Ask HN: Encouraging a child's gaming PC build despite fear of gaming addiction?

[marttt]

12yo son is doing dedicated research on gaming PC parts and binge-watches videos on how to build (he's not a native English speaker and has no real electronics skills, so this is quite impressive tbh). Me the dad, however, fears that I'm witnessing a FPS addict being born.

What's a good Middle Way here? Kid actually building the machine all by himself -- 100% yes, even if it's quite expensive; kid then Counter Striking, Call of Dutying etc for hours on dat 27" screen -- ugh!

What complicates things is that I myself am more of a "computational minimalist" using 15 year old machines in a cli-only environment etc. I've tried to show him That Path also ("dude, here's some Turbo Pascal for ya!"), but, well, obviously he's preferring those addictively engineered and GPU-hungry multiplayer games with his friends any day.

He's a good kid all in all, actively engaged in competitive rowing, with good grades etc. Plays chess also (but all the other folks are FPSing or Minecrafting, so there's that).

Being a gamer (and using ridiculously overpowered hardware) may well be just a stage of a teen's life, possibly even necessary to go through in order to understand that you don't really "need" all of this in you adult life. I do feel, however, that the fear of growing a computer gaming vegetable out of one's Good Kid is a little more than just overprotective dad syndrome these days. (I'm afraid the gaming industry mostly wins. And, with real-world war going on in Ukraine, I fooking can't stand watching him actually using those ultra-realistic knives or pump action guns for, well, killing "terrorists" as a recreational activity...)

Those of you facing (or having faced) a similar situation, what have you done? Thanks!

[captainzidgel]

> He's a good kid all in all, actively engaged in competitive rowing, with good grades etc. Plays chess also

If he's actually passionate about rowing, it's unlikely he's going to drop it to play video games all day. If he does, then its only a matter of time until he finds his true passions. I was a real gaming vegetable for years until I discovered some outdoor activities I actually enjoyed. I mostly rock climb now, though I still enjoy playing games.

> And, with real-world war going on in Ukraine, I can't stand watching him actually using those ultra-realistic knives or pump action guns for, well, killing "terrorists" as a recreational activity.

I can't blame you on that one, but for what its worth, I played plenty of violent video games and I've always been a staunch pacifist. If he can't separate games from reality, there's a larger issue at hand.

[dabinat]

Wanting to play video games with his friends is a normal thing for a boy of his age to want to do. It may help him develop deeper bonds with them. The violence can be a cathartic release and doesn’t mean he’s going to bring that into the real world.

It’s quite a leap to assume he’ll become an addict. There are many possible scenarios, including that he’ll grow out of it in a few years. Perhaps see how it goes and step in if you feel his usage is unhealthy? It’s probably a good idea to put limits on screen time anyway, with or without video games.

[Imustaskforhelp]

I am a teen myself so I think that I might be of help but when in 8th grade my brothers had given me a computer, they had that specifically without much of a gpu (intel integrated gpu ftw)

I always knew how to code beforehand as compared to my peers but still I wanted to go into finance, so, at first, I used to use valorant for many hours.

funny thing is that I started to use linux only because valorant was being incredibly slow (to the point of 10fps) and then I realized valorant had kernel level access and I was getting into privacy (I started to not trust the governments and institutions so much in general regarding Snowden etc.)

That privacy eventually made me realize the valorant kernel level root access and how there was no way to verify it except reinstalling my OS. so I realized that if I had to reinstall my OS, I would install Linux (I was watching the linux experiment videos)

I installed nobara as my first OS which was still for gaming but I loved linux so much and it felt really customizable as compared to windows and that made me want to script and also code with archlinux/cachy and others :-D

So TLDR: I do believe that in your use case, perhaps have your computer be maxed out in everything except GPU, or something similar?

Also personally I believe that it all depends on situation but if you are so worried about the addiction then I recommend giving the child a good PC except GPU (I think my cousins might've been too for me in some sense when I was in 8th grade which I do understand their worries so there's that)

so would your child be okay with a good PC without GPU with otherwise good PC?

I don't know about parenting and there are other @captainzidgel and @dabinat who have advices stating that he is unlikely to change so much with the gaming addiction so there's that too.

Edit: I also think that your child might be interested in robotics/arduino/rasp-pi too and there is this activity too which you can do with 3d-printing etc. too