The Nintendo Switch

SUPERHOT

Waited for ages for the physical release of the Cartoon Network RPG double pack of Steven Universe: Save the Light and OK KO: Let's Play Heroes to come out, didn't get around to it until now. It's a fun thing, but 90% of it is out of fan service. If you love the shows like I do 100% worthwhile, if you don't I'm not sure.

i am on that dragon quest builders 2. animal crossing x minecraft x dq

sent my joycon in for drift repair and it's taking so long that i'm considering ordering a cheap-o controller on amazon so i don't have to go three weeks without the switch

How long should it take? I could have sworn people were talking about a fast turnaround, but maybe they've been deluged? Anyway, I sent mine in early last week, but between my Pro controller and a pair of cheap-os (relative, when the real things apparently misbehave so frequently) I think my family can survive. Though I will say, anecdotally, that my girls are just not taking to gaming one bit. Or at least, only minimally, under duress. One loves Sims, the other is excited about Animal Crossing, but both of those games aren't really games so much as Smart Dollhouses.

If you were to turn your mind to it, what would you say was a descriptor of a Real Game?

Josh, they’re games. Don’t Real Games your own daughters ffs

both the sims and animal crossing are real games, and they're both really fun and also a gateway to gaming for tons of people. i'm making this fact up, but i believe it in my heart - the sims introduced more people to gaming in the late 90s/2000s than any other game out there - it's like the equivalent of tetris/super mario bros/windows solitaire in the 80s

See if they like Gears 5

Of course they're games, they have fun with them. I guess I meant there's no competitive (solo or multiplayer) element to it, afaict. Or at least, they never seem to play them that way. (They're no longer little kids, btw, so they're definitely past the "gateway" stage. They're 14 and 12, if video games haven't taken them in yet, I doubt they will).

the sims doesn't have official win/loss states but you can make choices to make your sims succeed or fail or even die etc so there is kinda a loss state element. i have a harder time with walking simulators not because i want to be all judgey and exclusive about what "games" are but bc i think sometimes "games" means any kind of digitally mediated simulation when i really suspect some of these things are just really novel movies if that makes sense? like for me decision making and success/failure states related to player ability are really important to what games are. so i'm inclined to call the sims or animal crossing games (tho maybe on the border of games/not games) whereas "gone home" or "her" both of which i think had merit i have a hard time considering "games" since you don't really play them as much as observe them, or at least not played much more than you "play" walking through an art gallery.

i do wonder tho if the sims really does lead to more "hardcore" gaming. i'm not sure that it does but i'd be curious to hear differently (either anecdotally or if there are studies on the topic)

also - a lot of animal crossing is about collecting and displaying things, sure. but so are a lot of games. when you're playing a game like HZD or AssCreed or BotW and open the map and see a million little icons indicating the places you haven't been to yet, the optional quests, the totally optional gear set you're trying to acquire for no particular reason other than to know that you found it and explored as much of the game as you could handle - those are just versions of talking to people in animal crossing and getting a cool plant that you can display in your house

xp

But there's no goal in those games (Sims, AC) other than existing in their worlds, right?

josh, not taking shots here, but that initial post comes off as casually sexist and suggests affiliation with some of the more toxic POVs of the gamer backwater
Smart Dollhouses, Walking Simulators, iPhone Timewasters, Bullet Hell SHMUPS, Solitaire Clones and Murder Simulators are one and all "real games" and to suggest otherwise implies the rules of ownership, qualification by "goal based gaming" and inclusion in the larger community are set by men who play by manly standards rather than by your daughters (who seem to have excellent taste and sound to me like discerning gamers!)

self-directed player goals tho are still goals and there are other games (dwarf fortress eg) that don't have "goals" outside player directed ones. and lots of games that do have designer delineated goals the player still finds the fun in doing their own thing so i don't think predetermined goals themselves are necessarily intrinsic to what a game is.

animal crossing has a goal, it's to repay your debt

self-directed player goals tho are still goals

otm

and, speaking of "gateway" games and things like, these games are great in part because they emphasize self-directed goals. it makes me think of when josh was getting into BotW and was trying to figure out what the point of it was, and we were all raving about how the great thing about BotW is that you can decide what your own goals are - you can ignore the big main quest and instead decide to just completely explore a peninsula or max out an armor set. i think that to a lot of us, that kind of perspective on the game is kind of natural at this point, but it may be something that a player has to learn? to come up with one's own goals? i don't know. but games like the sims are definitely the types of experiences that reinforce that kind of self-guided thinking

as an aside, your daughters might dig Stardew Valley, Josh.

They *hated* Stardew Valley, which I bought for them, not me.

xpost I didn't intend to be sexist, and I appreciate the preemptive. I just know that the way I came to grips with them playing Sims all the time is when something I read likened it to playing in a dollhouse. Suddenly it made sense to me, because my kids played with dolls/dollhouses (and games, to my mind, for all ages, are just a form of "playing," anyway). That said, I don't know any boys their age or younger who play with dolls or dollhouses, just like I don't know any girls their age who do much in the way of gaming (or at least certainly not the way boys do). I realize that's entirely anecdotal, but it's still based on my experiences as a parent. I don't know a single parent of girls who has come to me asking advice about what to do about their kid who won't stop playing video games, but I know several parents of boys who have asked me that very question.

(The subtext is that I would love to play video games with them! But they just don't seem to like most of them. Yet when, say, my nephew visits, he's all about it.)

gender preferences when it comes to leisure activities may very well be a thing but it's 100% not a thing i'm interested in discussing on ilx lol

everything mentioned in here is very clearly a video game, if there's a grey area it's in VNs

In other news, it's over a year since the Smart Dollhouse aspect of Fortnite brought in its first billion.

lol My daughter is now, with no prompting but hilarious timing, playing Mario Kart for the first time in months.

my daughters play games, goal-oriented (splatoon, mario odyssey) and non-goal-oriented (stardew valley), all the time. guess they're just cooler than your daughters.

Totally possible!

Speaking of amazing timing, I literally just got an email from Nintendo saying "We wanted to let you know that the components you sent to Nintendo for repair have been received." So it took a week or so after sending in my controller to get a confirmation that they got my controller!

ditto. i gave up yesterday and ordered a cheap controller.

I don't know any boys their age or younger who play with dolls or dollhouses

Still haven't broken down and got the Pro controller yet, but it feels inevitable

xps I was gonna say Fortnite is massive and ultimately a wacky dollhouse with shooting players barely care about

pro controller is really good other than the dpad being too sensitive for fighting games/puzzle games that need precision

All kids play with dolls & dollhouses, it's just that the dolls marketed to boys are called "action figures."

IMO games are all "Interesting Situation generators" and predefined goals and competition are just means to create the Interesting Situation, and by no means the only ones games can use.

I have come to terms with the fact that the Pro Controller dpad sucks, and I'm thinking about getting one of those 8bitdo ones. They look pretty good.

I'm hoping that after my controller is repaired it'll play better. I use the pro exclusively when I play on the TV, joycons in portable mode, but the drift issue was a PIA.

i get the point, but Fortnite is def a shooter first and the crafty bits are not rly dollhouse-y c'mon

Another example, I never played Minecraft, but my older kid sometimes did. But only building. (There's more to the game, right?) She still sometimes builds with friends online.

there's more to the game in the sense that the original game is a survival game but i think most people get tired of that and just play in free build mode

The bits where you pay money / complete challenges to get new clothes / skins / handbags / moves are pretty f'ing dollhousey, IMO.

the point is anyone who plays any video game of any kind is a fucking dork

otm

i mean in most games you complete challenges (or nowadays pay money) to unlock skins, clothes, and stuff?

xxp

also lol NA otm

lol yeah, if anything I suspect my girls are If anything too cool for me. I'm the dork for sure.

I've got video game madness again I don't want to stop thinking about video games

I’ve got dollhouse madness

I ordered a second console so I can play again. And (theoretically) my kid and I will get to use local two-player on our own screens. Really looking forward to it.

My nephew was over this weekend and introduced me to Splatoon. Rules!

make sure you get the new revision that just came out with the much longer battery life, if you can

Oh I did, memorized the different model numbers to be sure

hmm astral chain getting really positive reviews

Have any reviewers called it "off the chain?" I need to know so I can either shame or congratulate them, I'm conflicted

OK, fwiw just got a tracking number that my Joy-con is on its way back, so that's a pretty fast turnaround.