, absolute bullshit.

Photo by Emily Wade on Unsplash

I couldn’t help but think of having a kid as a cheat code—once they’re old enough, it’ll be a built-in partner for multiplayer! 

I envisioned passing the controller back and forth between Mario levels, while talking about his day and helping him to process the everyday challenges of life. We’d make our own fireteam in Destiny, playfully shoving as we took turns making mistakes, freeze framing on our joyous laughter as the pre-show credits rolled on the sitcom I’d be recording in my mind.

You can imagine my excitement the first time he wanted to play a game together. Not me playing while he watched, or showing him how to play it, but both of us, together, at the same time. He chose Minecraft, naturally. After taking literal days to set up various accounts for him (another story), he gave me explicit instructions on how he wanted it: creative mode, peaceful, always daytime. Essentially, removing any aspect of challenge the game had to offer.

“Are you sure, bud?” 

“Yup.”

“You sure? I mean, I think it’s more fun when you have to work for it by mining and fighting mobs.”

“I don’t like that.  I don’t like dying.”

“I get it, but if you die we can always go back and get your stuff, or just mine for more. You just respawn. Remember, it’s just a game. Let’s just give it a try.”

“Okay.”

Not ten minutes later, he was crying after having fallen into a chasm. We switched to creative mode after that. I still enjoyed myself, but it was a detached joy, a vicarious joy. To me, challenge has always been an inextricable part of video games, even when some of those games were, in retrospect, absolute bullshit. 

Raiders of the Lost Ark on Atari 2600 still haunts me in moments, stirring in my dreams…and my nightmares.

It’s clunky and simplistic in its presentation; inscrutable, punishing, opaque, colorful, spellbinding. Challenging and frustrating not only by design, but by the limitations of the technology and by the many lessons not yet learned in such a relatively young medium. The victories were hard-earned, if not rewarding; the rage exquisite after losing a great run to a nanosecond mistake born of mental fatigue and hand cramps and my mind slowly melting like a thick pat of butter in a hot pan.

No section of this game seared my brain quite so black as the parachuting section. And by “section,” I mean “approximately 1.5 seconds.” 

The basic concept is this: You have a parachute, you jump into this canyon where there is a cave in the wall with a long branch over it, and you have to glide under the branch–if you’re early you’ll catch on the branch, but if you’re late you’ll miss the hole. 

Now, in the original game manual, it does show you this screen and point out the hole in the wall. I was probably about eight years old, and if we had that manual, I never saw it. The first time I learned about that screen was the first time I got to it, and it is very close to the end. 

Even knowing what’s coming, the first time you hit that screen, it’s gone before your eyes even process it. Nothing prepares you for what it’s going to feel like. I’d eventually get past it—eventually beat the game, after years of trying—but it took me dozens, if not hundreds, of attempts.

Repetition was the point, learning from my mistakes and my successes, refining my execution and that, to succeed, I would have to practice patience, perseverance, and, regarding the design of the game itself, forgiveness. In many ways it was my first step on the road to improving myself in these areas by way of video games—good and bad. As a wise man once said, “to tilt is to take the first step on the journey to tilting slightly less.” I think it was Henry VIII.

Yes, video games gave me the opportunity to test and extend my patience, like blowing up a balloon as big as you can make it before it pops (...BIGGER). Skills that I would come to lean on heavily in many facets of fatherhood, not the least of which was teaching my son to play video games.

I didn’t criticize him or berate him or tell him he sucked. I didn’t mercilessly whale on him in Madden when he was four. I am not trying to mold him into the Tiger Woods of Fortnite. I would encourage him to try his best, celebrate his successes, tell him not to sweat it when he made a mistake, and validate his feelings when things didn’t go his way. I remember what it felt like when I was younger and my failures were met with disappointment, frustration, derision—sometimes from others, sometimes from myself. 

Children, however, have a knack for finding the gaps in your carefully crafted armor.

The question, as it turned out, wasn’t Are Video Games Fun. It was Do Video Games Have To Be Challenging? Every iota of my being said yes, but my son’s gaming habits said only if you want it.

He continued to gravitate towards games like this. Farming Simulator was (and is) one of his favorites. I would sometimes play with him, and even here, I had trouble accepting his modus operandi: he wanted to use the money glitch and treat it like a sandbox. 

I kept trying to explain to him that the point of the game was to make more money than you’re spending and grow your farm. He just wasn’t interested, and so, for a while, neither was I. This isn’t to say that I stopped playing games with him, but I looked at it more like an obligation of sorts, a parental duty to be his captive audience. I think this is something that is familiar to most parents, but it sure wasn’t what I’d planned on when I envisioned us playing games together.

And then I showed him Donut County.

For the uninitiated, Donut County is a cozy game. There is some light puzzle solving and you do have to beat each level to progress to the next one, but there’s no real tension—you move the hole around until you’ve gobbled up everything in the level. There’s no time limit and you’re never really under threat. It has a very charming story and cast of characters, which is no small part of why I loved it, but the reason I come back to it from time to time is that it’s almost meditative. The vibe is pleasant, its sounds and animations soothing and satisfying, the quirks and twists of each level satirizing many aspects of modern life—including gaming.

My son saw me playing this one day and asked to try it and took to it immediately. He was too young to read the game’s prolific text, but it didn’t matter; he delighted in all the things I did, and he just bounced around different levels—out of order, found favorites (the highway!), came back.

Watching him play made it click for me. I never played Donut County to challenge myself, or chasing some sense of accomplishment. I just…liked the way it made me feel. And watching him, I could see he did, too. Later, I’d return with him to the fields of Farming Simulator and the varied biomes of Minecraft creative mode. I sowed fields and reaped them, I pretended to respond to emergencies at the grain elevator. We built vast, underground bases, unconstrained by any means of production, under no threat from creepers or endermen. I reconnected with parts of my imagination long dormant, and I learned how to make my own fun, even when he was doing something I found boring. 

One day he decided to play Donut County through from the beginning. Having played most of the levels many times over, he burned through it pretty quickly.  Then, he got to the last level, and I remembered that it does have one boss fight. The first attempt happened so quickly that I didn’t even realize it until he’d failed. I could already see the stress and frustration hardening in his face. He tried again–nope.

“What?!” he exclaimed, his voice taut and elevated like a highwire. He dropped his hands—but not the controller—into his lap in defeat. This wasn’t the game he thought it was, it wasn’t the game he knew. I could feel my own emotions following his, as well as the impulse to tell him to not feel that way. Always helpful! I took a breath, looked at him, and smiled.

He just stared at the screen, unmoved. The impulse to pounce revisited, but this time I turned it away.  “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. I know that’s really not why you like this game.” We sat there in silence for a moment, him staring at the screen, me staring at him, trying to read his face, watching to see which button he would press next.

He didn’t say anything.  He just hit “continue.”

“You can do this buddy,” I told him.

He did. And he was proud. So was I. Not for beating the game, but for stepping up to a challenge. For showing patience, perseverance, and determination. For doing it on his terms.

His favorite way to play games is still no-stakes sandboxing, but sometimes he gets the itch. I like to think I taught him that overcoming challenges can be rewarding. But in reality, he taught me that peace can be rewarding, as well.

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