1) We (my wife and I) do not want to know any of your passwords.
2) No content filters on any device or router level.
3) Mixed OSes (we had Linux, MacOS and Windows in the house).
4) NEVER share your passwords with friends.
5) Anything you email, txt or post to anyone... consider it public. Nothing online is private.
6) No consoles.
I have a hundred times more confidence that microsoft and sony will keep the xbox one and PS4 operating systems up to date, patched and reasonably secure than I do that random cloud-based internet-of-shit consumer electronics vendors will maintain product security.
When my kids were young Minecraft JUST came out. They both learned A LOT about modding early. If they were stuck on consoles they probably would have missed out on all that.
"Modding" is like, whatever.
I grew up programming PCs in the 80s and 90s but when I look back on it, I didn't really tinker much inside the boxes even though I have mistakenly thought that I did.
Dad installed a Sound Blaster Pro I purchased in like 5th grade after I went to bed so that I wouldn't screw up his work PC.
Past that, I don't think I even upgraded RAM or a hard drive until I was in my 20s, mostly because they were just too expensive.
Had an NES, though. I turned out fine.
But I would have hated my dad if he was like, "no NES for you!" while shoving a screwdriver at me.
It's not for everyone, but it can be a heck of a lot less expensive and some games are simply better with the third-party mods.
> It's not for everyone, but it can be a heck of a lot less expensive and some games are simply better with the third-party mods.
This is what I do 90% of my time, I often make my gaming choices based on which games have good controller support
Since I grew up on FPS with kbm, I hate using a controller for them, so I'll happily sit at my desktop.
But Steam Link lets me play controller based games on the couch in front of the TV. At least until my wife comes home :)
Consoles can be social devices. PCs can be isolating devices.
It comes from a 10-second throwaway line in a gaming review from 2008 that's actually taking a dig at PC gamers liking overly-complicated RPGs [0], at about 0:53 to 1:03 [1]:
> While quickly it becomes obvious is that Witcher is very much a PC-exclusive game which are typically designed to be as complex and unintuitive as possible so that those dirty console-playing peasants don't ruin it for the glorious PC-gaming master race.
Then there's about 20 seconds more of him listing out the ways this game is overly complicated.
[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-glorious-pc-gaming-master...
I agree. But this was for his kids when they were kids living at his house. If he want's to maintain the no consoles rule at his house later on, meh whatever. That's his business.
Edit: Also, what makes it reasonable to enforce this while his kids were young was that he actively encouraged learning about PC's, not just consumption through a different "Magic Box".
a s d f j k l ;
That being said, my keyboarding class included copying out bodies of text as well, not just patterns on loop (There certainly was that though).
There's a small number of games that are exclusive but you'd have to buy 2-3 different consoles just to get access to them all anyways, which is not a realistic choice.
And yeah, some online multi-player games are console-only but as a parent I wouldn't want to be "forced" to buy a certain console make just because other kids might or might not have it. My friends had Xbox 360, I had PS3 and we're still buddies and we mostly played together on PCs anyways.
How many Xbox One / PS4 / Switch games can you get for free? A small handful if any. On PC, thousands literally. If you're not too picky, one could just play free games and never have to even pay for them.