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Comment by testdelacc1 | Hacker News Reader

The point isn’t to play the best “non-faddish” games. It’s to play what’s in the zeitgeist and form bonds with people their own age.

I’m so glad my parents didn’t override my decisions on literature or video games or TV shows. I watched anime then, my parents didn’t get it, and that’s perfectly fine. I continue to enjoy it now. If they had made me adopt their mindset of “anime = fad” or “anime = cartoon = childish” I’d have been worse off. Instead of enjoying masterpieces like Frieren I’d be snobbishly thinking about what a fad it is.

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We avoid fads because they come and go too quickly. My kids connect with their friends on games that are more enduring, like the From Software titles.

Again, that’s you substituting your judgement for theirs. There’s nothing wrong participating in a fad btw. Free time doesn’t need to be “productive” by only consuming something exalted like From Software.

I substitute my judgment for theirs as a parent; that's intrinsic in the nature of the job.

As I said in my previous comment, my kids chose the From Software titles because their friend group plays it, so I don't think that's a particularly good example of me substituting my judgment for theirs.

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Your account has unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly lately. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of the site more to heart? We'd appreciate it, because we're trying for something different here.

I think you’ve misinterpreted my tone in this thread, I really was approaching it because I was curious about his parenting style. But I’ve apologised to the other guy, because it wasn’t my intention to ruffle any feathers. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45873355)

I’ve made a couple of nasty comments about Elon Musk recently. I’m unlikely to change the way I speak about him. I don’t speak about anyone else that way, as far as I know. You can ban me if insulting Elon Musk in particular and no one else is something you don’t like. It is my sincere belief that he warrants an exception, because of the damage he’s done and continues to do. You’re welcome to defend him and ban people who insult him in the name of upholding the rules.

>I’ve made a couple of nasty comments about Elon Musk recently. I’m unlikely to change the way I speak about him.

Writing like this is covered in the site guidelines:

"Edit out swipes"

I believe I covered this when I said

> It is my sincere belief that he warrants an exception, because of the damage he’s done and continues to do.

This site deteriorates when any of us put a personal belief above the beliefs detailed in the guidelines.

I respect your opinion, it is a valid one.

And yet, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

The issue is not tolerance, or intolerance; it's the site goal of pursuing "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" and doing so while we all, among other things,

>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

>Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

None of that precludes us here from criticizing someone or something. It's a matter of how we hold such discussions.

> Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.

You’re being curmudgeonly.

Please don’t break site guidelines. Take some time to review them.

I'm proud of my decisions and I'm not here to defend them. I'm here for the conversation because I'm interested in the topic.

I vetoed Minecraft and replaced it with MineTest because Minecraft has the hypixel community, which is essentially an MMO that's built inside of the world of Minecraft and dominates the Minecraft playerbase. I was worried that my 11-year-old would be too young to deal with a massively multiplayer game like that, so I prohibited Minecraft for him. The original joy of Minecraft when I first bought it off of Notch's site in 2009 was that you could build things and exercise creativity. I found that in the MMO versions of Minecraft, this is less of a focus. So instead I host a docker container with a minetest instance that we can all build in together.

I also vetoed Roblox because I feel that the entire economy in that game is going to be a net negative, particularly the aspect where kids beg their parents to use real money to buy them Robux.

But to your point, the list of things I veto is pretty small: I'm socially very liberal, and so the main thing I'm trying to filter for is games that are exploitative of their playerbase in some way. In the case of Battlefield and Fortnite, since I used those examples earlier, these are both games that my kids have independently decided they are not interested in; I think some folks read my original comment that I had removed Battlefield and Fortnite from my household. But if you look at my phrasing, I used the passive voice because it was basically a group decision to never really pick them up. I'm using weasel language because they sometimes go over their neighbor's house and have experience with those games, so I don't want to make it out like they've never played them at all.

Sorry about my previous comment. It felt to me like you were deflecting because I was asking about what you’d vetoed and it felt like you were saying you hadn’t vetoed anything.

I actually agree with your vetoes and your logic for the vetoes makes sense. An MMO is too much for a 11 year old. And getting kids hooked the real money aspect of Roblox will have negative consequences in the future.

Obviously I’m no one, but it seems to me like you’re a good dad. Good on you. Again, sorry for the contentious tone of my previous comment.

No worries! I enjoy the discussion, and thanks for the kind words.

I think you've justified your positions more than enough and it's clear you've thought through these decisions and made them along with your kids. Good choices on the game selection!

Forbidding Minecraft is crazy. Helicopter parent 100%.

Enduring based on what metrics? Fornite is now an 8-year old massively (and still is) successful game. And the Battlefield series is actually 7 years older than the Souls series if you count from Demon's Souls. Comparing these 3 games is even more absurd because they are from entirely different genres, and they are not mutually exclusive, one can enjoy more than one genre.

I agree with other commenters in here, I feel sorry for your kids and thankful that my parents didn't treat me like what you are doing with your kids now.

When I think about enduring titles, I think about whether the kind of game that you'd pick up 20 years later and still consider to be a good game. I raised them on a curriculum of games starting with 80s titles and as they got older I progressed them all the way up into the 2020s so they would have a perspective on where particular gameplay mechanics came from. I see your point about the longevity of the Battlefield series and Fortnite, but my impression is people don't go back and play earlier Battlefield titles: I have always viewed them a little bit like the FIFA titles where there is a constant treadmill of needing to buy the latest version of the game. This is not true for Dark Souls, for example -- it's a sort of game you could play in decades and it would be as much of a masterpiece then it is today. I didn't really mean to compare the titles, but rather to use them as examples of titles that I would approve or disapprove of.

My kids choose the games they play, but I exercise judgment in vetoing certain decisions. My example of the From Software titles were not games that I bought for them, or even played (in the case of Elden Ring), but rather titles that my boys were into because of their friend group playing it. They've been playing Night Reign lately and enjoying it. I think people read into my dismissal of Battlefield and Fortnite as indicative of some much larger pattern that they've had a really bad experience with, but I'm not sure that conclusion is warranted.

I was 100% on your side until you list FromSoftware games. As good as they are, they're a single-genre game developer that has a very narrow design and audience.

There's nothing more substantive or enduring about their games intrinsically, that's 100% you just projecting your own opinions about what games are 'enduring' onto your kids, and is not giving them the 'guidance' you seem to think it is.

Not really. I tend to favor single-player games because they can be effectively archived and played in several decades. Multiplayer games routinely just get killed by their publishers. So I do view single player games as intrinsically more enduring than their multiplayer counterparts.

I'm sorry you see it as projection onto my children. I'm keenly aware that many parents try to force their kids to live the life they lived, and I've been careful to not do that. But I understand that that's not coming through to you in this discussion. I appreciate the advice though.

> Multiplayer games routinely just get killed by their publishers.

You are confusing "multiplayer" with "massively multiplayer online" games. The vast majority of multiplayer games are not MMOs. There are tons of multiplayer games that you can run your own servers for, or which use P2P or local LAN connections to not require any publisher presence or support for.

Hell, set them up a Minecraft or ARK or whatever survival-crafter game server, and they can invite and play with their friends on it.

Yes! I'm a huge fan of those. Increasingly rare, though. Was trying to play No Man's Sky, Sniper Elite v2, Quake/Quake2 Enhanced recently with the kids and all required centralized multiplayer. Super disappointing. I do run servers for MineTest (Luanti, really, but ya know), Xonotic, Starcraft 1, etc. but connect-by-IP on an actual LAN seems like the exception these days, rather than the rule.

Out of curiosity, what games published after 2020 (just making up a year here) can you play on LAN with one player creating a server and another connecting via IP? It's my ideal setup, but it seems to only really be available in open source games.

> what games published after 2020 can you play on LAN with one player creating a server and another connecting via IP?

There are tons, it really just depends on what you want to play. Looking at my steam library (installed only, so I can verify there's a LAN option) gives me:

Misery, Necesse, Voyagers of Nera, Infinite Rails, Windward Horizon, 7 Days to Die, HumanitZ, Barotrauma, Avorion

Keep in mind that those are just from the MP games I have currently installed, that are from 2020 onwards. I have 131 mp games from that release period, and only 33 of those are installed, and I only checked games that I figured would be likely candidates (i.e. I excluded Sniper Elite 5, Remnant 2, MechWarrior 5, etc).

So yeah, LAN/ direct IP connect options are still really common, it's just something to check beforehand. Also, the genre really changes the likelihood of having it.

Some smaller titles in there, which makes sense! I'll admit I haven't heard of any of those games, so this may be ignorance on my part. I was thinking of the games from the bigger studios and their general desire to retain complete control of the multiplayer aspects of their games, but I concede that while they have the most players, they are not most of the games. =)

Appreciate you doing some legwork to make your point!

Come on, you can't claim with a straight face that something like Sekiro is not more substantive or enduring than, say, that Rocksteady Suicide Squad game.

Yeah, I'd mentioned the From Software titles because they have received universal acclaim. They were intended to be an example that was not contentious. So much for that!

I feel so sorry for your kids. They deserve a better parent. Remember: your kids are NOT you and they DESERVE to have agency in their lives EVEN if it goes against your interests and desires.

My job is to guide them and use my judgment where their judgment is poor. That is intrinsic in the nature of parenting. Thank you for the guidance though. I understand that you feel strongly and that you hope my kids can be happy even though they're stuck with me as a parent. I do too!

That is such a sweeping statement. Part of what a parent does is guides kids to good decisions, and protect them from the consequences of bad ones. They need agency, and more as they get older, but you do not let them just do what you want.

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