DadCentric

Joining The Xbox Nation, Part Two

 This is the second in a three-part series of Xbox 360 Kinect reviews. Part One is here.

The boy was skeptical, as was I: would the Kinect deliver on its controller-free promise?

The answer? Sorta.

First, I had to set the thing up. The Kinect requires that you have a certain amount of floor space; our couch protruded into the thing's optimal zone, so I had to do a bit of furniture re-arranging. Not a problem for me, so much as an inconvenience; I backed it up a foot, and moved the attached ottoman over to the right side to free up the space we'd need to jump, swing our arms, and run in place. (Those of you with a small TV room, or one with a ton of furniture, beware: you might need to do some serious remodeling.) Navigating via the Kinect requires you to use different gestures, kind of like Tom Cruise does with his various future computers in Minority Report. It takes a bit of getting used to, and for younger kids, this might be frustrating, especially as the menu navigation functions can differ from one game to the next. (One suggestion: use the voice control whenever possible.)

Joining The Xbox Nation, Part One

 

Full disclosure: when the folks at Edelman PR contacted me and offered to send me, for review purposes, an Xbox 360 with Kinect and the games "Kinectimals (Now With Bears)", "Kinect Sports: Season Two", and "Kinect: Disneyland", I actually hesitated.

 

Here was a can of hi-res worms I wasn't sure I wanted to open. We'd bought a Wii a couple of years ago, and I was more than happy with it. Not because it's a decent console, with fun motion-based controllers and a whole slew of games for younger kids. No, I was happy with the Wii because for the most part, it sits by the TV collecting dust. Every once in a while Lucas plays with it, but he's a bit of a jock, likes his outdoor time, and quickly becomes bored or frustrated with video games. Not the worst problem to have as a parent. Zoe is four, and her definition of "playing" video games usually involves waving at the screen and talking to the computer-generated characters. As for me, I've never been much of a gamer: I had a first generation Xbox, which I bought a year or so after Lucas was born. I figured that as a new dad I'd be hanging around the house a lot more, and video games seemed to be a good way to pass the time. (When I wasn't being a caring and commited father, of course.) My days as an Xbox gamer were short-lived: a few months after I bought it, the kid busted it. He found out that the eject button opened the tray, and tried to close it manually. By pushing straight down on it. Snap. A couple hundred bucks down the drain. I was bummed for a couple of days, but as it became apparent that fixing the thing was going to cost as much as it would to buy a new one, I found myself...not caring. I gave the busted console to a friend who wanted to use it for parts, sold a few of the games to a used CD store, and didn't think twice about it.

And so we lived as non-gamers, and were content. Then I got the offer from Edelman. It did take me a few minutes to reply. But I said yes, and told them that I'm not a gamer, and that I was going to be honest about my experiences with the Xbox, the Kinect, and the games. That's fine, they replied. It's what we're looking for. 

"Gamer" is a weird way to self-identify. I occasionally describe myself as a surfer, but there's something to be said for that - I possess a set of physical skills and knowledge of the ocean that the average person does not, enabling me to participate in a very difficult, demanding, and even dangerous sport. But "gamer'? It's blissfully shameless - "I'm an adult who spends several hours a day sitting on my ass in front of the TV playing video games!" And make no mistake - the Xbox 360 is for the gamers. To get good at, say, Call Of Duty: Black Ops, you do in fact need to spend several hours sitting on your ass in front of the TV. As a guy with a fulltime day job, a few writing gigs, a blog to manage, oh, and a family, I do not have several hours a day to spare. The Wii was great, in that regard - the games are basic enough for both my 7-year-old son and decidedly non-gamer me. 

The Kinect, however, was what set the hook. Looking like a dashboard-mounted projector, the motion-based controller proports to go one step beyond the handheld Wii controllers - as the ads say, YOU are the controller. Simple concept, enormously complex execution: you stand in front of the thing, and what you do - swing an imaginary golf club, throw an imaginary football, wave an imaginary wand - is translated right up there on the TV, in the game. I was intrigued - not for my own sake, or even Lucas', but for Zoe. At four, the Wii controllers and most of the games are a bit too complicated for her. But running in place? Jumping up and down? That she can do. Lucas, meanwhile, was skeptical. "You don't hold anything? You just act it out?" "That's what they say", I replied. "Hmmm", he said. "That sounds impossible." 

This is the first of three posts I'll be doing about the Xbox 360. Next up: the kids put the Kinect through its paces. Finally, I try my hand at a couple of "grown-up" games, and ponder life as a new member of the Xbox Nation.

Rugby Tough

So we're clear: rugby is the toughest of team sports. At the adult level, it's ninety minutes of mostly nonstop running punctuated by pushing, shoving, tackling and getting tackled, all without pads. An adult American football player runs about 200 yards per game; an adult rugby player runs about five miles per game. You play defense, so you will tackle; you also play offense, so you will be tackled.

So we're clear: rugby for 8 year olds is a slightly different beast. It's two 15 minute halves, two-hand touch, and the coaches are on the field, directing the kids, telling them to stay in a line, don't pass the ball forward, and don't stop running. It's the game stripped down to the very basics: passing, catching, running, forming a straight line across the field when defending, staggering diagonally when on the attack. The rough stuff comes later. Still, when you get fourteen kids on a field chasing after one ball, there's gonna be some collisions. Most of the time they're accidental.

My boys had played two back-to-back games that morning, and they were feeling it. It was opening day, and while we'd been practicing for a few weeks, the intensity and pace of actual game play had worn them down. They'd had an hour to rest before their third and final game. Two of them - Lucas and another kid whose dad coached the club's U10 side - were second-year veterans. The rest were new to the game. They were loving it, but they were tired. And they had one game to go, against a team from Orange County that had twice our numbers - plenty of fresh legs to sub in. I had two substitutes. It was going to be a slog. But that's rugby.

"Take a knee, boys", I told them before kickoff. "You guys have played hard today. I'm really, really proud of all of you." Not a lie - we won our first game, lost our second, but the kids played as a team, listened to me and my assistant coach, and had a blast. They were slightly glassy-eyed, but grinning in anticipation. "Let's go out, focus on what we've learned, play our best, and good things will happen. Circle up." We stood, put our hands in, yelled our team name - "THUNDER!!!" - and took the field.

And then things went south.

Step Into The Wampa Cave

My youngest son made up a game and taught it to me. The instructions are below. This game is called Wampa Cave.

To play Wampa Cave, you need the following:

• 1 lightsaber
• 1 floor, or if a floor is not available, a ground will work

Wampa Cave is a 2-player game, one child and one adult.

Step 1: Clip the lightsaber to the child’s belt.

Step 2: Mount the child on your back. Assume a tauntaun-like posture and run around in a tauntaun-like manner making tauntaunish noises. Let out a worried tauntaun grumble.

Charges

It was a perfect afternoon for rugby; the park sits right across the street from the beach, we'd be running the kids, and the cold ocean breeze would help keep them going. For many of them, this would be their first experience with the game. I'm in charge of the U8 side - boys aged 8 and under, too young for tackle (not that they don't want to try laying out their teammates, but rugby tackling is an art form that requires conceptualization, discipline and maturity; running into each other like spinning tops is Pop Warner stuff, and I didn't want any black eyes or concussions on our first evening). The boys were excited to learn. I walked the newcomers through the basics: how we pass, how we kick, how we run behind the ball and how we are a team, everyone functions as one, no one gets left behind.

One kid asked me if he was going to be "stuck playing defense". I recognized the phrase - I'd used it myself when I was eight, and my soccer coach decided that his kid would be a striker, and I'd be a fullback. Ultimately, I came to love playing D, and would continue my reverse advance into the net. I was a pretty good goalie, and I enjoyed knocking opposing players down almost as much as I loved making a save. But I never forgot what put me in the backfield. "Yep", I told the kid. "And you'll play offense. You'll score tries. You'll kick. You'll tackle. Everybody does everything in our sport." "Awesome!", he said. I grinned. "It really is".

How About A Nice Game Of Chess?

Something occurred to me the other day that gave me a bit of a start. I was thinking about the last game of chess that I played with my five-year-old. I didn’t realize it at the time - maybe because I was distracted by the three-year-old trying to knock all the pieces off of the board like a giant that’s come across two warring armies and decides to stomp them both (“hold on Mr. Giant Dude, just let us finish up this battle first!”) - but what I didn’t realize then, what I only just realized was that I had to make very few corrections to my five-year-old opponent’s moves. 

I don’t mean that all of his moves were strokes of strategic brilliance. I still got him in checkmate. I simply mean that, for the most part, he moved all of his pieces in the way that they are allowed to as prescribed by the rules of the game. I only had to correct him a handful of times. And at the start of the game, he placed all of his pieces in their correct starting positions. In fact, now that I think about it, he’s been doing that for a while. This is progress. This is...

“What is it doing?”
“It’s learning.”

...unnerving.

Chess is the one game where I absolutely refuse to let up on the kid. I’m no master, my knowledge of strategy is limited, but I have a respect for it that won’t allow me to put it on the same level as, say, Candy Land. It’s the kind of game one should only win by winning it and where even a loss is to be welcomed for what it has to teach. So yes, I’ll correct him when he tries to move a bishop straight ahead or glides a rook around the board in an “S” pattern, and sometimes I’ll stop him and tell him to reconsider when he’s about to put a valuable piece in unnecessary danger. But other times I’ll just go on and take his damn queen. That’s how you learn.

The thing is, I'm having to make those corrections less and less often.

My son and I first played when he was four after many requests from him. It was a challenge then just to get him to stop calling it “chest.” Games were slow. I repeated the same instructions and explanations dozens of times, doing my level best to hold my exasperation at bay. “He’s only four,” I’d remind myself, “which means you’ve only explained how knights move once for every day he’s been alive.”

Now I look back and see that he’s come pretty far since those first games. And I have a feeling that it won’t be long. One day, my king will look up and see enemies encroaching on all sides. His army will lay bloody and beaten. The few remaining subjects, loyal as they are, will be powerless to save him. Across the battlefield, he’ll spot the unmistakable form of his queen lying motionless. He’ll close his eyes, hear distant laughter, and welcome the enemy’s blade.

“Checkmate, dad.”

Won’t be long now.

Do You Like To Gamble?

I play the lottery - Powerball - a few times a month. 

I've been to Atlantic City about a dozens times but stuck strictly to the slot machines.

Never been to Vegas.

Not that I don't take risks, I'm just not that into gambling.

I have friends who play poker religiously and have had co-workers who make annual trips to Las Vegas, but for me the appeal has never sucked me in quite the same way as it does other folks.

But I do like a good bet. 

I make bets often with my boys.

This soccer season, while his older brother was practicing, me and my youngest son Cole would throw rocks and sticks into the pond by the fields. A few months back we noticed a bobber hanging from a tree branch. 

We made a bet and the bet was that you had to make a direct hit on it with either a rock or stick. It was about twenty feet out and twenty feet up. Whoever got a direct hit would net $20.

"What happens if you hit it Dad?" He asked.

"Well then somebody is going to owe me $20," I said.

After a few weeks of attempts, he gave up and he'd do homework, read a book or kick the soccer ball around. 

"I wonder if the bobber's still there, Dad?" he asked last week.

We walked over behind the gravel parking lot to the tree-lined pond and found that not only was the bobber still there but two others had join him.

He picked up a half a dozen sticks and fired away.

The last stick hit the bobber dead on.

"You owe me money!" he hollered.

He put out the palm of his hand and said, "Pay up."

I didn't have any money on me so we drove to an ATM machine. 

I didn't want to welch on my bet - I withdrew a crisp twenty dollar bill and handed it to him.

He took the bill, drew it under his nose, and inhaled.

"I love the smell of money Dad," he said.

"Don't we all son," I said. "Don't we all..."

 

 

Every Hand's A Winner

So I’m sitting there at the kitchen table with my eldest and we’re playing War with his deck of round cards with the soccer balls on the back, and it’s just high card wins which is simple enough until you throw out a face card and find yourself explaining things like the gender inequalities that led to this gaming system where kings always win over queens, never mind the tactical advantages that a queen’s army may have over a king’s in real life, and then I find myself thinking, huh, maybe chess was revenge for that whole cards thing. Or did chess come first?

And then my kid tosses out a Queen and I toss out a Jack and my three-year-old is squirming in my lap and the five-year-old is trying to remember out loud if it’s the Q or the J that’s higher and I’m thinking to myself, huh, I guess this right here is just about the highlight of the day, and right about then the kid pipes up and he doesn’t ask which card wins, but rather, who the hell is this Jack person? Which is a good question to which I don’t know the answer. Isn’t he the guy that’s diggling the queen on the side or something? And if so, why does such a person get to beat a ten card? Or for that matter, an eight, what with its propensity for going on into infinity?

“I don’t know, son,” I told him, “but here’s something I do know. Hey, look at me.”

He looked up from his cards and I leaned in close and looked him in those big browns that his Mom gave him. He didn’t have any whiskey on him, so I just gave him the advice for free.

“Son,” I started, “you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em. Know when to walk away, know when to run.”

He starts laughing at me, as does the wife. I can’t believe these people.

“And son, you never count your money when you’re sitting at the table.”

This kid’s never heard this song in his life. What’s so damn hilarious?

“There’ll be time enough for counting when the dealing’s done.”

As for the wife, I don’t know what she finds so amusing. This is solid world-weary wisdom straight from the mouth of a nameless mooch with a gambling addiction that met Kenny Rogers on a train this one time.

“Okay kid, laugh all you want, but you’ll wish you’d listened next time you find yourself in some saloon somewhere."

Parental wisdom: unappreciated aside from its entertainment value.

A Letter To Mr. Charles Eugene Cheese

Dear Chuck,

My son and I visited your fine establishment the other night to take part in the birthday celebration for one of his friends. Although it was my son’s first visit, his friends had clearly been telling him about it because it was all he could talk about the entire day. He was so exited, in fact, that he chattered all the way from our house to your parking lot, and his little voice kept spiking upwards into excited mountains of squeak.

“Are we THERE yet, Daddy? Are we AL-most to Chuck E. CHEESE? How many more MI-nutes ‘til we GET to Chuck E. CHEESE? FIVE more minutes? My FRIEND is turning five today, but I’m al-READY five! Are we THERE yet? How many more MI-nutes? I can’t WAIT!”

Yep, his little friends really talked your joint up something good.

Everything I Needed To Know About Parenting I Learned From Playing Lego Star Wars

When I bought my son Wii Lego Star Wars for his birthday this spring, it was something of a leap of faith. He'd shown only a passing interest in the films, and his limited attention span didn't really seem to lend itself to the long-term gameplay necessary to navigate oneself through this kind of a thing. That notwithstanding, my hope was that he'd not only learn to enjoy the game and the storyline behind it, but also be able to use the game - and his ability to think and talk about it - as a way to find common ground with his peers.

(That's an autism spectrum thing. Peer-to-peer social relationships can be tough, and even when kids want to talk to their classmates... they may not know how to initiate, or what to say, or how to respond when others talk to them. My kinda-sorta-it'd-be-cool-if-it-worked-out-this-way idea was that Lego Star Wars might provide some kind of contextual framework to help make that happen.)

Anyhow, after about four months of ignoring the game, he finally started paying attention and playing about a month and a half ago. He's now obsessively working his way through it... and, predictably, I'm getting sucked in as well. And as we've stood there, side-by-side in our basement, fucking up stormtroopers and drones, a few parallels between the game and this whole parenting... thing... have popped into my head. May I share my observations? I may? Thank you. You're too kind.