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Episode 17, Java.

Take it away, Patrick.

All right, mixing it up this week.

So, having a young daughter and talking to other people at work with young kids,

we were gotten a discussion the other day, which I thought was interesting,

about playing video games with your kids.

So obviously, my daughter is far too young to play video games, unfortunately.

It would be a nice excuse to play even more video games than normal. Yeah, well, I saw a one-year-old playing anger birds the other day. Were they doing it well? They weren't doing too bad. I mean, like, in other words, like the bird was moving. You know, they weren't getting a high score or anything. But like, you know, they could see that I think the one year old was starting to figure out that like, you know, if they moved their finger a different way, the bird did something different. They're kind of starting to get the whole like the bird doesn't go as far if you move your finger down or whatever. Oh, wow. They were doing the, I was impressed. That's pretty good. Yeah, it's a hard thing. So there's different classes. You can try to play like an educational style games. Like I remember growing up, you know, you had these games which would teach you math, you know, you would run around the level and try to hit the block. Yeah, like the cookie monster one where you had to like add the cookies. Yeah, and there's all these, you know, but those are kind of overtly educational, right? Like obviously this is, you're learning, you know, at the expensive gameplay. And then there's like trying to do gameplay that is, you know, truly engaging for a kid and maybe trying to mix learning in it. Like I guess there's some learning to be had in Angry Birds like you said like trajectories type stuff I mean that's kind of interesting I don't know how much a one-year-old cares about trajectory unless they find a slingshot but maybe

you know yeah it's like the bigger thing of like the consequence of like or just knowing that like

there's this spectra here.

Like if you go like too far on one end and you go too far on the other end next time you go in the middle or something. I mean like there's some core concepts there. So I guess my debate was how soon, you know, not that is a big deal, but you know, how soon do I want to start introducing video games? because if you see like a one-year-old playing at your group,

they can maybe play it, they can launch the bird,

but they're not really understanding it. Yeah, that's true. I mean, if they're enjoying it, okay, are they learning anything? Is there something you could be doing that would help them learn more? Right. Does it matter? Like, you know, these kind of questions, because when I was hanging out with my cousins a while ago, one of them had a Nintendo DS and the Super Mario on the Nintendo DS. Of course, when I was young, first, second, third, fourth grade, I don't remember when we started having video games, but when I played Mario or whatever, I would get to the first level, second level, and then, you know, die and there was no save games, and I would just play over and over again, it was really difficult. Now I can play and like, Yay, I can get to the first level, second level, and then, you know, die, and there was no save games, and I would just play over and over again, it was really difficult.

Now I can play and like, yay, I can get to level five before dying. So, of course, you know, my cousin thinks like, oh, you know, Uncle Patrick's amazing at, you know, playing Mario. I'll have him beat this level for me. But then, you know, it's like they actually doesn't help them because they observe me play, but it's all like the subtle timing.

So then every time they get stuck instead of like toughing it out themselves and learning they just want to ask me like oh hey can you now be this like no you know either i'm too busy and i don't want to or like you know this isn't helping you me just keep beating these levels for you like you know you're not getting anything out of it but like there was a long time before I was able to ever, like, get a game to where I could beat it that wasn't a kid's game. Yeah, one thing that's kind of weird is I went back and played some old games on the Wii virtual console. Okay. So, you know, went back and bought Mario and Zelda and stuff. And I was actually much better at these games. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. You remember them being, like, incredibly difficult. And now they're hard. But even more so, like, I remember being way better at them. Oh, you were better before. Yeah. Oh. Like, I went to play, and I think what it is, I think I had more patience because the cost is high, right?

Like if, you know, you're playing Mega Man, like you're playing to beat the game, you know what I mean? Like, when you're 9. Now when I play Mega Man, I know that something's going to distract me in like half an hour. Like, I know I just don't have the block of time to beat the game. So I play like more reckless and maybe that's part of it. But yeah, basically, I can't get like even half as far as I could when I was a little kid.

Wow. I think it's also, like, a lot of those games, you needed to essentially memorize the level and the timing and the thing. I also don't have patience for that. Yeah, so I'm comparing, like, myself, like, having not played for 20 years, playing for the first time, versus like myself at the end of like having played for six months straight. Right. Yeah. That's not fun. Also there is a thing out there on the internet. People talk about our games are becoming easier, right? So you have saves and you know, continuous save or walk away or, you know, you can just checkpoint you checkpoint way too often or have too many lives.

Now the common thing in first person shooters is not to have to go collect help, but you get

shot and you just go hide behind a box for a few seconds and then your help to charge back up

...