yeah my friends who got their kid a switch seem similarly enamoured of the daily time limit you can set for them
that one is also a bit weird for me to comprehend as I had, like, no limits whatsoever as a kid and now I can’t bear to play games for too many hours of the day so obviously that worked? or maybe I’m just like JFK in that study when they told him not to eat the marshmallow
I think concern about screen time increases in proportion to the amount of activities kids are allowed to do on their own, like walking around, decreases
yeah I think generally I’m in favour of trusting people who have given you no reason to trust them to work things out on their own mostly because the alternative is stultifying and untenable
no interest in going up against the rest of the world on that one though
Yeah, although the games we played as kids were also short, repetitive 8 bit games with frequent game overs. I never really had any strict screen time limits as a kid besides the “6 o’clock is news time”, but even on weekends I remember 30 mins of Master System time was usually enough before I got tired of dying and ran outside to go burn off my excess energy on the trampoline.
It was also easier back then for sharing screen time with siblings, since you’d play as far as you could, lose your last life and then pass the controller. Then there’d be that one kid who’s better than everyone else getting further in the game than they ever had, and all the other kids would watch on transfixed
There were also “soft” limits, like access to a TV or the gaming setup itself, that can’t be replicated with a portable console which is one of the reasons why a built-in limiter could be desired. When I was a kid we only had one TV so gaming time would be constrained to whenever my parents weren’t in front of it, ie never after supper. The C64 and then PC, similarly, were in my dad’s work room.
A funny early limiter with the PC and C64 was that my dad would launch the games for us, since we knew neither english nor how to operate the command line. Of course two weeks at most elapsed until we had figured out command lines on our own and by the time I was 13 we knew enough english to be able to read Terry Pratchett books, could write custom DOS boot disks and knew some Basic, so in this case what started as a limiter had quickly mutated into a powerful learning motivator.
I think playing Wind Waker and Majora’s Mask one hour at a time for several months each made their flaws less irritating. I also admire this about Dragon Quest and wish Persona/SMT games were easier to resume.
Outer Wilds is the best of Wind Waker and Majora’s Mask in my heart
My mom made up a half dozen systems to limit our video game time, most of which lasted about a month or two before they fell apart. Playing Nintendo remained something tightly controlled until I was a teenager though.
Weirdly, we were allowed to watch the Disney Channel and our recorded Full House tapes literally from the moment we got home from school until we went to bed, so not all “screen time” was created equal.
I, uh, needed limits placed on me, really. if left to my own devices, I probably would have played my twelve NES cartridges all day every day for six years straight.
Two thoughts:
This game is an excellent Frodo Baggins simulator. I’ve never had a videogame evoke his journey to Mount Doom as successfully as this does, whenever you choose to go to Hyrule Castle when you’re absolutely not prepared for it, and therefore you have to sneak sneak sneak, hope to god you’re not spotted, and if you are, run away to safety. The only other game to really hit this sweet spot is Metal Gear Solid 2, and then only in the naked Raiden segment.
Also, so many second breakfasts.
If I were someone else, I would simply not go to Snake Eater Island during a weather cycle involving a thunderstorm followed by a blood moon. It is very bad, by which I mean very good!