[throwawaytime]

I played a lot of World of Warcraft when it came out, had the classic relationship challenges (wife didn't play but the kids did) and finally stopped playing seriously when I realized I had wasted a weekend working on materials for imaginary armor rather than building an actual robot or learning something new.

One whole weekend! :) You don't want to know how many weekends of mine that netflix or videogames have claimed. I think I turned out alright though. For me, it's mainly about whether I feel motivated. If I do, it's easy to avoid that other stuff. If not, then there's an endless stretch of time with nothing to do and no money to pursue hobbies. That stuff is a natural filler for the void of endless boredom.

About the kids: I wanted to ask you, how did the kids handle it when you left? I guess you didn't get too into it, so maybe they didn't feel very strongly one way or the other about whether you played. But I think I'm going to try to cultivate a relationship with my kids over videogames, whether it's playing Minecraft with them or whatever MMO they want to play. It seems like hiking through the woods together, but virtual woods. But I'd imagine it's going to go like: They might get too into it at the expense of schoolwork, so I'll have to put my foot down and say no more, which will make them quite upset. And sure, that's the job of a parent. I'm their parent, not just their friend. But I can't help remember how misplaced my father's rules were, so I don't want to become like that. Yet I remember how much of a pushover my friend's dad was, which my friend took full advantage of; again, don't want to be like that. So I wonder how to strike a proper balance. It'd be great to hear from you and anyone else with children what your rules are regarding videogames.

Is there an instruction manual that comes with each child? No? Hmmm....

[VLM]

"It seems like hiking through the woods together, but virtual woods."

I've played minecraft with my kids a lot, and it can be fun, but virtual play time is not all adult nostalgic fuzzy bunnies, I was highly annoyed to discover that minecraft playtime with the kids is just like meatspace play time with the kids which means it includes all the annoyances, so there's tons of typical "what are you doing put that down right now", "be nice to animals or we stop playing", "if you walk along the edge you're going to fall and get hurt", "lava will burn you I told you to leave that alone", "I don't care how much of a temper tantrum you have you can't take that diamond I just mined and do nothing with it because its too valuable", "stop teasing your sister in game or we all quit", "no we aren't there yet", "dads redstone thing is complicated stop dumping water buckets on it", etc.

I've spent my whole life from kid up to adult being lectured incessantly from liberal arts grads that normal humans never treat online humans like they would meatspace because ... some fuzzy psych major BS whatever, which is just apologist rhetoric for its OK to flame people online because its "natural", and/or stereotypical "nerds suck we spend our time watching football so we're cool" BS. However, despite decades of pontificating, I assure you my kids act online just like they act offline, both the mostly good and occasionally not so good parts.

Its tiring. Just like taking kids to a (real) park involves burning mental energy keeping them alive (I'm talking real parks with real wilderness, not swing set neighborhood parks), taking kids to your base in minecraft involves me not focusing on the game and spending maybe 25% of mental energy, maybe more, trying to keep them out of trouble. And just like in the real world, one or two adults can easily keep one kid out of trouble but you get two or more kids and only one adult and next thing you know one is shooting arrows at her brother or the other is dumping lava buckets on his sister because she won't give him back his sword and she's threatening to tattle to mom and oh its all Fed up sometimes. Well, kids will be kids.

It was/is fun, just go in with the awareness that if they spend X% of real world time being naughty, in virtual world its going to be the same X% of time being naughty. Its not gonna be all idyllic.

As far as rules and stuff its not rocket science you make a to do list and work it top to bottom and unless you're an idiot, minecraft is the last thing on the list not the first, the first is usually homework.

[jsprogrammer]

I think you are possibly being too harsh in game. A video game should be fun; a place where all rule implications can be explored. Turning it into an authoritarian environment with a running lecture seems like a good way to discourage play and exploration.

That kind of lecturing may make sense in the real world, but one of the differences/advantages of virtual worlds is that the normal constraints don't apply -- you can do whatever the machine/software allows, without risk (certainly not fatal risk, as in the real world).

Games present an opportunity to examine systems in depth without the traditional fears/consequences of the real world.

[VLM]

Yeah but there's the socialization aspect. In that my kids are pretty good at getting into meaningless sibling arguments with each other in real life, and also in minecraft. True that there is superficially no downside to beating each other up in minecraft, but may as well try to civilize them a bit as if we're in real life. Or learning when dad says if you do that the wrong way its going to hurt, is an easier lesson to learn the hard way in minecraft than on a bicycle or whatever, so why not teach it in minecraft where they won't get physically hurt by falling into minecraft lava or off a minecraft building.

[dragonwriter]

> I've spent my whole life from kid up to adult being lectured incessantly from liberal arts grads that normal humans never treat online humans like they would meatspace because ... some fuzzy psych major BS whatever

The usual explanations center around anonymity and lack of perceived accountability, neither of which would apply to children who are being directly supervised by a parent, for obvious reasons.

[ChuckMcM]

There is a probably a blog entry or two on gaming with my kids. As for being 'too into it' my account still has 31 level 85 characters, and 19 non full level characters. At the time you could only have 50 separate 'toons' on an account and I didn't want to get another account.

That said, playing with the kids was great fun as long as it didn't interfere with other things. I ended up changing my network configuration between 9PM and 6AM to avoid people getting up in the middle of the night and getting in a few hours of raiding time. What seemed to work for me was helping them keep it in perspective with respect to their other tasks. They still get together online for age of empires runs.