One Proud Daddy

It’s official, my son is now a gamer, and at just over 3 years old, he’s got a better start than I did.

The other day I got my free copy of Dora Saves the Mermaids from 2K Play, when I brought it home, my son saw it and was seriously like “Ooooooo, wanna play daddy’s game?” He’s obviously seen the game on my computer at work during development so he recognized it from that.

I, of course, had no problem popping it in to let him play

He’s ‘played’ the game before at my desk and he’s always enjoyed the imagery and the actions, but he never could really play it. I mean that he didn’t have the dexterity required to operate either the thumb stick or the d-pad and the action buttons at the same time, he would usually just jump in place when I gave him the controller.

Imagine my surprise when he started the game up all on his own (including navigating through the menus to start the game) and was able to guide Dora around without any trouble. He played the game for over an hour and made it all the way to level 6 all by himself. I couldn’t help but just sit there and watch, even though I’ve played the game a million times and can recite the dialog to a T. There’s just something awesome about watching the pure, un-distilled, pleasure wash over your child’s face as he interacts with something you’ve created. I imagine it’s a similar feeling traditional toy makers would get when their own child would prefer a small wooden car they’ve made over the latest Matchbox cars.

He would also dictate to me the things he was going to do in the game, and then actually go and do them.

“How do I get over the water to get that gem daddy? Oh, I have to find the bridge. There it is!” (He has conversations with himself all the time)

“I need to go back and get that gem.”

He finished playing for the night on Level 6 out of 9. When I woke up with him the following morning, the first thing he said to me was “Play the Mermaid game?” Well who am I to say no to my son when he wants to play my game? So he continued the game from where he left off, played for another hour or so and had officially completed his first real* video game from start to finish. I’ll try and get a picture of him playing.

Now to get him good at Rock Band, my band needs a drummer!

*Note: I’m defining a real video game in this instance as a game rated by the ESRB, or one that would have been rated had the ESRB been in existence at the time of said game’s release (Super Mario Bros.).*

So not much else to say on that I suppose, I guess I can reiterate how proud of a daddy I am at the moment, but I have a feeling you already know that.

In other news; Noah Falstein was at the office yesterday for our weekly meeting concerning the project we are working on. He told me that he saw my blog where I mentioned his secret method for getting to the head of the line, apparently he has some sort of Google service that contacts him anytime his name pops up in a website. I thought that was really cool that Noah Falstein read my blog (now to just figure out who the other 5 people are ), then I thought it would be funny to see if I can get him to read my next blog by plastering his name all over it so Google will serve it up to him again.

Let’s see, what else… oh yeah, Noah Falstein.