When I was a kid (oh boy… here we go…) the popular video games were things like Asteroids, Galaga, Defender, Space Invaders, and, oh yes, Pac Man. The goal of these games was to kill the bad guys or eat the pellets and get the most points possible. It was simple enough. The games provided entertainment and some training for hand-eye coordination. But the kinds of games my kids are now playing online are an entirely different beast. They are what I am beginning to see as manipulative and even downright insidious. Using adjectives like that you might think I’m talking about games of graphic gore, first person shooters, or any other sort of mature-rated games, but no. I’m talking about the apparently innocuous gaming sites geared for young children like Webkinz, MoshiMonsters, Club Penguin, and any number of others out there.
What I find I am objecting to is the constant but subtle training going on as a side-effect of playing games on these websites. For anyone not in the know, these sites offer a large host of themed games. For playing the games, the children earn play money (gems, coins, or credits of some kind). With the play money they earn they are then able to go to the virtual store on the game site with their game character and purchase things. It might be furnishings for their ‘home’, clothing, upgradings of some kind, colour changes, haircuts…. you name it. Everything is available and everything has a price. On one of the sites when buying clothing there is a salesperson there saying things like “Oooh, you look awesome in those jeans,” and “You’re going to be so popular.”
The children are enticed into buying things for whatever reasons make sense in the context of the website (e.g. Your Webkinz has to have a bed in order to be able to sleep at night. Earn money for a bed.) And, of course, once they have blown their money, they want to play more games in order to earn more money in order to buy more things. And the cycle repeats.
To me this kind of game playing can only result in three things — none of them good:
- Children who are trained to think that happiness derives from the purchase of goodies;
- Children who are trained to think that how you look, what you wear, and what you own define who you are;
- Children who get caught in the consumerist trap when they’re older of earning more and more money in order to buy bigger and better toys, while getting farther and farther into debt.
The way I see it these seemingly innocuous games, deliberately or not, are honing and even enhancing the consumeristic impulses in our children. Anyone who follows my blog (all three of you out there) know that I believe that consumerism is the plague that will be the downfall of our civilization. The inability of people to curb their “I want” and “I deserve” impulses (and not distinguishing from “I truly need”) are what is driving this planet to its self-destruction. If we are now training our children from an even younger age to hunger for a steady supply of material things, what kind of a planet are we going to have a generation from now? It worries me. It really does.
So am I allowing my children to play these games? Sadly, yes. They like them, and at least they aren’t games of violence. I limit their time on the computer and I do point out to them what is going on. And in our daily lives I ask them to justify the things that they feel they want or “need”. In my own way I am trying to train them to see that while they are constantly being bombarded by messages of “you are inadequate unless you buy this product”, that they have the power to see through those messages and make their own decisions based on a real criteria of need rather than on a criteria of ravenous desire. They’re only young, so they don’t get it yet, but sometimes the lightbulb does go on. I hope that over time they will see what I see and will in their own way and in their own time seek a simpler, less consumptive lifestyle.