Oh No, My Kid Is Starting to Complain About Frame Rates

Fortnite is raising dangerous questions in the house that I'm not prepared to answer.

I’m hiding a secret from my nine-year-old: her Nintendo Switch isn’t as nice as mine.

We’ve been playing Fortnite in the house on a regular basis because my nine-year-old was converted by its KPop Demon Hunters collaboration. I’m playing on a Switch 2, while she’s playing on my “old” Switch OLED. Fortnite runs “fine” on both Switches.

The definition of “fine” is going to be important here in a second.

When entering a match, it’s obvious my Switch 2 loads faster. I’m able to hop into the waiting area a few seconds before her, while she’s stuck staring at the loading screen.

The first time this happened, I brushed it off. The second time it happened, I got paranoid. The third time it happened, I started adjusting the screen away from her eyesight. If she didn’t see me pop into the map ahead of her, she can’t ask questions.

I can tell she knows something is up. But she doesn’t know what is up.

She knows that I have a Switch 2, but she does fully get I gave her an old Switch because I had bought a new and more powerful Switch. That mine is better. There’s no reason for my nine-year-old to have a Switch 2 because she does not play enough Switch games to demand it (yet), but Fortnite is nakedly revealing faults in my plan!

Years back, we replaced all the iPads in the house. The hand-me-down devices were getting old and it made sense to have everyone on the same tech track. It was also clear that Roblox, which was new in the house, did not run well on them. The devices also had hysterically small amounts of storage and I was tired of always deleting apps.

At the time, my then seven-year-old oldest child did not clock that Roblox ran nicer.

Her friend did, however. Our neighbor’s oldest was the one who got us on the Roblox train in the first place, a way for the kids to keep in touch pre-vaccines in the early days of COVID-19, and now they were playing inside next to one another. This also meant they could compare what Roblox looked like on each other’s devices.

Can you see where this is going, friend?

My neighbor’s kid’s device was ancient. It ran Roblox “fine.” But it did not run Roblox as nicely as my daughter’s iPad. She was 10 years old at the time, not much older than my kid is now. She complained that it looked “wrong.” She couldn’t articulate that the frame rate was dog shit—it was probably 20fps?—but it’s totally what she was saying.

Which makes me wonder: at what age can a kid detect and care about frame rate?

Because the consequence of this interaction was my neighbor buying his kid a new tablet! Now, much like our splurge, it was probably time for his kids to upgrade, but the question becomes when you make that leap. When the device dies? When it needs more storage. When there’s a sale? Or maybe…when they care about the frame rate?

“Care” is different than “notice,” though. Like, my five-year-old gets made when she doesn’t have the same thing as her sister, but does she need that thing, or is pure jealously coming through? I’m not sure where we land on frame rates just yet.

Fortnite is sticking. It’s lasted longer than any other game in the house not called Roblox. My nine-year-old is asking about buying skins. So far, she’s not asking why Dad is loading into the game faster than her. But folks, it feels like a matter of time.

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Also:

• The five-year-old is trying to play Fortnite, too, but is constantly sad that she’s “bad” and “not as good as her sister.” I’m not sure what to do about that issue.

• We haven’t dabbled with the non-Fortnite games in Fortnite yet. My understanding is they tend to be of higher quality than your standard Roblox fare.

• We don’t buy “robux” but I can be tempted into “V-Bucks,” because I have a higher respect for the stuff you can get in Fortnite. We’re not there yet, though.