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Gamification Nation PodcastAuthor: Gamification Nation Podcast
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Podcast 44: Is gaming bad for my child?
Tuesday, 24 November, 2020
Welcome to today's Question of Gamification, the podcast by An Coppens. And today we have a guest, Andy Robertson, who also goes by the Twitter handle @GeekDadGamer, and he's a video game journalist and the author of the book Taming Gaming. I'm delighted to have Andy with us today because we're going to address the question of: is gaming safe for my child? And it's a funny story how we actually met and how it came about, with me tweeting and re-tweeting some information that I sent out around #GetSetGo, a campaign by UKIE, who is the organization supporting the games and digital entertainments industry. I was basically quoting that, "Is gaming safe for my child?" Is probably the most frequently asked question I receive at the end of seminars or webinars when I speak about gamification because my audience tends to be adults. Andy, welcome to the podcast. Andy Robertson : Hello. Thanks for having me. An Coppens : Yes, delighted to have you. So, let's delve straight in. Is gaming safe for children these days? Andy Robertson : Yeah, it's a hot topic, isn't it? And particularly during this period where the amount of games that children are playing is on the increase, and the amount of screen use. And so, often that comes with a bit of baggage, and so usually I'll start to try and unpick it. There are various places we could start. Gaming classed as a disorder An Coppens: Yes, exactly. And I suppose the one place that triggered the conversation for a lot of parents in my view is when the World Health Organization classed gaming as a disorder, and definitely, that's when I saw the increase of questions in this regard, "What should I be watching out for? Is my kid going to be addicted? Should I stop them?" So, do you see that the same way as the World Health Organization? What's your take on that? Andy Robertson : I think it is a complex topic. And I'm not against having a gaming disorder clarified so we can talk about it. But I think the challenge is that some of how it's reported was just like, "Now, finally, kids who game too much can get a diagnosis from a doctor and can be sent to clinics and can be fixed, and can be labelled", rather than actually looking at an individual child and thinking, "Okay, what's working for them and what isn't?" I think the downside was that the danger is that it granted permission to us as parents sometimes to just label an issue that a child might have had, rather than actually taking a step forwards into the games they play and asking them questions, and spending time with them playing to understand what it was and why they were playing. But that said, if you look at the detail of that gaming disorder criteria that the World Health Organization has specified, I don't really know anyone with a child who would fall into that. We'll often say at the school gate, "My son's addicted to Fortnite", but we don't really mean addiction as the World Health Organization means it, because they talk about if a child is playing games so much it's detrimental to other parts of their life, so they wouldn't be going to school, they wouldn't be eating properly, they probably would be washing properly or taking part in family activities. And not only that, but once they noticed that and had been told about that, they would then carry on doing it, they would be unable to stop in spite of those negative consequences, and then that would continue for around about 12 months, and then only then do you start falling into this clinical criteria. So, it's a really extreme end of the spectrum, which I think is actually quite helpful to help us reserve that language of addiction to clinically addicted children, which is in the minority, rather than a label we can apply widely. Gaming as a passing fad An Coppens: I think it's a great explanation, some children, and myself included as a child, I used to love playing a specific game, and I would play it until I fell asleep. And if I got away with it, I played it under the covers. So, I think that's actually just, I suppose, a passing phase for most of us is, that we have a favourite game where we must play it, and play all the levels, and then we move on to whatever the next best game is. Is that how most kids operate in your view? Andy Robertson : Yeah, they're quite faddy in the games they like to play, and they'll be playing the games that their friends are playing. But I think because if we thought about this as a child staying up under the covers playing a video game it's like, "Oh, that's not right, there's a problem". Whereas, if you thought about a child staying up doing that with a torch and a book under their bed, it's kind of this sentimental, "We know that books are good in general", we don't even think about what they're reading often, that's a secondary question. But when it comes to games we don't have that kind of underlying understanding of what the benefits of games are as a piece of media, and so we then quickly go to, "And what were they playing? Was it violent?" And those sorts of concerns. So, I think we treat it differently and that ... it is different, but also we need to engage in a similar way with games than we do, really, with books and films and other media. What are the benefits of games? An Coppens : Yes, exactly. And it brings us to a good point because I do think children learn a lot from games and there are benefits that I tend to see from people that have gamed to people that have never gamed in the way that they approach work, in the way that they see work. So, is there benefits that you see, that you've come across in the research that you've been doing for the book? Andy Robertson : Yeah. So, I think historically, particularly people who've wanted to justify video games as something positive have often pointed to the hard skills, the hand-eye coordination, the problem solving, and in terms of the science that I've had access to and have talked to people about that's harder to prove, and how transferable those hard skills are, seems to be in question. And there is definitely a benefit, you have the general developmental thing going on. But what seems more transferable and more understood are the softer skills, the social, the interaction, the finding some calm and the time out of your day, the wellbeing, mental health side of it. And at the moment, I think particularly in this period, that's often what children are doing: they're staying in touch with friends. If I sit next to my kids while they're playing, the things they're talking isn't about what's in the game, what's happening, they'll be talking about, "How are you doing? How is your family? Is anyone locked down? Are you doing the homework?" The sort of stuff that would just be part of playground chatter comes up as they're playing. And as well as that, it does give them a chance to unplug from quite a chaotic world and enter a space that they've got a bit more control over and they can find some peace over that. The issue is that if we don't realise that as parents, and we just think, "You're on that game again, you've got to stop", and we make them stop, and if they had been using that game as a coping mechanism for what's happening in the world, and then they become upset because we've taken it away, then we often will point to it and say, "Look, you've got cross when I've told you to stop. Look what that game's doing to you." When in actual fact, that game was a solution to another problem and we've missed a chance to understand our child and what the problem was that the game was solving because we've labelled the game as a problem. I think it's those sorts of benefits which run a bit deeper and I feel like that it's this, children then take with them into a future that will be digital, and into a future where they probably will always play games in some way, it won't be the same games, but I think game playing will be part of the future of most children's lives. An Coppens : Yes, exactly. It's interesting because, most of the time, when I speak to parents that ask me this question, if it's safe for my child, they would never even consider the idea that it could actually be a coping mechanism, or it could actually be a place where they have control and find calm because most parents see games as there are loads of things happening and you have to manage all these things at the same time, it's very intense. And I don't think they understand that concept of finding your peace. Are most games violent? And there's also, I think, a preconception that all games are violent. What would you say to parents concerned about that? That all games are violent? Andy Robertson : I think it's understandable because the games that are popular and you see on bus stops are often the games aimed at older teenagers and do have guns in them. That's quite a popular thing because it's kind of quite an easy thing to do as a game, the play loop's quite predictable. As a developer, there's some safety and they know that's popular. And so, it's completely understandable, but what's exciting and exciting about creating my database of games for parents, the Family Video Game Database, is that I have a chance to uncover the wide breadth of games. And we've got about 800 games in the database, and probably only a very small proportion of them are games where the main thing is shooting. There'll be some of them because that is part of the wider games spectrum, but the range of what you're doing, whether it's exploring a different world, or running a train system, or swimming under the sea, all those sorts of things, you can do all these sorts of things in games as well. And the issue is the discovery and helping parents to discover those games. And that's the challenge, I think. I think we need to do a better job of helping parents find games which match their children,...
