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Role Playing (Games)

The Family That Games Together Online 84

Posted by Zonk from the farming-together-for-fun-and-profit dept.
GamerDad has a piece talking about families gaming together online. The article profiles some gamer families. Brian Reynolds, CEO of Big Huge Games, is cited as an example; He games together with his sons. The article also touches on the more serious issues of addiction and quality time. From the article: "Another hidden benefit to online games is that families spread over several states can keep in touch and play online together. Thompson agrees, 'I never foresaw how important the games online would become, but I did actually get a line added into my divorce decree that guaranteed me three days a week that I could get on the computer with my kids, via web cam. So I could communicate and see them. At the time, I wasn't a huge MMORPG player, so I didn't envision the role it would play.'"
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The Family That Games Together Online More

The Family That Games Together Online

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  • Ahh quality family time. ;)

  • Me and my Father... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quaoar ( 614366 ) on Tuesday February 21, 2006 @07:32PM (#14772358)
    We used to WoW together: Him a 60 priest, me a 60 warrior. Then that rat bastard rolled on my Brainhacker, and I squelched his ass!

  • divorces (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Elminst ( 53259 ) on Tuesday February 21, 2006 @07:36PM (#14772384) Homepage
    but I did actually get a line added into my divorce decree that guaranteed me three days a week that I could get on the computer with my kids, via web cam.
    I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of this in divorce papers. Especially if the parent with the kids moves across the country, such that personal visits are not practical.
    On a related note, restraining orders are probably going to start having sections on internet contact, if they don't already. "I never came within 1000 yards of her, officer." "but you harassed her 4 hrs a day on AIM, off to jail"
    • Ah, but whereas you might not be able to easily escape someone's physical grasp (depends who you are and how much martial arts training you've had, among other things, of course! :)) it's alot easier to log off AIM or even change your screenname... and then you can sever most ties with your real life if you haven't already (ie take real name off profile) to make it difficult for someone to pin down your new name.

      Still... I agree, eventually it'll become a problem. Of course the real problem is the accep

      • Re:divorces (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Jamori ( 725303 )
        Of course the real problem is the acceptability of divorce... if it was looked down on more, marriage might be taken more seriously.

        There's absolutely nothing wrong with "divorce", per se. It's getting divorced once you have kids involved that is a problem.

        It could certainly be argued that a large contributing factor to the high divorce rate is the [Christian] church's insistence upon marriage before sex. This has almost undoubtedly rushed many people into marriage who just don't want to wait any long

        • And how, in any way, is this relevant to the topic? I would look at society's focus on love itself, as opposed to the Church's view of it. Most people in failed marriages get married while in the throes of infatuation and lust, as opposed to really being in love. Tom Cruise, anyone?

    • Re:divorces (Score:4, Funny)

      by plover ( 150551 ) * on Tuesday February 21, 2006 @07:55PM (#14772538) Homepage Journal
      The new restraining order:

      You are not permitted to come within __one_subnet___ of ____her_name____.

    • 1000 feet or 15 hops.

    • restraining orders are probably going to start having sections on internet contact

      First, every restraining order already has a section against "contacting". After all, tele-harassement is an old issue and if it's done by phone or by IM is no difference.

      Second, do not solve with law what can be solved easily otherwise. Seriously. In most IM apps, you can simply block someone, so the law should not intervene. If someone doesnt block me on IM, I take this as an invitation to chat with him, restraining order or

  • Games and divorce? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by JonTurner ( 178845 )

    Thompson: '...I did actually get a line added into my divorce decree that guaranteed me three days a week that I could get on the computer with my kids, via web cam. So I could communicate and see them.'

    And that's supposed to be a good thing? I think it's just sad.

    I know I'm pointing out the obvious, but perhaps he had spent more time with the family and less time gaming he wouldn't be divorcing and could be more than a face on the webcam or a guild member.

    Yeah, so I'm judgemental. At least you'll get over

    • Re:Games and divorce? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 77Punker ( 673758 ) <(ude.tniophgih) (ta) (40rcneps)> on Tuesday February 21, 2006 @07:55PM (#14772542)
      I don't take issue with your passing judgment; it's a critical thing to do in order to make decisions every day. However, your judgment was passed too quickly. I bring to this conversation real-world evidence, even if it is only one case. Man and woman are married, have daughter. Later, woman cheats on man. Man finds out. Woman continues to cheat. Weak-spined man continues to forgive, expecting something to change as he goes on and continues to be a good father. Woman divorces man and marries her latest boyfriend. Court grants custody of daughter and almost all possessions to woman. Man is stuck paying $20k/yr child support in addition to college for the next 12 years. There are more details that were not mentioned, but suffice to say every detail points to this: this woman is a bitch and this man is a good person. The man was treated wrongly by the court.

      So one thing to take from this story is that sometimes good husbands and fathers are given a raw deal only because their wives are terrible people and they made a bad judgment to marry.

      • Re:Games and divorce? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by QuantumG ( 50515 )
        The whole concept of marriage is outdated and unsuitable for modern life. We don't live on farms anymore. Our children are not free labor to harvest our crops anymore. As much as I hate to admit it, children are a public good. They should be supported by taxes.
        • As much as I hate to admit it, children are a public good. They should be supported by taxes.

          One flight in an airplane w/a squalling infant who takes a dump 3 minutes into takeoff will have you reading Swift's Modest Proposal as a How-To guide.

        • Children are not the property of the public. When government money is used to pay for them, government power will be thrust into the realm of raising them. It already happens to plenty of kids in awful situations where their parents are unfit or unwilling to take care of them. I plan on getting married one day because I desire the security offered by a (properly selected) lifetime companion. I'll probably also have children with said companion. I won't want public money for or public intrusion into the rais
        • They should be supported by taxes.

          God I hope you're kidding.
        • Say good bye to Democracy, then. Once you let the goverment raise the children, how do you expect them to think and vote independently? In one generation, you'll lose all true freedom and independence.

        • Re:Games and divorce? (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Jacius ( 701825 )
          As much as I hate to admit it, children are a public good. They should be supported by taxes.

          (I really shouldn't feed the trolls, but this one is a little too good to pass up.)

          Your plan is really quite fascinating, but it has a couple little kinks that will have to be worked out before you put it before Congress/Parliament/etc.:

          1. It is inherently unfair. Suppose Citizen A is a single, employed man. Citizen B is an unemployed, "deadbeat dad" with 6 children. Why should Citizen A be forced to pay a monetary
          • Uhuh, so you're suggesting that you receive no benefit from there being a fresh batch of teenagers entering the workforce every year. We all enjoy the benefits of scientific discoveries and, as any mathematician will tell you, its a game for the young. Maybe someday we'll reverse the aging process and the effect children have on society will become negative, but until then we can either continue our hand-off, see no evil, hear no evil approach to introducing children to society or we can encourage parents

            • Re:Games and divorce? (Score:2, Insightful)

              by Jacius ( 701825 )
              Uhuh, so you're suggesting that you receive no benefit from there being a fresh batch of teenagers entering the workforce every year.

              If I had suggested such a thing, it would have been a foolish and unprovable claim. It would also be foolish to suggest, as you are doing, that teenagers are entering the workforce to provide some intangible benefit to "society". They are already being compensated for the benefit that they provide.

              If the parents do a good job, they too are rewarded for their years of labor spe
            • Of course, society couldn't have crawled out of the dark ages without groups of people forcibly taking the fruits of one person's labor to give to another person, all the while claiming "it's for your own good."

              Oh wait, society climbed out of the dark ages DESPITE people doing that.

              Yes, much technology has been developed with government money. Mostly, it was developed to more efficiently coerce or kill people. The non-military benefits were mostly afterthoughts.

              The government does so many other things right

          • Should we also start paying for each others' car insurance, so that Citizen B isn't inconvenienced when he causes $20,000 in property damage when he tries to drive himself home after a night of drinking?

            Well, that's the way insurance works. You pay $X per year, even though you have no accidents. All the $X add up to pay for Mr. Jones, who forgot to check in his mirror, and ended causing $100,000 of damage in a pile-up. The principle is that some day *you* may be that Mr. Jones. Same with having kids. Whatev

            • Oops, typo.

              Whatever your situation now, you may have kids some day. And their well being and health shouldn't depend totally on your attitude towards investment and your career.
          • Well, you might not like it when people take your precious money away from you, but we do live in a society and it's not in our interest to have hordes of feral children running about. It's only fair to the child that if their parents are good for nothing that the government will step in and lend a hand to ensure that the children get as good a start as possible, under the circumstances.

            Either that, or forcibly sterilise people deemed to be unfit parents, but I don't think we want to be going down that rout
        • Wow. Your post has pain and suffering written all over it. I truly am sorry for whatever your parents may have done to you, or what happened to you out of their control. Whether you accept my prayers or not, they are there.
      • Modern divorces almost always end with the courts siding with the wife. Play the sexist card (women are better parents, its was the mean ol' drunken dad's fault, the woman would NEVER hurt the kids, etc) and its very hard to win modern day divorces if your the husband. Throw in the fact that 'dad' is generally the 'breadwinner', thus generally not home 9-5, and its extremely hard to make a good case for the husband to keep the kids, let alone not pay child support for several decades when you know the wife
      • Man grows balls, hires an investigator and takes the bitch to the bank for all she's got. Then spends a portion of his out-of-court settlement on thugs to squelch said bitch for good.

        Or moves to the tropics and gets freaky deaky with the locals :)

        Either way, life's problems have solutions, but the biggest problem of them all is apathy.

    • Re:Games and divorce? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RingDev ( 879105 ) on Tuesday February 21, 2006 @08:03PM (#14772619) Homepage Journal
      I realise reading TFA is a quite an ordeal for todays ridlin fed ADD youth, but it even says in the SUMMARY, "At the time, I wasn't a huge MMORPG player, so I didn't envision the role it would play."

      He didn't start gaming until AFTER the divorce. Most likely either he, or his wife moved and the wife maintained custody. He could have been the best father ever, and the divorce could have been amicable, but if he or his x-wife moved across the country you can't honestly expect him to commute 2500 miles for 4 hours 3 nights a week. Sitting in front of a web cam for 4 hours a night talking to your father could get rather boring for a child. Why not spend an hour talking about life, then playing a game together? Seems like a perfectly good way to hang out with a child from across the country.

      -Rick
      • Brian Reynolds, CEO of Big Huge Games...

        Says he didn't MMO much. Doesn't say he didn't game. Though I agree there may have been an element of neglect but it was probably more to do with being a CEO than with being a gamer.

        • re-read that summary: "Brian Reynolds, CEO of Big Huge Games, is cited as an example..."

          then later: "Thompson agrees, 'I never foresaw how important the games online would become... I wasn't a huge MMORPG player..."

          The quote in questions is from Thompson, the divorce', not Reynolds.

          -Rick
    • Yeah, it's always the man's fault.

    • Re:Games and divorce? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Mazda6s ( 904056 )
      Perhaps the gaming had nothing to do with the divorce. People do get divorced for lots of other reasons. Some people just don't belong together and realize it too late.

      He did mention that this was before the MMOGs hit so big.

      You do have to admit that his seeing his kids via webcam is better than not seeing them at all. At least he's still involved.

    • Re:Games and divorce? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Zarquil ( 187770 )
      I'm divorced.

      I don't get to see my kids every single day. Technically, I'm supposed to be able to talk to my kids every single day on the phone. In actuality, I get to talk to the answering machine 4 times out of every five that I call.

      My kids are a little too young to play online with me. But in only a year or two, my daughter will be ready to play games. She knows my MMORPG of choice. I'll happily pay her membership. It will be just one more option that we can use to communicate.

      It's one more tool a
    • You're assuming that he got divorced because he played games, when in reality, it was probably for completely different reasons. My parents split up, and although my dad does play the occasional game, he was usually the one trying to keep my brother and I from wasting our time on the computer. I think he was actually better at enforcing the rules than my mother, who didn't game at all. They broke up because they just didn't get on as well as they used to -- perhaps because they were spending too MUCH tim
    • I know I'm pointing out the obvious, but perhaps he had spent more time with the family and less time gaming he wouldn't be divorcing and could be more than a face on the webcam or a guild member.

      Some fathers have no choice but to work away from home for long periods of time. I know oil workers who had to work two weeks onshore and two weeks offshore. Others work in the merchant navy and have to spend months away from home. Then there are long distance truck drivers, contractors, the armed forces, airline
    • I agree, this guys actually plays with his kids instead of watching TV like a good god-fearing, flag-waving American. No wonder his righteous wife has demanded divorce from such a deviant. Do you realize the damage done on his children? Instead of receiving their Government-approved weekly dose of Jack Bauer's Canned Moral Values (TM), they are forced to interact with their father on one of those video games.

      Remember, party-approved ocupations are limited to watching TV, attending church and hunting qua
    • I think you missed a line:

      Especially if the parent with the kids moves across the country

      In other words, it's better than nothing. There's nothing to indicate that the man didn't spend time with his family, but rather perhaps he and his family are now some distance away, which means at times he would be otherwise unable to see/talk to them in person.

      I chat with my GF on MSN and webcam almost daily. On weekends when I can I drive 4h to see her. Neither one is exclusive of the other, but as she lives 4

  •         Brion, Tuesday aug 16th, 2005 @ 3:29 AM
            ok i have a proposition for the horde, let us kill Korrak while you sit and watch. and well let you get all the honor youll ever want=}. no? ok well it shall be a great battle then, hope to see everyone there!

            Fayda, Tuesday aug 16th, 2005 @ 8:44 AM
            ((OOC))

            Pardon me for hijacking the thread, here..

            But, Brion - if you don't want your mother to know you were up and on the computer at 3:29 in the morning - DON'T post on a forum that she reads.

            Busted.
            Grounded.

  • My experiences (Score:4, Funny)

    by robyannetta ( 820243 ) * on Tuesday February 21, 2006 @07:50PM (#14772486) Homepage
    I've played WoW for a year and recently got my nephew online.

    Until he signed up for WoW, we rarely ever spoke, even though we both miss each other very much.

    Now that I've added him to my guild, he won't leave me the hell alone. I've learned to hate my family now, they're all ninka looters. FuXin n00b.

  • Gaming with family (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tojosan ( 641739 ) on Tuesday February 21, 2006 @07:52PM (#14772516)
    My son and I have played been playing online games together since EQ1 came out.
    He is now 16 and we are playing EQ2 together. There have been a couple of other MMORPGs in between.

    Before that though, we gamed on consoles and I introduced him to PC games at an early age.

    Gaming together, and play in general, is something all parents should do with their children. My son and I are much closer than we might have been, and definitely gotten some deeper insight into each other.

    Playing an RPG like EQ or WoW, gives a young person a chance to exercise their personal skills in a variety of settings, being their with him/her gives a parent a chance to mentor, observce and assist.

    As for the insight part, my son and I play totally differently in some areas. Grouping up, we learn how the other thinks about things, like fair play, how to treat others, and prioritizing.

    That sad, game play is no substitute for good parenting. So, if you're excuse for not spending any other time with yoiur family is that you play EQ together....well, you read the article. :)

    Laters,
    Tojosan
    • The whole thing about mentoring reminds me of, "Always two there are, no more, no less: a master and an apprentice." So, eh, let's hope the "graduation" doesn't go like in the Sith tradition ;)

      But seriously, it makes me wonder if one-on-one mentoring wouldn't go better in a more controlled two-player way than in an MMO. There are so many bad influences, and they're so contagious. Ranging from "let's go over the mountain and gank alliance newbies in Northshire" or "let's roll undead chars and camp the zones

  • I'm hesitant. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Tuesday February 21, 2006 @07:58PM (#14772568) Homepage Journal
    I don't know about you all, but there were moments during many an NES battle between my sisters and I that ended with a chunky controller being flung toward a skull. If you threw MMO drama into the mix, a family like mine may well end up pressing charges.

    Those NES pads had some corners, I tellya what..
    • That's why they went ergonomic. Rounded the edges off so they wouldn't cause so much bleeding. Problem is they became more aerodynamic, so more blunt-forced head trauma was the result. Don't even get me started on the N64 "trident."

      Let's just hope the PS3 boomerang is given some serious thought..
      Dear God, Please won't someone think of the the children?!

  • My girlfriend (who's at uni) and I play together, along with her mum.

    Talk about awkward.

    On the plus side, her mum likes me without having met me. Boy is she in for a surprise.

    On a side note, one of my guildmates started playing together with his son. The son's moved on, the father hasn't.

    • Re:Don't do this. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21, 2006 @08:24PM (#14772784)
      My girlfriend (who's at uni) and I play together, along with her mum. Talk about awkward

      No shit.

      On the plus side, her mum likes me without having met me.

      Eh?........ Oh, computer games, I get it.

  • I play StarCraft with my 4 year old. (Score:4, Informative)

    by LionKimbro ( 200000 ) on Tuesday February 21, 2006 @08:15PM (#14772704) Homepage
    Her favorite configuration is Protoss (her) & Protoss (me) vs. Zerg (computer.)

    I wrote about how she used to play the Terrans on my blog [taoriver.net] a while back.

    If I'm lost in online stuff, I hear: "C'mon daddy, it's time to play StarCraft."

  • The Family That Games Together... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Triv ( 181010 ) on Tuesday February 21, 2006 @08:19PM (#14772733) Journal
    ...Maims Together.
  • My brother lives in New Jersey, I live in Utah. Playing Enemy Territory helps us get together more than once every other year.

    My wife and I play Jeopardy on the computer from time to time. It is one of the few games we both really like to play.

    My friend and her husband do WoW online as a family. That's kinda wierd, but they enjoy it.

    Another buddy and his son make a big deal of playing Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds (if he's been good) or Heroes of Might and Magic IV.

    My son is not quite 2 yet, but

  • I love my wife and my kids, but if I ever get a divorce, I'll take whatever time I can get with them, even if it's online game. I may only get them 30-50% of the time, but I can be with them all of their free time that they're willing to play online that way.
  • "The Family That Games Together Online ... divorce decree ..."
  • I would really like to have some sort of "web community" for me and my family, not a forum, not a chat, but a game.

    But the members of my family have really no time for playing a MMORPG. So could someone suggest a funny and interesting browser game which brings a group of people (family, collegues, etc.) together and requires not much time? Additionaly it should have a very easy interface in order to let the less computerized family members also enjoy it.

    In most of the games, you are alone against everyone o
  • Our family doesn't need computer games. We perform in a traveling stage show. It never fails to bring us closer together. We call ourselves "The Aristocrats."
  • http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/12/31 [penny-arcade.com]

    I've played games on various platforms with my wife since the day we met (WoW, Mario Kart, Quake, etc). She wasn't really into games before we met, but now she comes to LAN parties with me.

    However, I have a job, and she stays at home with the kids. She can play when they nap. All I can say is that there's some serious truth to that comic.
  • Our family has 5 WoW accounts in the house, plus my brother-n-law and his wife each have accounts, and another son outside the house has an account. We created a family guild and often are online at the same time. its been kind of an addiction but at least its one where we're all together.

    Sometimes its weird like going to your teenage kid and saying, "Yo, get your butt onto WoW so your Pally can tank for us in Scarlet Monastary." "But dad, I was talking to my girlfriend on the phone......" "C'mon, hurry

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