How my Wii column drove gamers crazy
Boy, is that an understatement.
I have been learning that lesson all week since we published my story Monday on “Why we didn’t get a Wii for Christmas.” The story, which I figured was a pretty innocent tale of my family’s decision, has sent some members of the gaming community off the deep end.
To recap: My wife and I had planned to get a Wii video gaming console for Christmas. Like a fool, I didn’t do my research beforehand and didn’t realize all the extra accessories I’d have to buy when I got to the store. But as parents, we also weren’t really sure, in the end, that we were ready for a video game console in our house since we’re still trying to figure out how to achieve the right balance with our kids.
That challenge there brought home to me with a Kaiser study that was released this week indicating that kids between the ages of 8 and 18 spend an average of 53 hours a week in front of screens of some kind. From the L.A. Times:
“Young people now devote an average of seven hours and 38 minutes to daily media use, or about 53 hours a week — more than a full-time job — according to Kaiser Family Foundation findings released today.
A few years ago, the same researchers thought that teens and tweens were consuming about as much media as humanly possible in the hours available. But somehow, young people have found a way to pack in even more.
But in the last five years, the time that America’s 8- to 18-year-olds spend watching TV, playing video games and using a computer for entertainment has risen by one hour, 17 minutes a day, the Kaiser study found.
“What surprised me the most is the sheer amount of media content coming into their lives each day,” said Kaiser’s Vicky Rideout, who directed the study. “When you step back and look at the big picture, it’s a little overwhelming.”
Yep. That’s an understatement. It’s not that I condemn any of the activities on their own. It’s the total lack of balance and moderation that results that causes me concern.
Beyond this issue, though, my kids had plenty of free video games to play online. So we figured: Let’s wait a year. We’ll consider how we want to have a Wii in our house, figure out a budget for it, and make some reasoned, careful decisions.
That sounded perfectly legit to me. But to those in the gaming community, well, let’s just say that it’s nothing short of pure heresy.
My first taste of the vitriol came on the comments on the column at MercuryNews.com:
Sharky wrote: “I’m sure you can get the console, two controllers and a good game for under $300. grinch!”
Angel37 wrote: “You didn’t have the stomach for the long term cost of the device. Don’t make it about raising your children the “right” way. Do you need your cell phone or blackberry? Not really, they make your life easier, but not really better. We still got by 20 years ago with a land line and basic pc with word processing. Why don’t you give up your cell phones and save $1200 a year.”
Champ Kind wrote: “If you’re not willing to spend $300 on a gift for your children, that is nothing to be ashamed of. Just don’t go writing a newspaper article to make it seem like this is about protecting your children from the evil technology monster.”
Debbie Downer wrote: “I agree. A cheap parent, who throws out excuses on why he didnt deem it appropriate to spend his hard earned money on his kid.”
Fortunately, as the thread wore on, and I responded to some of the comments, the tone shifted and an interesting conversation emerged about the legitimate issues about how much exposure to video games and media is healthy. As just one example:
Cynical critic writes: ”I have built hardware/software for video game consoles, PC Multimedia cards and in the process played many video games for testing them. In fact I can easily build my own box if needed. My observation (both personal and kids) is the kids who play even moderate amount of video games (30 min day) have shorter attention span and do poorly in standardized tests.”
No such luck, however, at a gaming site called Kotaku, where a blogger posted an excerpt of the column that touched off a fire-breathing frenzy of anger. As of the writing of this, the post has attracted 881 comments, which seems on the high end for the site. The post basically summarized the column like this: I went to buy the Wii. Discovered the “hidden” costs. And took it back. End of story:
“The father of two bought his kids a Wii for Christmas, but returned it. Too many hidden costs.
The San Jose Mercury News columnist recently explained the sticker shock that had him returning his $199 Wii and all the stuff he felt he had to buy along with it.”
The tone of the post is pretty neutral. The comments are not, most of which are from folks who naturally didn’t bother to read the column itself (surprise!).
JazzNeurotic writes: “This is a useless article by a moron, not to put too fine a point on it. There is no reason at all to make this sort of complaint unless one has been living away from all sorts of technology with the Amish, or in a coma, for the past 25 years.”
RockyRan writes: “If you read the column you’ll see that his problem was beyond the hidden costs. He didn’t know how to establish “rules” for the Wii, and that the other gifts would be “overshadowed” by the Wii. In short, it was going to require regulation and parenting, and rather than let the kids have a fantastic Christmas with an awesome Wii they returned the whole thing to save themselves the trouble. Laziness is what I’m reading between the lines here.”
So to recap: I’m a cheap, lazy, stupid parent because I won’t fork over $300 for a present and because I don’t let the kids do whatever they want, when they want. Okay.
I was outed by Blore07, who discovered my “hidden agenda”: “I think a lot of people are ignoring the fact that this guy probably knows nothing nor cares about videogames, he just wrote the story to stirr up and divide the masses and get some attention.”
Yes, I was hoping to start an online riot. Exactly.
Fortunately, there were some voices of sanity:
Lionkitten writes: “Wow. The anger of the commenters in this thread is mind-numbing.How dare this guy not know/anticipate every detail about video gaming, seeing as how he hasn’t had a system or followed the industry closely in over 20 years. How dare he. Because no one in this thread was EVER surprised by the exclusion of an item in a purchase before. Never. Gamers forget just how much they actually know about their hobby - - how many years it took to acquire all that knowledge.
Well said.
Oddly enough, there is debate within the comments about the fact the many consoles do have hidden costs, and whether that’s to be expected or whether it’s a sneaky, price-gouging stunt.
In the column, I acknowledged that I blew it by not doing my research beforehand. That was picked up by some commenters, but not many. As far as expense, at the end of the day, let’s have a reality check: A video game console is a luxury, not a necessity. If my kids are happy playing free games online, well, that’s still cheaper than any money I’d pay for a game console.
But beyond that, it’s clear most of these commenters can’t seem to conceive of a world where everyone doesn’t play video games all day long. Or that there might be any consequences to that lifestyle. Like I said in the column, I’m not anti-video games. We let our kids play them (though apparently we’re torturing them by limiting that to 30 minutes a week!). And we will probably get a Wii next year. I’m especially excited about the recent deal with Netflix to stream movies on the Wii, since I’m a big fan of Netflix.
Happily, I also got dozens of emails (and some comments) from readers who were sympathetic, from parents who took time to describe their own challenges in striking that balance. I even got a couple emails from parents who bought the Wii for Christmas and have been regretting it do the fights and stress it’s caused. One of my favorites:
“My husband and I also decided not to get a Wii this year. Our reasons closely matched yours, though my husband also had to add his own concern that he’d get a bit too competitive on the games with our children.Now, our 2 girls are a little older than your children, so we had a bit more pressure from that side. In fact, our second grader wrote an essay for school, “Why I want a Wii”!Well, we hung in, despite many hints and letters to Santa and did not get a Wii. However, as I write, my second grader is in our living room playing “Bash Party” on the Wii that grandma sent home with the girls this weekend, “just to try out…”. You see, in this valley, sometimes grandma works for a game company and really wants to use her employee discount to get the grandchildren some fun Wii games! This challenge to our Wii-free life is, I believe, not something we can stop.
One final note: This column is getting picked up around the world. The latest was the Taiwan News. You’ll be happy to know this international celebrity has not gone to the kids’ heads.
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I can’t believe the comments you got on not buying a Wii. There are so many factors that go into buying a game system and for viewers to place it on laziness and not wanting to spend money on kids is just wrong. I can’t believe the gaming community would jump on the post so viciously. Kudos to Lionkitten for noticing the people posting were out of line. For people commenting to suggest that you have committed serious offense by not buying a luxury item is also not right. If your kids are happy playing games online so be it, i know a lot of people that when they were kids they were happy playing in a cardboard box…mostly my parents… I’m glad you posted this, because it brings focus to how people can view things so differently.
Very interesting. I am quite an avid game player. I am also a teacher of third graders. Obviously I am not anti-games, but I have seen the adverse effects of these games on the attention span of the students I teach. I enjoy playing myself, but I am not going to shake my finger in self denial and say that they haven’t affected my ways of learning.
Purchasing a console should be an educated choice. There are more costs involved than one would initially realize. Not only monetary, but also on the time that is spent. My wife and I have also had to learn to set limits with myself and my son. There is much more to this short life than pushing buttons and being immersed in a virtual world. Though I do love a great “virtual world”.
Thanks for your insights. As a person who enjoys games immensely and owns several consoles, it is a bit embarrassing to have other “gamers” use such close minded logic, and lose their tempers over somebody else’s decision. Especially when that decision is made by wise parents concerned about their children’s futures. You sound like parents I wouldn’t mind raising the students I teach.
Wow! I read your Wii article but I thought you were spot on. Our kids (ages 9 and 5) play games on my husband’s Ipod or on the MAC. We too didn’t buy the Wii for Christmas. However, there was a $120 Amazon burning a hole in my pocket (or, I should my husband’s lol). We just bought it last week. We only allow the children to play it on the weekend.
It’s funny but any of those people read your column, they’d know you are just strike a good balance–which I love. Moderation is key people, lighten up!
Kudos for handling the vitriol so well. Ah, gotta love some of those screen names. T
Ack! Sorry for my shoddy grammar. I accidentally hit send before editing!
“Someone else sent me a lovely essay their son had written for his college application about how his parents would not buy him video games and why he loves them now.”
Who, his parents or video games?
Anyway, my problem with your article was not your parenting style, as they’re your kids and your responsibility, but your complaining about hidden costs. Yes, you said you didn’t do the research, but what you complained about was the gaming equivalent of saying you wanted to play baseball and bought a bat, but didn’t realize you also needed a ball and a mitt. This is on top of you living in Silicon Valley, and all you had to do was make one forum post on a site like gamefaqs.com to find out everything you needed to know. To write a follow-up calling out the people who called you out on your very basic mistakes is…well, I’ll just say petty.
You’re a journalist. Do the proper research next time you write something for the world to see.
Good for you! These gamers websites shouldn’t be allowed on the internet. All they do is take up even more of the time kids should be learning or getting exercise. This is just more proof of how Video Gamers are controlling the minds of our kids.
The best thing you could have done was repost these responses, so that people know that what they post on the internet isn’t something just you and your community read for a laugh. I wouldn’t want to be talked about by these type of people on the internet, hopefully you scared a little sense into them by posting their nicknames.
Of course, there are many hidden costs to buying gaming consoles. This holiday season, I noticed several pamphlets around the video game sections of some retailers explaining exactly what it would cost to get what console to do something specific. At least you didn’t buy an Xbox 360, or you may have found yourself paying upwards of $200 in extra costs in addition to the $300 you’d be shelling out for the console itself. Not including games. But perhaps if information such as those pamphlets were mode widely available and accessible to the non-gamer population, issues such as this would not arise. Better education for all means better decision-making in the long run.
But, to be perfectly honest, the gaming community of the Internet has felt like it’s been under attack since the early 2000s, and especially since the United States Senate has begun to eye video games as “potentially dangerous media.” Now, not saying that you’re at fault at all here for posting anything about games being bad, because essentially, it was the price tag. However, when this community sees something negative about their precious games, they tend to get a bit irrational and angered enough to respond with a quick quip on how nobody should talk bad about games, and everyone should have them no matter what. So, you really shouldn’t be surprised by the reaction. Unfortunately, it’s how some things go on the Internet. At least you didn’t condemn Grand Theft Auto as being evil.
Sad bastards let ya kids be kids!
Though I can’t speak on behalf of the Kotaku community, I can say that as a gamer we CONSTANTLY see articles about the “evils” of gaming. Public officials, journalists, people who’s opinions mean nothing, you name it, they always have something negative to say about the gaming industry. Half of these people are uninformed and simply hate what they don’t understand. That being said, I would presume that most people glanced over your article and took it at face value for just another schmuk hating on gamers and playing quaker with his kids so they responded accordingly. Besides, you posted on the internet where opinions are like a**holes and everyones more than proud to show you theirs
Though I do agree that the comments on the Kotaku article were brazen and almost entirely unwarranted, I would also point out that there are some grains of truth in some of the words some of the commenters posted. (Yes, that is quite a lot of “some,” but we’re big kids; we can handle repetition.)
Having read the original article–and I will acknowledge that you raised the point yourself–it clearly shows that you did not do the research. As a journalist, that’s something I would have expected of you, considering how crucial research is in the field.
Allow me to backpedal from that scolding for a moment: I can’t blame you for not having looked into it so closely. We all drop the ball from time to time, so it’d be hypocritical of me to say, “Look at this big jerk and how he doesn’t know anything about anything I am offended at his article hear me roar this is a run-on sentence to illustrate the point which is that I am calling them irrational.”
Now, allow me to step out of my Boots of Understanding here, because it also needs to be said that your response article was just as immature as the comments attacking you. Instead of responding to an insult with an insult, why not respond in a reasonable fashion and explain your article–particularly the points those people didn’t see?
Yes, they were immature and out of line. But I can’t help but be disappointed with the way you handled this. If this is the sort of thing typical of the field I’m looking to get into, maybe I should reconsider. Defending yourself is one thing. Launching more attacks? I sympathized with you before, sir, but you’re also in the wrong at this juncture.
In your original article you lost me on the $30 batteries. To be honest, your kids seem a little young to be gaming yet. If they want someting like that, I would make them save up their money. The only reason my kids have videogames is that I buy them and they play mine.
How many hours a week do your kids watch TV or Netflix movies? Currently, video games are the media “bad boy”. You know all the studies about how video games “rot your brain”? Well, they used to say that about television, radio, and books! It is a good thing you let your kids play Farmville for thirty minutes a week instead of a deep role playing game with a lot of textual story or an adventure game that helps hand-eye coordination. There are many great educational games out there. You would not know that though because you are too lazy to do any research other than watching the news. You know… the news on one of the many networks that are losing viewers to video games and the internet.
You’re right on many points, article writer, but not all.
1. RockyRan DID post some valid information. The fact that you were merely planning on limits for when the Wii WAS gotten is not something I suspect you would have said. They did not suggest not having any limits. They suggested you had not been prepared to set those limits at time of purchase.
In the end you misconstrued what they said the same way gamers like myself, but not me personally, misconstrued what you said. Your point would be made just as well without hypocrisy and ironic writing.
2. Having gaming as a hobby does not FORCE a person to have a lower attention span. I’ve been a gamer for years, probably without as much moderation as I should have had. I still do well in school and on standardized tests for the most part.
It isn’t the game’s fault if the children have lower attention spans. It is slightly the parent’s fault for not trying to regrow it, but mostly is the fault of the child themselves. It may seem harsh to judge your own children in such a manner if it were to happen, but they are not absolved of any responsibility the hobby has on the rest of their lives. Gaming is gaming. School is school. One does not have to influence the other.
3. You neglect, understandably so, that the media has made a scapegoat of the video games medium for as long as it has existed. Naturally, a report which could be INTERPRETED as further media scapegoating will be viewed poorly. You did not personally make such an article, but many others have. It’s an unfair assumption, but it is to be expected with the scapegoating and sensationalist media the world has today.
As you can see, not all gamers are the way many of those commenters were. Both parties have some blame here. While it is mostly on us, the gamers, there are elements of your speech which could be interpreted in such a way that would make you seem responsible.
No person is responsible for how others interpret what they say, regardless of their true intention. But as someone in the media, you have to understand that burden. Some day, after I’ve graduated college, I will too.
Sincerely,
Silva
From the point of view of someone who was raised on video games and grew up to be a game programmer, I think I can explain what about your article touched off the firestorm. The big thing is, gamers are sensitive to any bad perception of games by people inexperienced with them. Because there has long been stereotypes of games only being for little boys, and if adults play them they are fat, socially undeveloped geeks with ADD who live in their parents’ basement munching on cheetos. And games are always under attack as being bad without any scientific proof, such as the person you quote in your article “kids who play even moderate amount of video games (30 min day) have shorter attention span and do poorly in standardized tests.” (Is this person a teacher? Where have they observed this general trend in standardized tests with video game experience?)
Because of that sensitivity, when people make negative assumptions about video games even when professing that they don’t have experience with games and didn’t do their research, it sparks an instant desire to defend gaming. And of course the type of hardcore gamers who would post about articles in a gaming blog like Kotaku are going to be rather harsh (and while most gamers are adults nowadays, the average age being 35, I wouldn’t say most people posting on Kotaku are mature).
Naturally, the outrage on Kotaku was unwarranted, but this is the internet. Should you follow the business more in the future, I’m sure you’ll find that there are many responsible members of the gaming media fraternity–including the majority of the Kotaku staff (minus the Senior Sony Correspondent, who also happens to be the Night Editor; I kid, I kid, Briano).
That said, the studies regarding attention spans and such in children who play video games are misleading in that they are inherently biased by subject matter alone. Despite playing World of Warcraft for five, six, sometimes seven hours a day in the spring of my junior year in high school (and never studying for a minute), I scored advanced on all of my state standardized tests and perfect on three of them. Yet, others in my circle who were genuinely concerned, studied for hours on end only to receive marginal results. The same was repeated with the SAT as well.
I offer this example to illustrate that, ultimately, a major factor in your children’s future will be their environment as a whole. If they are not playing video games, surely they will find another means of spending their time, and occasionally that will be far more destructive than playing the Wii for a few hours a day. My parents allowed for me to pursue my own interests but also provided an element of nurture that parents should be more focused on, rather than restricting what it is their children would like to do.
It may seem counterproductive, but young children and teenagers do benefit from playing video games–especially with friends. To this day, many of my closest friends were those I met at school after recognizing we had a common interest in gaming and the like. Sure, some children will stray from studying nightly for several hours while playing video games, but there are just as many that stray just the same that are doing anything but gaming. Too much blame is placed on video games (including its ability to inspire non-virtual violence and such) simply because it’s a convenient and recognizable scapegoat.
In short: While there may be bad students who spend copious amounts of time with video games, there are just as many (and conceivably more) that are poor students yet never partake in any gaming. As for the contraposition, there are good students who are gamers and there are good students who are not. Restricting children from a potential hobby merely because you are purportedly minding their academic future may not be as failsafe as it seems. Leveling with your children as individuals and evaluating what is best for them on a child-to-child basis is what parents should be focused on, rather than succumbing to a generalized assessment of the population at large.
It is reassuring to see parents such as your wife and yourself researching and making considerations with at least some insight, whereas most others would write it off as harmful without a second though.
The reason you infuriated people is you posted another article in the media portraying video games in a semi-negative light, even if that wasn’t your intention.
The readers at Kotaku are used to seeing stories where journalists, politicians, and police officers blame video games for the cause of murders and social injustices without consideration that the majority of people in the country play video games, and that the crime-committing individual might have mental stability issues or other underlying problems. Kotaku readers are equally as shocked as the rest of the general population when a 5-year-old child is killed while playing a skateboarding game, or when a child is set on fire after a dispute over a video game and a stolen bicycle. They get angry when journalists take these incidents and turn it into a month-long focus of “video games and violence.” Perhaps it is similar to how followers of Islam feel when a Muslim commits a terrorist act and a large section of society runs to blame Islamic teachings.
Focusing on your article, now:
It’s not like there are ways to get around most of those hidden costs. For my Wii I have a battery charger that you can fit the Wii-mote into ($15-20), and I’m still on the same set of batteries that came with the charger from years ago.
Purchasing extra controllers for family members should be expected; not everyone needs four controllers. Purchasing games should also be expected - and while games do add up in costs, you can do your research together with your kids beforehand to make sure your kids really want that game, read reviews from online-webpages (both professional and user oriented), and wait for sales on games that your kids want, but aren’t necessarily crazy for.
Some costs, like the Wii Balance Board or the Wii Motion Plus didn’t exist when the console launched. You need to decide which devices are right for you. My family doesn’t have a Wii Balance Board, but we have several Wii Motion Plus devices. It’s also unnecessary to buy the plastic controller coverings for your children - let them imagine they’re hitting a ball with a tennis racket - you don’t look at it when you’re playing anyhow, although I would recommend the Nintendo Steering Wheel if you ever buy Mariokart.
Finally you can find titles cheap. Last Christmas in my household we purchased 13 games for $135. All of which were high quality titles, and many were recently released - no “shovelware”. They’re cheap, poorly constructed titles, but they appeal to family members because of their price tag, and because family members often do not understand the differences in quality between games when they fail to do research.
Gamers are often considered a highly meticulous demographic, as they spend time and effort researching the titles they will be purchasing, because they don’t want to waste the $50-60 on a title they don’t like. Kotaku falls into a site where readers visit, but you also fell victim to the “trolls.” When you post things online you need to decide the intent of criticisms aimed back at you, and selectively take them; ignore the others.
Hopefully your next experience with the Wii goes smoother.
The portion of the gamer demographic who agrees with you… well I’d rather say who understand, respect and are perfectly ok with your choices, they exist but probably don’t speak as loud. I for one wished to give them a voice..
You probably got answered by a bunch of kids who made projections of you as their own parents.
Good choice on not getting a Wii, if you got one it would probably be collecting dust by March because good games for the system only come out occasionally and it’s unlikely that a parent such as yourself would be find those gems in the mountain of dreck that comes out for the system. Wait until you can get a Playstation 3 or an Xbox 360, they both have a lot more good games than the Wii does, and they play movies (they both have Netflix too), and at least for the Playstation you don’t have to worry about batteries.!
Yknow, if you’re going make it blatantly obvious that you’re picking angry gamer internet qutoes specifically to say ‘Look at these angry gamers’, you might want to try throwing in one or two that actually poked valid holes in your thought process.
All I’m seein is some biased jerk who is either relishing in the fact he made people angry (even going so far as to label them gamers), or someone who would rather live in his own little world of strawman arguments, fingers firmly in ears to ignore people providing evidence that he is being silly.
I read the Kotaku article, and theres a lot of commenters there that in addition to the angry ones, were point by point showing you that you are being unreasonable in all these unexpected costs. As well as a few who brought forward the argument that many children who grew up with Nintendo are now perfectly normal nearing 30 adults.
Here, I’ll pull this out of your last column:
“My wife and I, like many parents, have been trying to strike a balance between letting them explore computers, and keeping them from becoming techno-obsessed shut-ins who spend all day online and have no friends.”
Quite the underlying negative opinion you have of technophiles, there. While I understand there is an audience for that sort of opinion, its outdated, and you’re going to be left behind with it.
Just a few points:
Sounding rather sarcastic in this collumn.
You cherry-picked some of the worst of the worst comments on Kotaku to show how unreasonable people are (remember: there is always a vocal minority).
Rather unfair to blame this on ‘gamers’ as a whole when in total only the smallest of percentage of the gaming public responded in an unreasonable manner.
Some of the more polite responses on Kotaku agreed with your choice but just felt (as I do) that you didn’t research your material enough for a big purchase that you were considering. There are plenty of hidden costs, but pointing to something as mundane as batteries feels a bit unaware of technology in this day and age.
Not saying you did wrong or anything, but please don’t portray the entire gaming community in such a harsh light when a small vocal minority loses their common decency… The amount of reasoned arguement and decently worded disagreement far outweight the number of petty insults people spouted.
Yeah, you shot yourself in the foot a bit by not doing research. You also owned up to that. It is pretty ridiculous that the commenters on Kotaku went berserk like that. I’m a commenter on that site myself, and a pretty avid gamer (so I hope this doesn’t cast us in a bad light) but I can completely understand and respect your choices.
I myself am 17 and just entering college, so I definitely understand the need to balance your time correctly. And as much as I love games, on any given weekend I’d much rather be out having fun in the real world. Good for you for raising your kids the way you see fit! I’ve been at my dad’s house and seen my two younger siblings fighting over the Xbox; not a pretty sight.
“But beyond that, it’s clear most of these commenters can’t seem to conceive of a world where everyone doesn’t play video games all day long.”
I think it really boils down to the fact that video games are becoming a sort of “necessity” entertainment medium these days much like music, movies, and television has over the last century.
For these guys it’s like saying something like: “I don’t allow my child to listen to music.” Which, as a huge music buff, would be an immediate red flag for me for an article. I mean, how can one not allow a child to experience music and, along with it, the emotional and cultural experiences?
Video games are a newer phenomena, obviously, and so, until recently, have not really been seen as adding any sort of cultural or emotional experiences that can, with the right moderation of course (everything in moderation), enlighten a child and teach him/her to understand new things in life.
Anyways, I believe that’s their line of thought, and one that seems fairly reasonable to me, albeit in some horrible contexts.
Still though, it’s your household and the choice is yours to allow your child to experience the different facets of life. It seems like your not downright opposed to the idea, so maybe when they are a little older you’ll start acclimating them to the idea.
I will also say that teaching children (all children, not just yours) moderation around video games will probably need to become mandatory. Let’s face it, you can’t keep them away from it forever and if you don’t teach them the good and bad about the medium then they are more likely to become too involved in a game like World of Warcraft which has the potential to destroy lives… scary stuff.
Anyways, just my 2 cents.
Shame on these gamers for harassing an old man who doesn’t understand the world changing around him. They will certainly have a rude awakening when they hit their twilight years…
It’s tough when your columns reach an audience that doesn’t already like you, isn’t it?
I’ve read both your previous article and this one, and I found it rather interesting. I’ve been playing games since I was 5 years old, and now that I’m in college, I’m studying to work in the video game industry. From your perspective, what you did was completely reasonable. I agree, it was. I noticed that you and some commenters mentioned that video games are affecting kid’s attention spans. Could one of you explain to me how that works? I don’t really understand it, since I’ve been playing games all my life, and yet I can concentrate on my homework for as much as 6 hours at a time. I want to get into the industry, and I want to make a positive difference in people’s lives, so understanding these things is important.
Another thing I would like to add is the hidden benefits of playing video games that even a lot of gamers forget to acknowledge, at times. I had a lazy eye before, and playing video games repaired that. My family isn’t exactly healthy, either. I would not be the person that I am today were it not for video games being there to provide escapism, as well as an inspiration to work hard and do the impossible. They helped me through some hard times.
I am not saying that you were wrong in not buying a Wii. On the contrary, it seems you have a good understanding of what your children’s needs are. I’m simply saying that these are the types of things that video games provide to some gamers.
As someone who regularly reads the Kotaku blog, I feel compelled to point out how you comment on the rude, name calling, posts by their viewers, by doing some rude name calling.
I also need to comment on the attention span comment brought up in this column. I myself am an 18 year old who has been playing video games for about 12 of those years regularly for absurd hours a week. However my attention span is above normal as long as it’s something that interests me, and I received the the highest SAT scores in my high school.
Making a mention of how video games have the exact opposite affect proves how you are in fact anti- video game despite saying you weren’t. The reason most children these days who play video games and spend their time online pay less attention in school is because they:
a) Already learned the material being covered via these secondary mediums, and
b) Aren’t interested in how FDR met with Churchill and Stalin during WW2 shortly before Americas involvement in order to find a way to get involved.
Sure I support your parenting technique of limiting what your children do that you weren’t able to when you were their age, however using made up facts and bias studies as an excuse to support your reasoning is just going to get you more negative responses.
Also, (forgot to say this during the last post as it was getting rather lengthy) the main reason you were getting negative flak for your decision wasn’t so much the actual decision, but that you were unable, or more so unwilling, to figure out a plan that you found reasonable for “screen time” with a Wii.
Also the whole battery thing was mildly silly, since every Christmas since the mid 70’s has required batteries.
I can remember reading that post and read quite a few of the comments. There are always extreme responses by morons or simply someone having a bad day already, but most of the comments seemed to not be referring to the cost issue but the sentence :
“My wife and I, like many parents, have been trying to strike a balance between letting them explore computers, and keeping them from becoming techno-obsessed shut-ins who spend all day online and have no friends”
This is just one sentence, but it stood out. This is precisely the kind of comment that gets many the backs up of many people in the gaming community. It paints gaming in a very bad light that either you’re not that interested in it or you are some sort of social-reject. Obviously this is going to annoy people who have been cast into this second category by a man who admits to having no real knowledge of the subject.
The rest of the article was perfectly fine journalism and a reasonable story. I even think his decision is right as his children are young enough that it is worth preserving “that childhood innocence, that appreciation of simple things”, as he puts it. To be honest, I think we would all love to find toy cars quite so incredibly enjoyable as we did when we were young; that innocence never returns once it is lost.
So in short:
I think Mr. O’Brien made one poorly-judged and narrow-minded comment in an otherwise fine article and received responses in kind.
(P.S. I actually think this response article is rather petty and does him no favours - better to keep his mouth shut or write a full response than paste in comments followed by sarcastic replies. I suppose he was drawn into replying in kind as the Kotaku readership had to his first article. It would appear we are all weak to a personal attack. )
That is so bizarre. Did I miss something here? Did you tell all these critics that you were making them pay for your Nintendo? Good Grief, Charlie Brown.
I’m 36 years old, I had an Atari when I was a kid, and I still love video games today, but I keep my priorities straight. And there is no way in hell I would let my kids sit in front of a damned tv set for 50 hours a week. You are absolutely correct to make the decision you made.
The kids should be playing outside, moving around, getting into trouble, yadda yadda. Video games are fun, especially when we’re all playing together. But 50 hours a week? That’s just insane. I would certainly recoil at that. The Nintendo Wii will still be here next Christmas, all the fun games will still be there, and the world will go on.
My advice? Buy the kids an acoustic guitar. Buy them some paints. Buy them some books. Get back that turntable and stereo system you had when you were a kid and collect some records. And on weekends, toss the kids outside at 10am. Send them outside and make them entertain themselves. They will thank you when they are adults, trust me.
Oh, one final thing. If you need help researching video games or music, just visit my blog, Daniel Thomas Vol 4. Good luck!
I agree with your reasons for returning the Wii, but it seems like you went out of your way to increase the costs as much as possible. For instance, instead of buying a game with a bunch of extra peripherals, like Rock Band, buy a game that has none, like Super Mario Galaxy for example. And complaining about batteries is pointless, you could have bought your kids an RC car and had to complain about the batteries. Also, the Wii has built in Wifi, so that also wouldn’t have been a problem for you. It seems like you were trying your hardest to make games seem as bad as possible.
The reason many people commented so harshly against you was not because you returned a Wii, but because of your stance on gamers, and how you reacted towards them. From your first column, “keeping (your kids) from becoming techno-obsessed shut-ins who spend all day online and have no friends.” shows that you view gamers in a very negative light. It says that you think people who play games a lot have no friends and don’t do anything else. Gamers are people too, and what you list is the exception to the rule. In this second column, you went through and handpicked all comments that made gamers look as bad as possible. You said yourself that Kotaku had 881 comments. You took one that agreed with you to an extent, and three that didn’t. I’m betting that there were other rational comments that both agreed and disagreed with you, but you neglected to post those. You are intentionally making yourself look the victim here, and everyone on the internet is bad.
This is “Trolling”, essentially this means that you were saying things with the intention of provoking others.
Thats why most people are so upset by what you are doing. You aren’t anti-games, though I wouldn’t say you are pro-games either. You are anti-gamers, what else did you expect them to do when you insulted them? Shower you with happiness and praise?
“Yes, I was hoping to start an online riot. Exactly.” You didn’t want to start one, but you are doing a very good job fueling the wildfire.
Oh, come off of it.
You wrote, in your previous column, “Reasons the O’Briens didn’t get a Wii this Christmas:
1. Dad had a panic attack trying to figure out all the extra gizmos he needed beyond the console, such as rechargeable batteries, extra controls, games and attachments.”
It was this point — evidently the primary factor in your decision-making process — at which most Kotaku posters took issue. Someone who returned a DVD player he’d purchased because of the “hidden costs” of DVD movies, cables and batteries would be just as rightly scorned.
One need not be unable “to conceive of a world where everyone doesn’t play video games all day long” to realize that wireless remotes require batteries or that media-playing devices require media to play.
I think the problem with your original posting is how you appear to think that you are doing a better job parenting your children than the gamers of the world are doing with theirs. No, of course you did not state that directly — but the whole article had a “holier than thou” feeling to it.
Between my husband and I, we have had almost every video game system for the past 20 years (yes, including a 3DO, 2 dreamcasts, a Game Gear, AND a Virtual Boy). Without video games, I probably wouldn’t have my husband — since we original bonded over the Final Fantasy series. My son just turned 2 last week and loves nothing more than watching me play Dr. Mario on the Wii or learning how pushing buttons on the Nintendo controller makes Luigi jump in Super Mario 2. Of course, he does that for maybe 30 minutes a day in between looking at books, playing with blocks, building a model train set, and running around outside in nice weather…
Don’t rush to think that giving your children more than 30 minutes a week to play games will RUIN them… instead, think of all of the skills that they can learn, the chances to be responsible with money while saving up for a new game, or the bonding abilities for the entire family over Wii Bowling… In my experience, those friends of mine who had the internet and games limited when they were children are the ones that are now sitting in front of their computers playing WOW all day or on XBOX Live all night…
Well Mr. Chris Obrien, you are wrong and so are the studies. The time spent playing video games has no effect whatsoever on attention spans and doing bad on tests. I’m a 30 year old lawyer with a Master’s Degree who is married and has been playing Videogames since I was FIVE. I play videogames at least 5 hours a week, sometimes actually 10 hours a week on average when work allows for it.
My little sister is 11, she’s been playing videogames since she was THREE and she’s a straight A student. My brother is 27, he’s also been gaming since he was THREE and he’s just finish his Master’s Degree studies. My godson is 4 and he is doing great in school plus he’s in a soccer team and enjoys playing outdoors as much as playing videogames.
You know what the problem is? Lazy parents who don’t research what they’re going to buy for theirs kids, then write a column about something as trivial and non-sense as “hidden costs” when EVERY VIDEOGAME CONSOLE IN ALL OF HISTORY has always had what you refer to as “hidden costs” because you have to buy games and extra controllers for them. Instead of thinking about buying Guitar Hero (which is $180 at most retailers) you could have gotten Wii Play for $50 which comes with one Wii remote and a disc with several games which would be just great for the age of your children and the special edition of Wii Sports Resort for $60 that contains the game and the two Wii Motion Plus extra attatchments that conect to the Wii Remote and provide a better experience on those games that use them. But again, that is because of you not caring about doing research on what to buy for your kids. They’re too young for Guitar Hero, so that would either had been $180 that wouldn’t get enjoyed, or a gift for you and your friends to enjoy a music game.
Ignorance is what gives videogames and those of us that enjoy them such a bad reputation. Well, ignorance and close mindness from those repeting patters from generations past.
You’re entitled to your decision, but you don’t have a right to missinform other closed minded parents about why you took it.
You really shouldn’t take the kotaku comments to heart. It is one of the most popular gaming sites and so there are a fair few idiots commenting on articles. I think in general the more popular the site the worse the commentors. Just look at youtube.
Honestly, you don’t want to buy a Wii, anyway. You’d be better off with the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. As you aren’t really into video games, be warned that the Wii has the worst software available for any current system. Less than 1% of the games you’ll find for Wii are actually worth playing(Hell, most of them don’t even work properly), so you’re almost guaranteed to waste $50 on garbage that your kids will play for a week, if you’re lucky.
I think most of the angry responses come out from a fear that any sort of comment that does not completely approve video-gaming and could lead to some sort of increased “awareness” would lead to further restrictions in the gaming market. For example, in Australia there’s no rating for Mature or NC17 games, wich means that any games that would fall in that rating, are instead banned or butchered with censorship. I understand that in the US there was a senator pushing towards the ban of certain games in the 90’s as well, but i don’t know/remember too much about that subject.
I’m not trying to defend them, comments with no real thought behind them deserve no merit, and the most vocal members of the gaming community tend to be of the reactionary and overzealous kind.
On another note, if you’re going to get them any console, do get them a Wii. Its the console with the most casual approach and a lot of games involve physical activity, there’s also certain titles that revolve around sports, wich could get your kids interested in trying the real thing.
Dude, I don’t blame you in the least. Unless you’re an avid gamer and have the cash to throw down on a system - they run into serious cash.
The very fact that people are challenging you over it is pretty humorous, though. It was your choice and your own opinion. Nobody forced them to read the article or agree with you. Its that simple.
You sure have some really thin skin for a journalist. I mean really really, really thin skin. You didn’t do your research, you posted a column that made this clear and you insulted not only gamers, but parents who know how to allow their children to play video games without over doing it.
You would have never had made it back when newspapers were king. Maybe you should stick to a blog that you can fashion into your own private hugbox..
“RockyRan writes: “If you read the column you’ll see that his problem was beyond the hidden costs. He didn’t know how to establish “rules” for the Wii, and that the other gifts would be “overshadowed” by the Wii. In short, it was going to require regulation and parenting, and rather than let the kids have a fantastic Christmas with an awesome Wii they returned the whole thing to save themselves the trouble. Laziness is what I’m reading between the lines here.”
So to recap: I’m a cheap, lazy, stupid parent because I won’t fork over $300 for a present and because I don’t let the kids do whatever they want, when they want. Okay.”
RockyRan calls you lazy, no where does he say you are stupid or cheap. But, hey, don’t let that stop you from calling yourself these things.
Why did you pick some of the most rude of the 100s of comments at Kotaku? Some of the comments politely pointed out you are unreasonable with this quote from your original article, “My wife and I, like many parents, have been trying to strike a balance between letting them explore computers, and keeping them from becoming techno-obsessed shut-ins who spend all day online and have no friends.”
I don’t fault gamers for being insulted by that comment. Some of the comments on your generalizations were rude, yep. On the internet even, go figure. You are a journalist however. Why even respond? Unless, you are liking this bit of controversy and publicity.
The original article was really not worth being featured by Kotaku. You Insult a whole subculture and perpetuate nasty stereotypes and the article is poorly written. Just so happens, Kotaku will post anything and everything game related, especially if they think it will get a lively discussion going which = a lot of hits on their website.
“It’s funny but any of those people read your column, they’d know you are just strike a good balance–which I love. Moderation is key people, lighten up!”
Lisa, I feel a lot of people understood that, but were more upset that he seemed to be blaming the system as a reason it would be hard for him to moderate. If he can moderate existing games, he can moderate a console purchase too. He says he panics because basically his kids would want to play it. Well, not only does that seem to be the point of the present, but if they’ve set up some boundaries why are they panicking for setting up more?
He also seems in this article to have offensively stereotyped gamers, saying “it’s clear most of these commenters can’t seem to conceive of a world where everyone doesn’t play video games all day long. Or that there might be any consequences to that lifestyle.” So now people who play games are all doing it all day long, and have no idea of any consequences of not moderating? And he basically judges this based on the fact that people are pointing out - and agreeing - that he’s been really hiding himself from learning anything about this technology for 20 years.
I get the hidden costs of video games thing, but that’s nothing new. Only a few original consoles came with two controllers, but they haven’t for a long time. I’m also surprised they don’t seem to use much batteries or find them a scary new expense. And it’s probably because he’s admittedly had a blind spot for video gaming and hasn’t paid attention in 20 years.
What I find most telling is that none of these problems are going to change by next year, but he’s still planning on getting one next year. It’s still going to overshadow other gifts. It’s still going to be able to be moderated. It’s still going to take batteries. Especially when looking for Netflix, it’s now going to NEED internet connection (which most people’s I know don’t have it connected). So nothing is actually going to be different at all next year.
Hi, I’m a avid-moderate gamer and I was directed towards Kotaku and unlike the readers whom you pointed out, I do read the articles I find to be controversial on the Kotaku homepage.
While I can see where you are coming from and the risks of allowing children to play games too much I have witnessed the other end of the spectrum, a situation that is close to your own.
While I will admit that there are some children who become out of control and result to violence when they feel they are denied their right to video games, that is mostly a parenting problem rather than a video game problem because their children obviously had a obsession rather than a hobby.
The other side of spectrum may not seem as dangerous mainly because the news does not mention it but I’ve had relatives and friends who have restricted screen time. When they visit me the only thing they ever do is play video games. You mentioned that in your last article that when your children go to their friends house they play the Wii, I think you should ask your children what else they do as well.
From experience I noticed that my friends and relatives do nothing more than play games in my own home and refused to do much else. If I wanted to go out to the park or something I would have to take the initiative and go their house instead. While it is difficult to manage the influence of games on your children, you should also manage moderation. While I’m not in any place to tell you how to raise your children, 30 minutes of screen time a week may seem a bit low.
Technology grows at a phenomenal rate, as you should know, and many people get left in the dust when it comes to computers. I know that if I didn’t spend a significant portion of my high school career (I’m at University of Chicago now) in front of my laptop I would know 1/10000 of what I know how to do now and even then I know only a minimal amount.
Its hard to take care of children and determine what is right for them and at this point the safest solution may seem like the best but there are risks even then. Many of the college students have had the screen time limitation and while they are smart they have no self control over their hobbies. I think a lesson in self control for your children is better than forcing control on them. I’m not quite sure if your way is what I would do for my children but again I’m in no situation to be giving your lectures on how to parent.
so to recap….
1) Mr. O’Brien writes an article where he relates the story of an ill-fated purchase that he feels he needs to take back due to a number of concerns. if he would have stopped at that, nothing would have happened. HOWEVER, he chose to include a bunch of snarky and condescending comments about people that play video games, including ‘geeky lynch mobs’, ‘techno-obsessed shut-ins’, and an assertion that games will take away ‘childhood innocence’.
2) video gamers are insulted by statements that insult them. SHOCKING. some post angry little snippets. many post thoughtful and insightful comments.
3) Mr. O’Brien replies to comments in a snarky and condescending manner. guess which ones he chose to reply to.
Mr. O’Brien has created a classic ’straw man’ argument. he creates an artificial representation of his opposition, being very selective of the elements (angry geeky shut-ins). he then attacks that representation. this is a logical fallacy that cannot be used in a proper discussion.
Mr. O’Brien, you will find that many of us adult gamers are highly educated, active, social people. i practice martial arts, play soccer in a league, take part in community/charity work and have traveled and lived around the world. many of us also have kids that play video games, under our careful supervision. as a matter of fact, it is precisely our knowledge of video games and technology that aid us in parenting this aspect.
also, Childs’ Play Charity, started by gamers and supported by gamers, gives 100% of proceeds directly to Children’s Hospitals all over the world. this year alone it raised almost $1.8 MILLION. it was initially started as a response to an article that labeled gamers in a similar poor fashion. http://childsplaycharity.org/
The comments about games having a negative impact on the attention span of children intrigue me. I don’t doubt that such an impact is possible, but I would like to see some research into specific kinds of video games.
My preliminary guess would be that the impact on attention spans is not a by-product of video games in general, but rather the casual games that can be enjoyed in 10-minute bursts and require immediate gratification. Unfortunately, the Wii has become a haven for these kinds of games, which can be equally blamed on the developers as well as the people who buy these games.
I think that, if you looked at children who played lengthy role-playing games or adventure games, you would not see such a decline in attention span. These kinds of games often have long stretches of time when there is little action; for example, a dialogue-driven cut scene or an in-depth investigation sequence. These games demand time commitments because of their very nature.
If children in their formative years are exposed solely to the casual games I’ve described, they would probably see the down-time in RPG’s and adventure games as boring or pointless, when in reality they are essential to the storyline. The thing that fears me the most is parents who don’t understand this.
In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I am definitely not a Wii supporter. I feel that the mass of parents who bought their children a Wii because it was the hot gift item are contributing to the very problems associated with video games that they complain about. Children need to be exposed to more than just “mini-games” of throwing blocks at things using a motion controller if they are to truly understand the power of video games as an art form.
Mr. O’Brien, I understand your decision to return the Wii and your surprise at the internet firestorm you created. I would, though, ask that you research more of the kinds of games that “hardcore” gamers enjoy. For instance, there is a game called “Heavy Rain” due to be released in February for the PlayStation 3. It is certainly not for your children–it is a mature tale of a father dealing with his grief after losing his son and what he goes through on a quest to find a serial killer. It is games like this that demonstrate video gamers are not all lazy, sun-deprieved slobs. It is games like this that show exactly what can be done with the medium.
Let me explain why your article started an internet riot. To quote your first post you did not want your kids to become:
“techno-obsessed shut-ins who spend all day online and have no friends”
You made a broad generalization indicated that simply buying them a video game console would be a slippery slope to becoming a shut in and stereotyped a lot of people in one fell swoop while undermining the rest of your argument. Gamers (including my self) are sick of being the scapegoat for societies ills and hate that enjoying video games instantly makes one antisocial. While the rest of argument was well written and it is VERY true that gaming is an expensive hobby. next time you write an article and wish to avoid starting a internet riot, avoid insulting the people spend a great deal of their time on the internet.
I don’t see what the hidden cost of wii is beyond maybe the Nunchacks. Free online, all games are priced below £40 and it doesn’t require any extras to link it up to gamecube memory cards or controllers, meaning you don’t have to pay to play games you might already own. It was just pure ignorance to suggest otherwise really. You also come across as a bit arrogant with the whole, we’re better than other people because we limit our kids time, I work in education and kids with parents like yours end up with the narrowest views of life because they aren’t given the freedom to pursue their interests.
As a gamer, what actually irked me a little about your past article was not the way you got pretty much scared off the console by the amount of money needed (for a first time gamer, it can be a little overwhelming. I guess.) but just how evil you seemed to think the videogames in themselves are. 10 minutes a day? Wow. You can’t really accomplish much in that time. Not only of videogames. Everything in life takes more than 10 minutes. Working out. Studying. Having fun with friends.
Having fun by yourself (yes, it is possible!).
But of course, since videogames are the new evil of the digital
era, ten minutes should be enough. I understand that you want to limit your children - when I have my own, I will limit them too. But ten measly minutes? How about half an hour a day after homework?
Hal an hour a day will most definitely not make your children dumb TV-stricken idiots that know nothing about the outside world. If anything, it will allow them to actually get along with other Wii-playing kids at school, you know, allow them to be In.
There are also several studies that focus on the advantages of playing videogames; from better eye-hand control (comes handy when learning to drive) to better spatial thinking. Not to say that two-player games, when played with a sibling, are awesome fun (own experience!) and deepen the bond between the siblings. Same goes for games played with friends.
When reading your past article, I feel that saying “Oh no it’s too expensive” is more of an excuse to keep your daughters away from what you think will be detrimental to their growth. Can’t blame that - all parents are like that.
But videogames aren’t drugs. Half an hour, even an hour a daywon’t hurt their brain. I grew up playing videogames. Not as the nerdy droopy-eyed kid you might imagine, nor as the screen-glued idiot you might want to imagine, if only to justify many things. I attended highschool, college, got a job, just published my first novel. I continued playing videogames, alone and with friends. Sometimes for just a few minutes, sometimes for hours and hours on end (ever read a good book you can’t seem to put down? Some videogames have stories like that).
Videogames don’t interrupt one’s life that badly. If you ever decide to give your daughters a chance to try them by themselves, a chance to actually discover what they like and don’t like without daddy deciding for them , you might see that too.
I’ve just got to raise an eyebrow at that quoted comment from “Cynical critic”.
How exactly does one casually “observe” that something causes children to do poorly on standardized tests?
The phrasing of the last sentence. It’s just such an odd thing to say.
And with the possible exception of a school teacher I can’t imagine anyone able to “observe” such a thing without a deliberate experiment.
Seeing two children who happened to play videogames and do poorly on a test is hardly enough of a sample to draw any conclusions.
All in all I find myself rather skeptical about the veracity of his entire comment. It all seems rather manufactured to sell a point.
You still haven’t explained what rock you’ve been living under to not have a basic knowledge of modern technology and their practices.
Do you have an assistant that helps you post here on these complicated internet things ?
This writer just went off the deep end.
First, he is a professional writer but somehow he doesn’t even know how to handle himself professionally. He can’t even rebuttal to people angry with him without calling them insane (by saying there was some “voices of sanity” he is calling the rest insane). The people who left comments did so on their time, their free will, and essentially their money. The writer on the other hand is using this website to attack people who disagreed with him. This writer should lose his job for unprofessional conduct, he can’t even handle people being angry with him.
Second, his first article discredits itself. In it he references himself to knowing “about most topics” relating to this website. Its odd how he talks about the internet connection being a problem. Most tech savvy people would already have a wireless modem (for years) because it has become so common-place in any household. It seems that he is behind the common person tech knowledge. His article is geared for common people yet he is behind in tech knowledge, his article should be for the technology challenged people. He shouldn’t be writing tech related articles when he is obviously behind.
Overall, he has written two articles with two evident errors. In the first he asserts himself as someone he isn’t making the article horrifically misleading. In the second article, he can’t keep any form of professionalism, he calls his accusers insane. This writer should try to not write opinion pieces because he can’t handle the back lash; he should try not to write tech articles because he doesn’t know enough to write one; he should try no to write opinion articles on tech because it might just start another war.
I’m sorry but you went about it the wrong way. I am an avid reader of Kotaku and
and I read your first article as well as this one. I believe you were trying to get a reaction and a negative one from your first article. You were trying to say the reason that you did not get a Wii was because of the hidden costs. Which is wrong the reason you did not get the Wii was because of the way your family life is. Fine I do not have a problem if you want to raise your kids that way, but do not make an article to state that you didn’t get a Wii becasue of the hidden costs when it was clear that it is because of your family values. Also with your comment on hidden
costs. When you buy any electronic item there are alway’s hidden costs.
A T.V. You can not run without electricity. A portable radio you need batteries for
Hell a cell phone you need a battery a charger and extra case as well and yes
those are hidden costs if you want an extended battery or want to protect your
phone with a case. That is the main argument. It had nothing to really do with how you want to raise your children (except the few who are called trolls and look for a fight) Also the way you stated in your article you did not want to deal with how you would have to manage your kids time with the Wii, but you do it with the computer.
Also the one main argument that I had with your article is you did not have to spend $30 on batteries. you could have bought a cheapy $2 pack and that would have lasted for a while. So if you are going to put gaming down (which you were trying to do with saying the hidden costs of gaming) expect soem people to talk about the way you wrote your article. You should have made the title of your article
the reason I returned a Wii was to keep family life the way it was. Not the hidden costs of gaming.
Thank You
Daniel
Hey all: Thanks for the comments (seriously). I’m catching up and will try to respond in full tonight.
Also is it really that hard for other parents to say get off the game and go play outside. I have two straight A students and I have all of the gaming systems (I am a collector) And yet my daughter loves to read books and play outside and my Son who is a teenager hangs out with his friends outside and lives a normal life with out the games being a central part of it. It seems to me that in your article you were trying to make the hidden costs of gaming a central statement of the article. When that should not have been in the article at all. The reason that you returned the Wii (at least the way your article read in the second half) had to do with your family lifestyle. So to write another article seems that you really were trying to get some attention with the way you were trying to blame hidden costs in your first article.
It also seems that people saw it as a disrespect to them and their favourite hobby, and I’d argue you really did the opposite.
The article does acknowledge that videogames are a very enticing gift, one that would overshadow all other gifts. If anything, it is too good of a gift.
Because of that, it puts extra pressure and responsibility on the parent, as they can’t expect children to show the sort of self-control and restraint that adults have.
Though I do think it’s possible that you and your wife may have missed on important consideration.
The Wii console in comparison to others has many games that the whole family can play together.
There are very few mediums that allow for this. Your kids may be too young for Scrabble or Monopoly, and you may be too old to watch Dora the Explorer with them, but Wii games like Wii Sports can bridge interests and mean time spent with the children in a constructive, positive and memorable manner.
Some people by a Wii to be a babysitter for their children, but many parents are buying it to be a part of their children’s lives. Choosing the right software can mean the difference between kids fighting each other to play and a family playing together. Choosing the right software can be the difference between “coming home from school to play videogames all night” to “playing as a family on the weekends”.
It’s harder for parents to be involved with their children as they grow older, with tastes in movies and music diverging as the years go by. I’ve seen the Wii bridge this gap, even with parents who’s children have left town to go to college and have returned for the Christmas break.
With this in consideration, $300 (assuming you get all sorts of extras for it) isn’t a whole lot of money. Having worked in youth community groups I realize that sometimes a little investment can go a long way.
Consider getting the Wii only for family fun, and getting LEGO and Groovy Girls for their own playtime. If you buy the right games, your kids won’t want to play by themselves but with you and your wife.
Chris, you should have just done your research in advance before doing the previous Wii-related article. That would have garnered you a bit of points from the gaming crowd. They like knowing that the uninitiated can at least go through the effort of becoming knowledgeable with their beloved video games before typing up your condemnation of the Wii console, ostensibly.
This new article doesn’t really help matters at all. I think it’s unprofessional to single out specific commentors, especially if you’re going to reply to them in a sarcastic tone.
I know I shouldn’t hope for a personal reply, but I would really love it if it happened. I am a commenter on your aforementioned and seemingly devilish Kotaku. You have picked some of the most narrow-minded and unfair replies, naturally, to support your stance, but I think most people were offended by the genuinely offensive tone of certain parts of your original article. Let me give you some quotes:
“My wife and I, like many parents, have been trying to strike a balance between letting them explore computers, and keeping them from becoming techno-obsessed shut-ins who spend all day online and have no friends.”
This is the kind of annoyingly narrow-minded comment that annoys many gamers. The idea that once you enjoy gaming you are a friendless waste is unfair and untrue and bound to upset a community of gamers. Unfortunately it seems that this kind of sweeping generalisation is acceptable nowadays.
“before a geek lynch mob hunts me down”
And in this article : “But beyond that, it’s clear most of these commenters can’t seem to conceive of a world where everyone doesn’t play video games all day long.”
Your article was in the most part fair - I agree with your decision to maintain your childrens childhood innocence and enjoyment of small things - but then you let yourself down with oddly bigotted comments like these. Unfortuneately society works so that if an idea is widely held it is acceptable whether it is true or not. We all fall foul of this, but as a journalist you should be avoiding spreading such ideas. It is people like you that cause this to be ‘the norm’. You admitted to having little experience of gaming in your first article, but then continued to make judgements as if you did.
In short I am sorry for the personally offensive and childish replies you received, but you received many comments in kind to those you (maybe unwittingly) made about the gaming community.
Good Day,
I followed this story over from Kotaku and while I also agree that a lot of those comments that were posted were very inappropriate, you have to understand a few things about the gaming community. Every time that there is a violent crime that happens in the country now a days there are a ton of media people out there that start to try and correlate that violent act to the video games he played and say that they were responsible, because of this members of the gaming become very sensitive to anti-gaming comments in the media. While I agree that your comments in general were not anti gaming, someone who has been hit with a stick several times will tend to flinch when someone grabs a broom to sweep the floor.
When I was younger the same thing happened to the Role Playing community as certain elements of the media tried to make connections to D&D and Satan Cults. It was so bad that my parents burned my gaming books and forbid me from playing.
I guess that the main thing that I’m trying to say is that you tapped into a vein of anger in the gaming community that wasn’t really directed at you, more at the people who are trying to work against the community as a whole, it doesn’t make what they said right, but it does make it more understandable.
The biggest reason you see such strong reactions is to your comments is simple. As a gamer, we are used to being bashed in the media. Even if it is a legitimate complaint, it gets old really fast when only negative things are said about a hobby that you enjoy.
As a parent and a gamer I understand that sometimes that this hobby is not one that most parents approve. Like all activities, one has to do things in moderation. To be scared of potentially turning your children into mindless zombies because they play some Wii once in a while is just plain overreacting.
Think about how you would feel if the thing you liked to do in your spare time was seen by the major media as the cause of children being dumbed down, kids going on murde sprees, and a large waste of time.
I have the same issue as most with both articles. The condecending tone directed at the gaming community (which I am a member of, but fully aknowledge that some gamers can be, um, passionate.)
The “techo obsessed shut ins who spend all day online and have no friends” comment was pretty broad and short sighted. I’m 30 years old with a full time job and a wife, who’s quite the looker by any standard. I spend a lot of time playing video games, but I also play in a band, work out, maintain a blog, and spend a lot of time with numerous friends and family among other personal endeavors. I don’t think my situation is at all unique, there are far more people today in the my situation than in the one you described, although it does still somewhat exist.
I also take issue with the generalizing statements in the second article about the gaming community. That one does’t have one specific statement to me, but the tone of it is very condecending. I agree with the notion that you painted the kotaku article’s comment section to be far more extreme than it is. I’m sure there are a lot of comments out there like that, but being a frequent reader and commenter of that site, I can safely say there were more than enough comments like the one I’m writing now.
I get that you were probably highly annoyed and offended by some of the really foul attitudes on that site, but I’d have thought a professional journalist (which I am on the road to becoming) would have taken the high road here.
It wasn’t just your lack of research that got you in trouble. It seemed as if you went out of his way to inflate the cost of a Wii. You complained about batteries! I can’t even remember the last time my family had a Christmas without a product that needed those.
You also had a holier than thou tone throughout the article. You made it seem as if he was a better parent for not giving them a Wii. You specifically stated part of his reasoning against it was “keeping (your kids) from becoming techno-obsessed shut-ins who spend all day online and have no friends.”
Thats a very negative stereotype in the gaming world and you essentially said most of us are that way. If we weren’t why would you worry about that happening?
Your response is even worse. You responds to sarcastic and derisive comments in the exact same way. Tossing in some random fool who claims games kill peoples attention spans? Then you have the audacity to imply there were only a few sane responses oiut of over 800 on Kotaku meaning the rest of us are insane. Plsu we can’t imagine the day without games b/c we thought your article was poorly written? Yea, you didn’t come off as having a biased opinion or anything.
You rightly deserved his flaming and should get even more for your weak kneed response.
To close, you know you wrote a crappy article when you have the hardcore people defending the Wii from bashing.
Im sorry, but you should have done basic research about what you would need before you ran out to purchase.
Ya know, research… that thing that “reporters” like you are supposed to be good at.
I’m glad you didn’t buy a BluRay player with it’s hidden cost of discs. Or an iPod with it’s hidden cost of Mp3s. What are you going to do when they want a car? Return it because of the hidden costs of gas?
Please before you write an article investigate a little more. There is nothing wrong with how the Wii is sold. It operates on the same principle as the computer you praised. However, there is something wrong with an ignorant customer complaining because they didn’t do any research into the product they are buying.
And a panic attack? As someone who suffers from panic attacks, I can say you seriously need some help. There are many medicines you can take for it. For your children’s sake please get help before you have an attack about them going to school, going our for a sports team, DATE, the prom, and leave for college.
The response in the gaming community is clearly disproportionate and needlessly vitriolic. But perhaps it’s worth looking at this at a higher level: why is there so much built up rage for the traditional mainstream media amongst the niche gaming community?
On some levels I think the gaming community is annoyed from a regular sequence of stories claiming a direct causality between games and horror: After the serious car crash, a copy of “Need for Speed” was found in the driver’s car!, etc. This kind of overly simplistic post hoc ergo propter hoc logic really drives gamers nuts (as it should any fan of rational thought).
However, I think the issue runs even deeper than that. In most major newspapers games are relegated to the technology section, instead of the arts section. We see articles of the form “Millions stand in line for new Halo game, we don’t know why.” And even in the article above, Chris O’Brien writes: “I’m not anti-video games. We let our kids play them (though apparently we’re torturing them by limiting that to 30 minutes a week!)” immediately followed by “I’m especially excited about the recent deal with Netflix to stream movies on the Wii, since I’m a big fan of Netflix.” Ok, so all of the very legitimate and reasonable parenting decisions aside, in that quote games are framed as a type of media best consumed in fun sized packets of time, while movies (covered in the paper’s arts section) deserve the full two hours. Limiting a movie to 30 minute chunks would really destroy the narrative, but that’s ok, because it is assumed for the game that there there is no narrative, it’s just a mindless toy.
While I really didn’t like the initial article, it has very little to do with the author’s parenting decisions (after all at ages 7 and 4 Lego is probably a better angle into a kid’s creativity and imagination). But the story does give a lot of insight into the author’s own view and understanding of the medium. This isn’t surprising as the story opens with memories of Pacman (circa 1980). However, after 30 years of evolution, many epic and popular games are less akin to movies as they are to books, with 40-60 hours of dramatic narrative, long and complex story lines, deeply engaging characters, and immersive fictional environments. And for the best games, like the best books, you completely forget you are playing or reading them, and you are consumed by the story.
Chris, you obviously don’t deserve the online riot the article created, but I do hope you pick up an Xbox for yourself, along with an award winning game in your favorite fictional genre. You can play it long after the kids have gone to bed, and before long you might find that just using the Netflix streaming on the console is like doing a crossword puzzle at the opera.
wait, now, you say that video games cause children to have a lower attention span? if you bothered to do some research you would see that video games actually have positive effects on attention spans, and even help children with ADD.
As to the lower test scores: This only happens when parents DO NOT know that video games aren’t baby sitters. This is mainly just a lack of parenting and the children have lower test scores to start with.
which leads into your complaining about moderation. why are you complaining about it when YOU are the person in control of how long your children play?
The wii now only costs $200. You could easily stop there, and have a game you can take turns with and actually get some physical activity. If you wanted to play multi-player, you could spend another 40-120 dollars for three more controllers. You could even go with a 3rd party solution and buy three more controllers for about 90 dollars. You have now spent about 300 dollars and have a system your whole family can enjoy together, for a very very long time. That sounds better than sitting on the couch watching tv together right? I know that for a family of four, it costs about $40 to go to the movies. Thats not including popcorn or anything. A wii game will get you more than 90 minutes of entertainment with your family, and most wii games that you could enjoy with your family are now about $30. In the long run, don’t you think that the wii would end up being cheaper?
now, video games are not for every family. But, your reasons are not credible at all.
You have done very little research and you complain about things you have complete control over.
Now comes to the big question:
Why did you decide to share something so opinionated and uneducated with the world? It truly makes no sense to me, as your job is to do research and write columns, not pull some BS out of your ***. You are only contributing to the lies and false that video games have received over the years.
You sir have a rebuttal awaiting for you: http://www.freezecracker.com/forum/index.php?topic=4878.msg50974#msg50974
And to the poster known as Lisa, you need to read it as well.
this article could be about an ipod, tv, dvd, computer or even a refrigerator (you have to pay to put stuff in there as well, consumption by your children needs to be monitored and can cause obesity, etc). Content costs money to develop. No new knowledge was created by the author and the article was just a restating of the obvious.
We got a wii for our teens this Christmas..the whole family really enjoyed some quality time playing games together…here is a good site with reviews for different video game consoles and awesomw gifts for teens. http://GiftsForTeens.info
its pretty clear “wii dad” just had a panic attack because he didnt know what he was doing and returned the wii out of that emotion. trying to retroactively pretend logic led to his decision is why he is being sweated. he uses the word “panic’ to describe his repsonses several times. panic is the inability to apply logic to a situation due to duress.
he panicked because the wii scared him. no huge shame in that. and people called him out on that, though many did too harshly. so he wants to pretend he wrote a different article for different reasons. fine, but it might not work on everyone.
and im confused how batteries are a hidden cost. this guy has a tv remote, right?
im also confused how a game where you play rock band instruments wouldnt pretty clearly need you to get said instruments.
lastly, he either did not realize that he would need to set usage rules with his kids (strange, since he already understands that other multimedia require them), or he did realize that, but used that as an after-the-fact excuse to justify sending the system back. probably because saying the wii scared him was too embarassing to admit.
oh and to some of the “think of the children” posters in these replies; videogames are just as evil and just as corrupting of youth as Socrates, dancing, “talkies”, rock’n'roll (especially the beatles and elvis!), comic books, dungeons and dragons, television, and the internet. notice the irony? probably not…
but this time its different!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you, sir, have been trolled
LOL
The internet could be used for evil purposes, let’s not teach people to use it responsibly but ban it.
There are books like “Mein kampf” out there, let’s not teach our children to read.
Same vein… Instead of using this to teach his kids about responsibility and moderation, because it COULD be addictive when not doing that… let’s ban it.
Oh… and do not feed the trolls!
Mr. O’brian needs to know the truth people. This is not about reducing attention spans, improving “hand-eye co-oridination” (*ack, the WORST example to ever defend video games) or gamer rage at the Mainstream Media.
This is about the Wii, the redonkulously selling, most family friendly video game system on the market. So many parents are exactly in this same boat. A 4- 7 year old has no idea why they want to play video games other than everybody else they know is doing it, and they want it. It’s not about “deep narrative” or anything of the sort. Parents don’t know these things generally, and plenty just plunk down the cash and get on with it. Thanks, Mr. O’brian, for taking a moment and maybe giving another parent pause. This is far more about marketing and product saturation than about parenting. The Wii stands alone as the family console. It targets families and little children.
The Wii is a veritible junk peripheral wasteland. You (Kotaku Readers) know it. You bitch about it every chance you get, the lack of meaningful innovative titles available for the Wii, the endless stream of shovelware (crummy, Make-A-Buck throw-away games). Amazing that none of you congratulated Mr. O’brian on his restraint from the rope-a-dope that the Wii has rodeo’ed. Aside from the initial innovation of the motion control, and the its ability to worm its way into every household and nursing home, the Wii is an over-priced, under-performing, gimmicky Nintendo marketing ploy. But boy, don’t you dare say it ruined my life, because that would be just too pathetic.
“Good for you! These gamers websites shouldn’t be allowed on the internet. All they do is take up even more of the time kids should be learning or getting exercise. This is just more proof of how Video Gamers are controlling the minds of our kids.”
I can’t believe I actually read this. Now we shouldn’t allow freedom of speech on the internet?
And you think that kids are the ones who are always at these video game sites? Adults play too, and adults are generally the ones in the industry looking at game news and posting it.
“Controlling the minds of our kids?” Please, the fear and paranoia is way too much
http://www.freezecracker.com/forum/index.php?topic=4878.0
You have a pretty big ego, my friend.
OK, so you decided not to get a Wii. Good for you. I strongly recommend people don’t buy one, because they’re a huge POS not only for the reasons you mention, but their terrible design and hardware.
But why bother writing about it?
You claim you didn’t think it would be a big issue, so why did you bother to write 1500 words on the issue?
I’m sure your kids didn’t get snow mobiles or dirt bikes, or more realistically given your perceived frugality, baseball sets or golf clubs, or bikes. Why didn’t you write about any of these?
The answer is you’re a journalist, and you’re lying.
You knew precisely you’d get a reaction. You may not have expected so large a reaction, but you definitely expected one otherwise you wouldn’t have written the story and your editor wouldn’t have published it.
The fact that so many commentators have defended you shows an appalling lack of knowledge of media manipulation perpetrated by you and other authors on the American public.
By all means write whatever you want about whatever you want, but don’t act all mock surprise when people choose to pick up on those topics you choose to deliberately write about with a sense you’d get a reaction.
“The Wii is a veritible junk peripheral wasteland”
Yes of course, the Wii has NO good games, well I must living in an alternate reality because I know plenty of good Wii games for the hardcore gamer.
Perhaps you are too picky, and care more about whether a game has an M rating
then if it is actually fun.
but their terrible design and hardware.
Funny because that’s exactly what I would say about the 360, I’m pretty sure
a hardware failure rate of over 20% qualifies means product has a “poor design”
The gaming community as a whole, as many have pointed out, is extremely defensive, and for good reason. Mainstream media regards them as “kids”, despite the average age of gamers has risen to 22. The vast majority of them hold jobs, and many of them are beginning to start their own families. Yet their hobby is still regarded by people like you, who admittedly haven’t ever tried them medium (or in your case, haven’t for 20 years), deride it as childish, and irrationally violent, somehow moreso then the equally violent if not more violent content that is in our movies, and even our books.
The average demographic of Kotaku, according to Alexa.com, is comprised of people in their early 20’s, around 24 years of age. You referred to them as “kids”. You imply that you have to “spend all day” playing video games in order to know about basic facts that reading “consumer report” would have educated you on. Not only do video games decrease attention spans, they are a scientifically effective treatment for ADHD.
http://www.smartbraintech.com/
Nobody hates you because you were ignorant about the working of the wii. They hate you because you perpetuate the same stereotypes they have dealt with for most of their adult life. Their have been far more inflammatory articles about video games then yours, but yours has received so much hate because its main focus is about your woes with the wiis pricing, but these common stereotypes are literally laced throughout your article, as if it were a commonly regarded fact.
While you may think your articles are valid, your essentially engaging in yellow journalism, at least within the perspective of the gaming community.
And seriously, if your going to spend your time watching movies in front of the television using the wii, you might as well buy a game like Okami and learn something. http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/wii/okami?q=okami.
If Netflix is a new selling point for the Wii you may want to spend the rest of the year researching alternatives. The Wii is, by far, the worst option out there for Netflix streaming. It is simple unequipped and under-powered for an adequate viewing experience… unless you are as uninformed about current A/V tech standards as you are about videogames. BTW, congrats on acting like a parent.
I’ve disagreed in various aspects on the original article. But people have already shout theirs minds and you must be tired of all the flaming.
The only part that really bugged me is the word “hidden cost”.
Man, you wrote that your children is happy playing free online games, if you’re BUYING something, don’t expect it to be free.
The costs are not hidden, otherwise I would say that buying a car has the hidden cost of having to put fuel on it!
Also, you don’t really need to buy every accessory ever released on earth, just buy one additional wiimote/nunchuck pair and some games and you’ll have fun for at least one year.
Forget about, bats, rackets, gloves, trash trash trash…
For Balance Board, Motion Plus, etc, buy it the next year or as their birthday gift.
Regards!
Happy “NotWiing”!
“though apparently we’re torturing them by limiting that to 30 minutes a week!”
Although I can totally see where you’re coming from in returning the Wii, limiting their game playing to 30 minutes per week really does seem quite slow. Does this translate to them only being allowed to watch one television show per week and one movie per month? If not, it does suggest bias against playing games.
As a parent who has a Wii, I can understand your points. However, I cannot agree to your decision of buying the console, letting the kids play with it ON XMAS, then taking it back to the store. That is just plain cruel! Imagine yourself back in your childhood days, you get the best present ever, you get to play and enjoy it, then your parents decide to return it because of a reason that they fully cannot understand??? You are horrible! I hope that you didn’t do that with your wife when you proposed… “Oh honey, I love you and I want to live the rest of our lives together, but you know that diamond engagement ring that I got you? I’m gonna have to take it back, for budgetary reasons.” (Yes, I know it’s not the same context, but the emotions involved are the same - the feelings of being betrayed, hurt, anguish, resentment, hatred). If this happened to me when I was a kid and my parents returned that NES + Rob + Zapper set that they had gotten me for Christmas, I would probably still resent them till this day!
The Wii is, by far, the worst option out there for Netflix streaming
Funny, last time I checked it’s not even available for the Wii yet, do you have
a magic crystal ball that tells you this? How about not passing judgement until we
see it in action
I still disagree with your article.You seem to be saying that playing games tends to hurt a child in the long run.Well,I must say that I personally had games when I was a child.Even so, I voluntarily went outside and spent much of my summer days playing sports all day and then when I would get home , dive into playing some games.Some children are able to regulate themselves, granted at the time I really started getting into gaming I was around 10.
To those here that say they warp you or dumb you down, you should be ashamed.I had loads of games and never recieved a grade lower than a B on any assignment.
I am now 25, a member of Mensa international, with an iq of 155, and as a child tested in the 98th percentile.
I currently run a business, attend college, and I play games, sometimes in excess of 6 hours a day.In that time, I also have time to model, work on music production, and have friends. Moderation to some may mean something entirely different to another.
I am not trying to come off as snob or have anyone think I am trying to be superior.I am simply showing that people in life may see things in different ways.I could continue on here,but I feel as though I would be wasting my time.
I read your original article (via Kotaku), and I thought it was interesting. It was a nice read; the experiences of someone new to the medium, discovering all the nuances associated with it. As for the parenting section, I thought it was pretty reasonable too: if you are not sure about a decision that might affect your kids, it’s better going safe. Our children is the most precious thing we have.
That being said I would like to address a couple of things. First, I feel bad for all the bad reactions you received from the gaming community. I am an avid gamer myself, and I see this all too often. I think every mainstream outlet out there should know, by now, that if you are going to talk about anything related to gaming, well, you’re likely to receive the wrath of gamers.
But why is that? Well, the problem is that the gaming community is a marginalized community. Like all marginalized communities (like say, racial minorities), they tend overreact against anything they perceive as an attack. Because, let’s face it, pretty much every single article/TV mention of gaming in mainstream media has negative connotations. “Study finds video game players have attention span problems”, “Serial murderer arrested was an avid gamer”… There are plenty of great, good stories about gaming as well, many of them featured on the gaming blogs (like Kotaku), but they never leak to mainstream media, only the bad ones.
What’s the effect of all this? Well it tends to build a bad reputation of gaming among the public at large. This tends to build up resentment among gamers… and well, you get things like the response to your article. Which brings me to my second point…
What I like about your article is that it had no such prejudices in it. It seemed to me like an honest piece about a problem with this industry: the hidden costs. Mind you, this is not a problem exclusive to this industry. It’s a problem existent across all of the technology spectrum (which, frankly, causes me to be a bit surprised about your surprise). I thought it was an informative article for those not savvy about gaming costs. However, this follow up is a totally different tale…
I understand you’re upset about the response to your article, and I feel for you on that. But, as opposed to your previous piece, this one does have the prejudicial tone in it. Which throws your credibility for the previous one out the window. Listen, I get you didn’t like the hidden costs, and that as a parent you’re concerned about your kids. It’s your house, and it’s your rules. You are entitled to make your own decisions, as it concerns to your household, and for everyone else to respect those and back off… And so, you must do the same for everyone else.
In this article you descend to the level of the rest of mainstream media, subtlety hinting that video games are harmful, not just for kids, but for everyone in general. Now, I’m not going to scorn you, or anything, I just wanted to point this out. There are many people out there making decisions about their lifestyles, and entertainment. Just as you did when you decided not to get the console, others are inclining to get it. And both decisions should be respected.
Good for you on taking the reins on your parenting. It must have hard not getting the reassurance you were waiting for when you wrote your article. But did you have to respond by going the old treaded way of bashing or choice of hobby and entertainment? Back off sir. Just as you, we are able to make our own decisions and parenting. And we want it to be respected!
My problem with this article wasn’t that the writer opted not to purchase a Wii. My problem is that this guy is a paid writer for the San Jose Mercury News (to those that don’t know, San Jose is right in the heart of the Silicon Valley) and he writes a regular column entitled Silicon Beat: The people and companies driving the innovation of Silicon Valley, yet he doesn’t appear to have any knowledge at all about the world of technology that surrounds him.
I guess I’m the idiot for assuming this guy should have a little knowledge about the subject at hand, huh?
I don’t claim to be an expert in the field of technology myself, but I feel like one after reading this guy’s “work”. If he wrote a regular column entitled Modern Parenting or something, I wouldn’t have had a real problem with the article, but this is not the case.
Hi there, i am thinking of getting hold of a new bike for my husband. He however is very worried around what type of risks could take place from biking accidents. See his love is sports so if he was hurt, he would most likely kill himself, no jokes. Do you think biking injuries usually occur, or is it usually simply dying!