Now that video games are reserved strictly for the weekend, according to the Chinese government, we thought it timely to extol the virtues of gaming as a family, and even threw in some of our suggestions for family-friendly video games.

Video games are an indulgence that consumes time and attention – two things that responsible parents hardly have enough to spare. So it’s rare to find gamer moms and dads. But my husband and I had bonded over gaming in our early days of cohabitation, our relationship dating back to the PlayStation 3 (we’re on PlayStation 5 now). When our child was a wee baby, we maneuvered our gaming sessions around his naps and bedtime. But as he dropped his naps, we went so far as to hire a babysitter to bring him outside while we stayed home to game. All this is to say that my husband and I kept up our gaming habits, albeit pretty much hidden from our kid.

I can’t pinpoint the moment it started, but it was sometime this year that we began to game with him, rather than around him. It coincided with my reprisal of the Uncharted games, of which there are four, all of them starring Nathan Drake, who’s basically an updated male version of Lara Croft. The meticulously researched storylines that weave together bits of real-world history with mythology, impeccable voice acting, and stunning visuals transfixed my kid into hours of silence as he watched me drive Drake over rooftops and mountains to seek the treasure, which he invariably destroys or gives up. In terms of storytelling, the Uncharted series is beautifully concluded as Drake ends up starting his own family and raising a legitimate treasure hunter in his daughter, Cassie Drake.

Thus began weekly video gaming sessions with my 6-year-old son.

I loved involving him in the puzzle-solving and trying to guess what would happen next in the story. He’s even learned all about classic narrative tropes such as the exact moment when a bad guy would show up to take the treasure away from us. I consider it a small victory for “nerdom” that my child can read the game environment, picking up on lighting and music cues to correctly predict when there would be a boss fight around the corner. Plus, we both gleaned bits of fun trivia and history (which we followed up with more research to verify) ranging from Genghis Khan to the Tree of Life.

Now, I’m not going to preach that video gaming is educational, but I will whole-heartedly say that it offers teaching and learning moments, which are up to you to make the most of. More importantly, it can be another part of your life that you share, rather than compartmentalizing kid time and no-kid time. Your teenager doesn’t have to be holed up in their bedroom for hours on end playing Fortnite, unless you’re perfectly happy with that arrangement. You could log on, create an avatar and join them in the digital world, or just watch them play and take a sincere interest. After all, it’s good to know what they get up to, both offline and online. Just remember not to judge, simply observe and save the questions for later.

Below are some games that we have played, and would recommend playing, with kids. Plus, if you get them early enough, you can help shape their gaming habits to be healthier, and influence better gaming choices.

Nintendo Ring Fit Adventure: Remember the Wii Fit craze from years ago that had kids and adults alike carrying a white Wii controller in hand while hitting imaginary tennis balls? Well, Ring Fit Adventure is the latest version of that, but with more of a story to it, so you can get invested in building a character with skills to battle the big bad boss. It’s also a pretty good resistance-training workout as you squeeze the ring between your hands, thighs, or swing it overhead. My kid was perspiring plenty after a 30-minute session. If you buy the Chinese version, your kid may pick up bits of Chinese too, as mine did! 太棒了 tài bàng le marvelous!

Zelda Breath of The Wild: This visually stunning game will lull even your most active kid into temporary submission with its soothing soundtrack, while dads and moms can marvel at how far the technology has come to transform a 2D side-scrolling game into an immersive 3D tale of discovery and heroism. One of the most fun things was cooking ingredients to make new meals or potions, which my kid was endlessly fascinated by and spent almost a full hour doing.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order: This fairly new game may seem quite mature, but our 6-year-old has taken to it extremely well. As with the Star Wars films, there isn’t any inappropriate language or violence, and the great graphics make it feel just like you’re in the movies themselves. This is a must-try if your kid is a Star Wars fan, or even if they just like space and astronomy.

These are just a few of the many family-friendly video games out there. If you already have a console at home, why not pick it up and suggest embarking on a digital adventure with the whole family?

Also, share your favorite family-friendly games with us in the comments!

KEEP READING: Play Time’s Over: China Bans Weekday Video Games for Minors

Images: Naughty Dog, Giphy, Pexels

I’m usually pretty chill about my kids playing video games. We keep time limits strict, and they prefer playing group games like Mario Kart or educational games with their favorite characters like PBS Kids or Sesame Street.

But I noticed they have trouble on the phone or video calls with friends and cousins across the world. Their lives are so different and there isn’t a lot of common ground if they haven’t seen each other in a while. And let’s face it, we aren’t going to see them for a much longer while. On a recent call, they spent a lot of time trying not to interrupt each other until my oldest heard his younger friend didn’t know the game “Rock, Paper, Scissors” and so proceeded to teach him! That opened up a whole series of fun games to play together.

Based on their chats with their seven-year-old cousin, I heard that Roblox is a good way to “play together.” Even my parents have accounts to play with him. I get nervous about games that involve online chat rooms, but I was assured that you can turn those off.

After a little research and some time with a more experienced six-year-old who helped me set up an account, we presented it as a gift to his friend, my son. I found that thanks to a few strict parental controls and open, honest conversations about what is safe and why, it wasn’t as scary as I thought. For now.

Here are the parental controls I set:

Disable chat or set to “friends only”

Go to privacy tab > account settings > account restrictions for this feature. Online chat rooms are one of my biggest fears when it comes to gaming, so this setting alone put me 50% more at ease.

Set an account pin to make any changes to restrictions.

Make sure it isn’t the same pin as any other device, as kiddos are great at picking up on your codes.

Here are the ground rules we set with our children for their game time:

Follow these rules or it is uninstalled.

It helps that we just went through this process with YouTube. I told them if I didn’t like a channel or a certain video, I would tell them why. We could talk about it, but I have the ability to block it from their laptop. They can either accept this or revert to YouTube Kids, which has much more restrictive access to videos and is quite frankly a pain in the butt for parents.

So we spent most of the first night we had Roblox playing it together and setting the ground rules as we went, making it an open discussion on why something may or may not be safe. That’s when I learned that:

We don’t ever use your real name.

This is a pretty big one for us in general. Since they were born, we’ve used nicknames for our kids 98% of the time and deleted the many comments by our parents when that rule was forgotten. It’s fun to choose a nickname for yourself, too!

Rules for Roblox are good rules for life.

Would you accept an invitation to a party from a stranger? Would you let someone you don’t know inside your house? Would you give a stranger your phone number? No? Not until college? Then don’t do that in the game either. Since I had never played before, we always play a new game together the first time in case more ground rules need to be laid. I’m open about the reasoning behind it and we don’t usually require a big discussion.

If you want to spend Robux, we talk about it first.

I started him off with a few dollars in his Robux account, just because some games require a little something and so we could figure out how to set perimeters for spending. The rule then became: if you want to spend that money, just call me over and we’ll discuss it. Two things usually happen; he’ll talk himself out of it before I do because he’ll see how little he’ll have left if he spends it, or we decide it’s okay. A fun side effect of this is that when relatives across the world want to buy him something, but it will cost so much to ship anything and the last thing they need is more “stuff,” their Auntie Kelly can buy them Robux for Christmas!

If the game involves violence, especially killing people, we need to talk about it and play together first.

I find he’s much more open and responsible if we can discuss certain boundaries. If he knows that it isn’t always an outright “no” to his question, he’s more likely to ask and not try to sneak it. One time we’d set him off on a fun looking game and I focused on my own laptop next to him, when I heard, “So it’s okay if we didn’t know it was a killing game, right?” I assured him he wasn’t in trouble, we assessed the level of violence and its role in the game together, and that was that. Ultimately I decided against it, but he was involved in the process and didn’t fight me on it.

Only play when his Dad, babysitter, or I am with him.

He spends some time after school with his ayi before I’m home, and this is off-limits for online gaming time for now. I still sit next to him when he plays a new game, as will his Dad and babysitter who also plays. Our ayi is wonderful, but it’s not within her comfort zone to moderate a Roblox game, so that is not game time.

Eventually, we’ll learn to build a game of our own together. 

One of the reasons why lots of parents like Roblox is that you can build your own game. All the games on its system are player built, and that gets kids into coding and self-learning. Once we’d played through a few games and had gaming time with his cousin in Boston, my kid opened up his Scratch Jr. program much more often than his Roblox games. He wants to learn how to build his own game and that’s super cool in our books.

Other Perks

Ever since we started with these ground rules, making them part of the experience instead of imposing limits once bad habits were already established, conversations about other types of technology have been easier too. We started playing “Among Us” as a family, which is extremely fun, and they didn’t even blink an eye when I said they never press the “Public” button because we only want to play with people we know.

It’s a good introduction to safety online and will hopefully instill some honest gut checks for when they make decisions more on their own in the future. I’m much happier after opening this door to them as long as we make the map together. If I’d tried to just keep it closed, my kids or their friends would have eventually shoved it open without my guidance, and who knows what would have happened then? Now they get to stay in touch with family members and Beijing friends who moved away in a safe and fun way.

KEEP READING: Screen Time Isn’t All Bad: Lessons to be Mined From Mario, Minecraft and More

Photos: Roblox, Scratch r website, Pexels

In the latest move to combat addiction to video gaming in young people, China has banned under-18s from arcades and gaming cafes, apart from during public holidays. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism posted a statement on its website ordering owners of these establishments to apply the ban as of January 2020.

The law was in fact already on the books but has never been enforced. It’s not clear how it’s going to be enforced now, other than relying on the businesses themselves to check IDs and turn children away. Nor is it clear whether the ban applies to preschool children, with many of the games at Chinese arcades being rides aimed at younger kids, often taken there by grandparents after a visit to the supermarket.

This comes shortly after the imposition of an online curfew, banning kids from playing games on the internet between 10 pm and 8 am. Concern has been rising about compulsive game playing causing obesity and myopia, and its possible impact on the country’s ability to fill key roles in the military and aviation.

Photos: Cecil Accetti via Flickr

The Chinese authorities have imposed new restrictions on online gaming by young people. Children under 18 will not be allowed to play games between 10pm and 8am, and they will be restricted to 90 minutes per day, or 180 minutes on weekends and public holidays. Minors will also be limited as to how much money they can deposit in their online gaming accounts: RMB 200 per month for children aged 8-16, and RMB 400 for 16- to 18-year-olds.

The clampdown has been explicitly linked to the rise in myopia in Chinese children. Nearly half of fourth-graders and two-thirds of eighth graders have poor eyesight, and an increasing body of evidence links shortsightedness to lack of exposure to natural sunlight. The government is concerned that there will be an inadequate pool of labor for key jobs in aerospace and the military.

READ MORE: Game or Shame: Are Video Games Bad for You?

Ironically, the ruling came days before a Chinese team became world champions at video game League of Legends. Anyone to whom this sounds trivial has missed the rapid global rise of what are known as “esports”, team video games played competitively in front of rabidly enthusiastic audiences. And what audiences. It’s estimated that 100 million people around the world watched the match between Chinese team FPX and Europe-based G2 Esports. The official prize pot for the tournament is USD 2 million, but with crowdfunding contributions the final sum is expected to top last year’s USD 6.45 million.

Chinese victories in esports are something the nation takes a pride in, and online gaming is an important industry, worth around USD 38 billion last year. The government faces a tricky balancing act in nurturing a success story while not allowing video gaming to become obsessive and damaging. In much the same way, parents have to decide whether to allow their children to participate in an increasingly important area of life for their generation, while at the same time protecting them from potential harm. The debate will doubtless go on.