Vector Analysis

"The New is not a fashion, it is a value." - Roland Barthes

It's Saturday morning. 7AM. The sun's been up for an hour or so, but the day still has that yummy oven-baked freshness. My family is still asleep. I get on the bike. After 20 minutes, I hook up with my friend Kyle, as we always do. "Hey." "Hey." We don't need to say much more than that. We've been riding together for 25 years. I've spent more time looking at his ass in a saddle than I have at any girl I've ever known.

Another 20 minutes pass in near silence.

"So, I'm thinking of buying Chris his first game console. Thoughts?"

"Gamecube."

"Really?" He says. "Not some souped up Xbox 360 or something?"

"Kyle, he's fricken' nine years old. His brother's 7. Call me a curmudgeon but there's not one single 360 title I'd be proud to sit down and teach them."

He ponders that for a minute. Kyle's not what you'd call a hardcore gamer. He shows up in my basement once a month or so, carrying the cubearific SFF PC I built for him two years ago. He pops on his headset, we play a little Battlefield 2, maybe some Unreal 2K4. He kicks me around for a few hours, and then he's back to his very real world.

"I just feel like he's at that point where he needs to learn how to play videogames."

I chuckle at this. Chris is not exactly your average kid. He's a foot taller than your average 9-year-old. He's wired tight. And he's a freakin' genius at board games. He can beat pretty much anyone at Chess, instinctively. He's harbored a dominating addiction to Heroscape (thanks to good ol' Uncle Julian making some accurate birthday purchasing decisions) that borders on scary. I have zero doubts that if I showed up one evening to teach him poker he'd own my house by sunrise.

But his real introduction to videogames occurred just a month ago, to Runescape of all things. He's not exactly a twitch-monkey. It's hard to imagine him sitting on the couch with his DS, fingers poppin'. He's just too cerebral for that. He's gross motor movements attached to a giant brain. When this kid moves, the house moves.

So I ride another mile and think it over.

When I was Chris's age, there simply weren't any real videogames. The Atari 2600 was still a few years away. The Apple IIe, likely responsible for most of the rest of my life, wouldn't be sitting in the computer lab for six or seven years. But something marvelous happened when that 2600 rolled into the rich kid's house on my street.

We all learned a new language.

Most kids today don't even realize it, but they are growing up with an entirely new way of looking at the world. I'm not talking about the Wired Magazine/Nicholas Negroponte starry-eyed "isn't the digital millennium orgasmic" crap. I'm talking about nuts and bolts.

It's 1895. You live in rural New England. If you are a nine-year-old boy and you don't know how to fire a gun, gut a fish, or skip rocks, then you are simply not going to have a lot of friends. You will be on the fringe. (Interestingly, if you are a girl, you are likely expected to know these things as well, but without having been explicitly taught.) In 2006, if you don't understand how a D-pad works, or how to use an analog stick to aim, you're in the same boat. You'll be the kid standing watching your friends do something fun. Nothing life threatening here, you'll just be on the fringe.

Even worse, you won't understand the vernacular of an entire communications pathway that dominates so many of your peers' interactions. Those of us engaged in the punditry, frivolity, and mayhem here may forget that our avocation is the actual medium of existence for an entire subculture of not-even-teenagers. If you're a teenage boy, it's simply expected that you understand how videogames work. It's not one big thing, it's a thousand subtle things. How grenade timing works. That you need to jump on the back of the turtles. The industry standard layout of a heads up display. Over-steer. Flight mechanics. Physics. Fluid dynamics.

Vector analysis.

When the railroads first crossed the US, there were startling numbers of fatalities. Not because trains were unsafe to be on, but because people simply couldn't connect the dots between the perceived speed of the train with their own momentum. People, time and time again, were killed watching the train. One day, vector analysis was important to a devout marksman hunting moving game. The next, it was a critical survival skill.

I down-shift. The bike complains. Carbon fiber, that miracle of ten years ago, just ain't what it used to be--to say nothing of my quads, lungs, and knees. We stay silent, breathing hard to the top of the hill.

"Yeah. You're right. Super Monkey Ball. Mario Kart. Sunshine. A little Tony Hawk. It'll get him started on the right foot."

Comments

Great point and it's one that I'd say can often lead to problems in adulthood.

I had an ex that suffered from this very thing. While with my friends she'd get easily lost in our conversations and would miss the majority of our jokes. Why? She had an extremely sheltered childhood. No tv in the house because her mother said it was filled with sin, Shakespeare was banned both at home and in her school, and all the other things that you can probably guess without me mentioning.

This didn't just cause her to be on the fringe, it alienated her from the rest of the world. Even after having graduated 3 years ago, she had yet to be able to make a friend outside of those she met in her parochial school.

Why? She had little in common with them. They even spoke different languages. Think about being in a group and missing every reference made to books, tv, movies, videogames, or current events.

Wow, I think this post might need a ranting tangent alert.

Interesting piece, haven't thought of it in that perspective yet. Another thing to consider when I will have kids.

Great article, rabbit. At 3 years old and four months old respectively, my kids are still years away from owning their own console, but the topic here resonates deeply nonetheless.

rabbit wrote:

I've spent more time looking at his ass in a saddle than I have at any girl I've ever known.

Yeah, you are fitting in here real well

Podunk: Age 3 to age 6 is a complete blur. Enjoy it while you can!

The title to this article "Vector Analysis" keeps making me thing of that colonial marine dropship pilot quote from Aliens and later Starcraft...

"In the pipe, five by five"

Mario Sunshine and Prince of Persia 1 for GC, most definitely.

If your 9 year old is a big HeroScape and Chess fan I highly suggest introducing him to Fire Emblem nd Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker. After all, everyone should could cut their teeth on a good Zelda game..

Yumm... Zelda...

My new favorite article from the new contributors. Succinct. Poignant. Not self-indulgent. Very well done.

rabbit wrote:

Podunk: Age 3 to age 6 is a complete blur. Enjoy it while you can!

Oh yeah, age 2 blew by before I knew what the hell was going on. I can only imagine that it gets worse.

rabbit wrote:

When the railroads first crossed the US, there were startling numbers of fatalities. Not because trains were unsafe to be on, but because people simply couldn't connect the dots between the perceived speed of the train with their own momentum. People, time and time again, were killed watchingthe train.

I hope they were posthumously given Darwin Awards.

vbl: thanks...

Gamecube.. yeah!

Resident Evil!
Eternal Darkness!

Oh ... wait...

These are the kinds of articles I like, Rabbit. You will make more and I will read them.

Irongut wrote:

The title to this article "Vector Analysis" keeps making me thing of that colonial marine dropship pilot quote from Aliens and later Starcraft...

"In the pipe, five by five"

Why?

Yeah, not so much with RE4 and ED with GameCube there...

Great article, rabbit. Not having kids myself, I never thought to think of what system works for what type of kid, nor of the social factors relating to videogames (other than "You're a game geek"-type "social" factors). It's a lot of stuff to think about, plus, now if my nephews start clamoring for a video game system, I can point their parents to this to give them a perspective point.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

These are the kinds of articles I like, Rabbit. You will make more and I will read them.

Irongut wrote:

The title to this article "Vector Analysis" keeps making me thing of that colonial marine dropship pilot quote from Aliens and later Starcraft...

"In the pipe, five by five"

Why?

Because it reminds of the dropship 'vectoring' in for a landing i suppose.

I thought this article was about me :sad:. Great article despite the obvious lack of me.

Great article filled with just enough homo-erotic imaging to fulfill some people's desires.

Finally had a spare moment to give this some deserved attention. Great, just great. I've always looked at east coast friendships with a little envy. From everything I know, people stay friends for decades, it's just part of the culture. On the west coast, and Austin being a bit of the west coast transplanted, "best friends" could mean someone you met 6 months ago.

Souldaddy:

Subject of a future piece most likely: moving to the country, moving to the east, moving "home".

There is a certain something about the east coast. I think it's called "February". When its 10 below out, friends are important. Perhaps more to the point, when you live in a town of a few thousand people, when you find someone you share anything in common with, you grab onto them and don't let go.

I'm lucky enough to have a handful of friends I've known since grade school. But most of the folks I know I've only met in the last few years. Funny how it all works out.

Great piece. My favorite quote: "I just feel like he's at that point where he needs to learn how to play videogames."

Needs to learn - now how often do you hear a parent say that about videogames? Not often enough.

Vector wrote:

I thought this article was about me :sad:. Great article despite the obvious lack of me.

My first thought was, Why are we analyzing Vector?

Nicely done, bunnyman. I recall hearing third-hand about how kids nowadays actually have different brain functions due to having been raised in a computer-immersed culture. All you new parents, just wait until your four-year-old overclocks your PC for you.

Nicely done, bunnyman.

Now that I realize you're talking about me, thanks!

My six year old hasn't overclocked my PC yet, but she completely understands RPTV Warmup and that it's a drag, and she has instinctive understanding of timeshifted TV and home theater PCs. It's all about what's important.

Great article. I went through a few years ago. When I dumped my PC in favor of a Mac, I had made the decision to limit my gameplaying to consoles, and that I would never upgrade or buy a computer in order to play a videogame. We had a Dreamcast, which I had picked off Ebay just after Sega pulled the plug. I hadn't had a console since I sold the Super Nintendo for a an evening of babysitting of our six-month-old little girl. I had long stopped playing it once I discovered Doom, Duke Nuke'em, and Quake as well as Front Page Sports Football Pro. I enjoyed all of the tweaking and the editing of files in order to keep my PC game ready.

Once FBPro died a horrible ugly death when '99 came out, I decided to give try out the 2K football game I had seen being played in a Best Buy, and picked up a Dreamcast on the cheap. I was way behind the curve, but getting a Dreamcast at that point was fantastic. There were tons of great games to try out, but I was still primarily a PC gamer. But I was starting to enjoy the idea of just turning on the console and playing. No system requirements, patches, or upgrades. PC gamihng became just a little less fun, even as I was enjoying Half-Life and Deus Ex, as well as continuing our FBPro league online.

Gradually, I came to resent the money I was spending on video cards and other upgrades. Warcraft III was the last straw. I installed it, would either get no picture or no sound. While I finally got it working after installing new drivers and some other tweaks, I was finally fed up. Then I noticed that Blizzard had shipped both the Mac and PC version on one disk. Perfect. The switch ads drew me in. I realized gaming on the Mac was not a real alternative, so I decided that I would buy Mac, and then only game on the consoles, or any game in which I did not have to upgrade my computer.

So it was time for a new console, as I really needed a new football game. My wife assumed I was going to get an Xbox and went to buy me one for my birthday. But I stopped her. I wanted a Gamecube. By this point, my daughter was 5, and ready to start playing around with video games. We picked up the Gamecube, with Mario, and then Windwaker soon after. Windwaker was the difference maker. She was learning to read, and would read the story to me and my wife as we played. We would let her try parts, but mostly my wife and I played through the game, but we always played with her. There is not a single game on another console game that would have made the huge impact on her that Zelda did. She was reading, helping us solve puzzles (on many, even though I had figured it out, I waited for her to give me the solution before I would move on) and it spurred lots of real playtime fun, as she pretended to be Zelda and act out parts of the game, as well as create new stories.

My wife and I are firm believers that you cannot teach moderation by banning things like candy and video games. I have never had a problem getting her to do other things, but I am so appreciative of Nintendo for providing such positive videogame experiences for my daughter. She is hooked on Nintendogs and Harvest Moon now. She was upset once, because some of her friends are much farther than her in these games. So I sat her down and explained it to her. Did she want to give up dance class, ice skating, biking in the park, and swimming, so she could spend more time playing games? Of course she said no. I told her that video games are about enjoying them while you play them, and that she had the best of both worlds.

I do have an Xbox in addition to the Gamecube now, and will probably get a 360. But I will probably get a Wii first. I know that the Wii will bring a ton of fun for my family, while the Xbox is mostly just for me. I almost feel sorry for one of her friends, who only has a PS2, becasue that's what her dad plays. I do think videogames are a positive influence on my daughter, but only if I provide her the positive games that are available. Anyone with a young child would be much better off with a Gamecube.

Fantastic article. I love the way it examines gaming's influence on childhood culture. It also got me thinking about the vast divide that I sometimes find between myself and adults my age who don't play games.

I've usually had two or three hooked up at any one time for the past ten years or so, so my kids have always just played on whatever I have under the TV at the time they gain an interest.

I'd say my oldest son's first properly owned console would have to be the GBA we helped him purchase last year. After he destroyed my Afterburner enabled GBA in a fit of gaming difficulty induced rage he was, of course, banned from playing its replacement. His mother and I tried to turn it into a lesson about responsibility and matched money he made towards his own GBA, which he got last year. He's definitely more gentle with this one, and is currently deeply into Super Mario Bros. 2.