Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Playing Video Games with My Son Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be

thecut.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 176 posts

Re: Playing Video Games with My Son Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be

#81

Post by acobster »

hluska wrote: post #58

This article reminds me of playing Minecraft with my stepdaughter. When we got her a PS4, I have to admit that I had a bit of a fuddy duddy moment. Games weren't like they were when I was young, blah blah blah, NES, blah blah blah, the damned princess is in a different castle. And, when I firstlooked at Minecraft, I couldn't for the life of me, figure out what I was supposed to do. Then, my stepdaughter took over and…

As someone who lives with two teachers, I find this hilarious and awesome. :D

I still haven't played Minecraft, but this makes me want to learn how from a kid.

Re: Playing Video Games with My Son Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be

#82

Post by fyi1183 »

TimmyMustGo wrote: post #54
sdfin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resource management in video games is a skill that I'm sure transfers to real world resource management. Apart from the simulators you mention strategy games like age of empires and red alert also teach about it. Some weeks ago a co-worker told me something similar to what you share, how he learned about resources while playing SimCity. He also said his younger sister asked him "If people doesn't have money, why does…

It definitely is not a naive question. Printing money is precisely what the government should do. Income tax should be eliminated, it is a relic of the past. The government should fund itself not by selling bonds, which essentially is printing money that pays interest, but by simply printing money which is more direct.

To put a finer point on it, most people still believe that (monetarily sovereign) governments are constrained by their income and by the willingness of lenders to accommodate government debt. But that view is incorrect: the real constraint to government spending is only the economy's real capacity for production. Another way to think of it is that the real constraint to government spending is inflation (because excessive government spending beyond the economy's supply capacity would lead to increased demand-pull inflation).

Whatever the reason, the empirical observation in these days of low inflation seems to be that most governments aren't even close to the true limit of spending.

Re: Playing Video Games with My Son Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be

#83

Post by skrebbel »

I tried Minecraft for the first time in my life a few weeks ago. Together with my 5 year old son. He loved it, and I liked it too, but we really didn't get very far - the moment night fell, we got brutally slaughtered by zombies or whatever. Respawning only made things worse, because later nights seemed to bring stronger attackers.

I played some Quake back in the day, it's not like 3d games are totally new to me. Still, I felt completely incompetent. Does anyone know what someone should do to get past these first few days? I keep reading articles like these on the internet about how kids build fantastic structures, but how do you do that if half the game is basically about being hunted down by mindless killers?

I feel like there's some key aspect I don't understand. Any tips?

Re: Playing Video Games with My Son Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be

#84

Post by wingerlang »

skrebbel wrote: post #83

I tried Minecraft for the first time in my life a few weeks ago. Together with my 5 year old son. He loved it, and I liked it too, but we really didn't get very far - the moment night fell, we got brutally slaughtered by zombies or whatever. Respawning only made things worse, because later nights seemed to bring stronger attackers. I played some Quake back in the day, it's not like 3d games are totally new to me. Sti…

Searching for "how to survive first night minecraft" yields 2.2M results. Have you checked any of the videos out?

E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VWnQHS-ffs

Re: Playing Video Games with My Son Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be

#85

Post by omegant »

skrebbel wrote: post #83

I tried Minecraft for the first time in my life a few weeks ago. Together with my 5 year old son. He loved it, and I liked it too, but we really didn't get very far - the moment night fell, we got brutally slaughtered by zombies or whatever. Respawning only made things worse, because later nights seemed to bring stronger attackers. I played some Quake back in the day, it's not like 3d games are totally new to me. Sti…

You have survival and creative mode. In creative mode you have all the blocks you want to make great buildings, dont need to mine them and you can even fly around.

Start with your son in creative mode and practice building basic stuff. Then learn how to go survival mode watching some youtube tutorials. Small kids really enjoy creating their own houses, towns and megacaves in creative, when they feel comfortable they ask to go to survival on their own. Then they discover roblox (that has hundreds of mods) and there is no back! Hope it helps.

Re: Playing Video Games with My Son Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be

#86

Post by gowld »

ebcode wrote: post #70
gdubs wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have a source — lazy Saturday here — but I recall something about city planners using Sim City back in the day as part of their education, which horrified Will Wright since in his words (paraphrasing) “sim city is just cellular automata with some differential equations sprinkled on top.”

Yeah, but who's to say that real cities aren't just cellular automata? They kind of look that way from space.

Even if they are, they don't have the same rules as SimCity's

Re: Playing Video Games with My Son Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be

#87

Post by gowld »

icelancer wrote: post #67
gowld wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a naive question. She was on the verge of re-inventing Keynesian Economics, which ended the Great Depression. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/k/keynesianeconomics.asp

>> Keynesian Economics, which ended the Great Depression This is a pretty bold claim and not one that should be stated as fact.

What are the competing theories? The most common one is "WWII", which is another way of saying "Keynesian Economics"

Re: Playing Video Games with My Son Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be

#88

Post by gowld »

RomanPushkin wrote: post #52

I tried to play with my 4 y.o. son to NES classic games. He loved Donkey Kong County, and some other arcades, but I found games affects his behavior in a bad way. He was always asking to play more, refusing to go and play outside, working at home with books, paper, and color pens and water paints. So we're not playing for 6 months or more. He loved plasticine, and makes some really fancy and realistic animals. He lik…

Donkey Kong Country is SNES.

4yr-old is very young for video games.

Re: Playing Video Games with My Son Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be

#89

Post by gowld »

ekianjo wrote: post #40
jpatokal wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RTS and flight sim games were the domain people who could afford PCs. The average American kid only had a game console.

> RTS and flight sim games were the domain people who could afford PCs. Not at all. You could play them on an Amiga or an Atari which were miles more affordable than a PC.

What games?

Re: Playing Video Games with My Son Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be

#90

Post by Nomentatus »

skookumchuck wrote: post #56
skookumchuck wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be very careful about applying lessons from a game to the real world. Lots of games designed by economists, for example, tend to validate the pet theories of the economists, despite not working in the real world. Real world economics is infinitely more complex than the handful of rules in a game.

For example, the classic board game "Monopoly" was invented to push an economic agenda: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-scandalous-history-of-monop...

But taught me very different things...
Post reply on HN