I'm Going To The Fjäll!

Here is something unrelated to gaming for a change. Or is it? Let's call it real-life open world. Or sandboxing maybe. In essence, I'm going hiking. And not just your around-the-corner-neighbourhood-forest-hiking (in Sweden we have plenty of those) but a week long, set-up-your-own-damn-tent-and-kitchen, shit-in-a-hole-in-the-ground-like-you're-on-Survivor kind of hiking, in the Swedish Fjäll, aka northern mountain ranges. If you wonder what that looks like, it's a whole lot of nothing, which is really cool if you're into that. I'm not not into that, so it'll be interesting to experience.

Just me, myself and the lemmings.

I have, save once as a 8-9 year old, never even been to the Fjäll, nor done any significant kind of hiking. When I was around 9 I remember going there with my parents and then 5-year old brother, and I remember doing a lot of walking and liking it, but how much hiking can it really have been with two kids in tow? I don't recall us tenting for instance, I'm pretty sure we had rented a cabin and did day-excursions from there. So this is on a whole 'nother level and eventhough I love being in the forest I haven't tented since I was a teenager either (let's pretend that wasn't 15 years ago).

How did I get into this mess? Well, my mother loves hiking and seems to spend more time in her tent than at home, especially during her vacation. She loves it so much in fact she recently decided to become a Fjäll Hiking Leader with her SO, ie someone who leads other people into the wilderness (and hopefully also get them living out of there). They mentioned they were going to lead a group of people at the end of July and I sort of mentioned it would've been fun to be there. Mom obviously said I could come too. Well then! Why back down now? The fact that I have literally no experience? The fact that I have literally no gear? No, why let those pesky things be a problem, right? Right?!

It probably won't be this green...

I got really into the idea but at first it looked like we wouldn't have someone to babysit my son, as my SO was still working. Fortunately my dad and his SO came to the rescue and offered to be with him for the week I'm gone. Unfortunately they live 9 hours away by train. Fortunately it's on the way I am heading up north anyway (which is 18 hours away by train). Unfortunately that means spending 9 hours on a train with a 3-year old. Fortunately he's really into the Gameboy. I also actually swapped to a 22gb internet plan (from 3gb) for my phone just so I would have enough Youtube to entertain him with on the train.

Mom said I could borrow a lot of gear from her, so for instance tent and kitchen were sorted from the get-go. I still had to invest a couple of hundred euros into clothes and food but what the heck (apparently I'm made of money now) (I'm really not btw). Finding the right kind of clothes and food was a bit tricky, especially when you've never done it before. I felt very lucky to be able to phone my mom with every question I had, like "do I need to bring a bra?" (If you want), "Do I need to bring soap?" (No, just wet wipes will do), "are these the right kind pants/shoes I need?" (No, no, no). Finding the right pants took three tries and finding the right shoes took two tries. Thanks a lot to the outdoor-store for their patience with my fumbling.

Part of Kebnekaise

So the plan at the moment is for me to take a 9 hour train ride up north to where my dad lives, mind you I'm going to deal with all the luggage I need for my trip and for my 3-year old, while also dealing with a 3-year old. Then leave my son there and continue up north on another 9 hour train ride up to someplace called Abisko, which is about as far north in Sweden as you can get. From there we're hiking down south over a week to a place called Nikkaluokta from which I will be able to get a car ride back to where my dad lives. We'll pass Swedens highest mountain Kebnekaise too, but I don't think we're going up there. I hope. Oh, and apparently the weather is particularly shitty this year with a lot of snow still lying around so I am picturing an Arctic Expedition basically. I know what happened to Robert Falcon Scott.

Add to this that not only have I never been on anything close to a week-long trip outdoors, I have also never been anywhere close to away from my son for that long. The longest we've been separated has been when I still had my 25-hour workshifts. Eventhough I think it'll be hard on me, I know I can tough it out knowing I will get to see him soon again. But I am of course worried how my son will handle it. With no prior experience there is no way of telling. Because we live 9 hours apart, he doesn't get to meet my dad and his SO very often (grandpa and grandma), but I know he likes them. They live in the countryside with forest and lake right next to the house, so there will be loads of fun things for him to do. I hope time will fly fast for him and that he will have a blast. I have no idea what reception is going to be like, but I guess very patchy, so I won't be able to keep much contact. I'm sure he'll be fine though.

Question is, will I?

Toddler & Game - Whip The Hair Back and Forth

My son is almost 2,5 years old and so far I haven't actively encouraged him to play video games. We don't own any kind of tablet and I won't let him use my phone or PC (because he messes everything up!), so he's left to the consoles we have standing around. It's not that I'm worried he'll be too inactive, he spends about 80% of his awake time running around, but rather that I am worried about the well being of my consoles. The level he's been at so far is turning the consoles off and on again and as long as that was the case I prefered him doing other things.

But that is changing, and it is very interesting to see. It started with Yoshi's Story. I'm not sure how he got interested in the game to begin with, I was probably playing it at some point or other - but he loved the intro sequence and especially the music. After that it was impossible for me to try to play the game, he reset the console after the first minute or so of intro, rewatched, reset, rewatched and so on until I told him we'd go do something else (it didn't take long before I felt sorry for my N64). Same thing with Sonic on the Mega Drive (my bfs favorite game).

Eventually he would press a button on the controller, because hey! buttons are totally fun to press. And they are! In video games all kinds of things happen when you press the controller and he quickly figured that one button would make Yoshi eat stuff and the other would make Yoshi jump. So we licked and jumped a lot. But obviously he still had no grasp of the concept of the game, to get to the end of it. And when you're that age you make up your own rules and try out new things all the time. It's one of the most charming aspects of the age and I normally let him to it until he figures something out that he likes. Besides, who says you have to play games a certain way? The main focus is to have fun with them. I used to play Settlers 2 completely without enemies after all, simply because I enjoyed building up a society without the hassle of adversaries.

Sometimes however, I like to try things out and see what he thinks. Because the controller is way big for his wee little hands (they're totally cute), he can't push the buttons and make Yoshi walk at the same time. I decided to see if we could co-op play the game where I would make Yoshi walk and he would jump and eat things. And it was actually really fun! It was a huge challenge for me, since I needed to avoid dangers and make sure to not run into enemies/pits until the son was pressing the right buttons, and he was having a blast getting to eat fruits and jump over pits. Great success. Although resetting the console and watching the intro sequence is still what he enjoys most so far.

He had less trouble when it came to my N3DS, something I have been lending to him only very reluctantly because that is 150 euro of hardware he could decide to throw into the floor at any second. Not to mention my fear that he would accidentally erase some data from it, I've been through that horrible experience before (yes I am looking at you little brother!) As I was sitting next to him and supervising his every move I realized that there is actually a lot more for a toddler to enjoy about a 3DS than I initally thought. For instance I didn't have a clue that most main menu icons are sound triggered, in which they will move faster if you blow or speak into the mic. My son discovered this quickly and will sit yelling at the 3DS for a while before moving on to other things.

Next he discovered my Shantae and the Pirate's Curse in which he could shoot and hair-whip as Shantae, which he loved for some reason. It took him quite some time before he even tried to run around, and because he was at my end-game save he ran straight into the final boss... which he BEAT! I'll be completely honest and admit I activated Pike Ball for him, but other than that I didn't touch a single thing and he managed to finish the final boss of Shantae and the Pirate's Curse just by pressing things randomly (because I really doubt he knew what was actually going on).

He also found a drawing program I didn't even know the 3DS had (turns out it's the Letter Box feature where you can draw your own letters and also replay your drawing, it's quite cool) and the camera. Next time I checked he had taken 20 pictures of his feet and drawn 30 letters full of squigglies.

And that's the level we're at at the moment and it'll be interesting to see how that develops further on. I'm still not in a hurry for him to get any kind of hooked on video games, as I am certain the Minecraft curse will affect him too soon enough. But I am also not against him playing some every now and then as it is in fact interactive entertainment just as with any other toy. Who knows, I might let him inherit my Game Boy Advance SP for his third birthday. He would probably just look at it and wonder why there isn't a touch screen or camera though.

Baby & Game (Part 2 - All Fun And Games)

A couple of years ago I read Jane McGonigals book "Reality Is Broken" and eventhough I wasn't overly fond of the book in particular (you can read about it here) I did like the core concept - that through presenting seemingly dull tasks as fun games there is a lot of manpower to be put into useful things. As an example I remember a game that allowed "players" sort through thousands of snippets of old documents found by archaelogists, marking the ones that had letters on them (and which letters), thus saving the actual archaeologists tons of time. I tried this game myself and it wasn't fun, or should I say ellaborate, enough to spend hours on (but then some game concepts are very simple yet keep you hooked) but good enough to jump in every now and then. Even if only a couple of thousand people try it out and spend in total an hour playing it, there is alltogether a lot of time saved for what in reality is a menial task. Hence, Reality Is Broken. The title is actually quite catchy, since it pinpoints something crucial about the world around us. It's easy to make things boring, but it's also not that difficult to make things more fun.

Personally I've noticed that trying to make things more fun for yourself is a much more difficult task than to do it to someone else or have someone else do it for you. Maybe it's a bit like tickling, where it just doesn't work if you try to do it to yourself. Anyone who's tried it knows that sticking to a diet, gym regime or quit smoking all by yourself is a lot trickier than when you have friends who're in it with you. Or if you have some sort of app that allows you to track your progress. I mentioned to a friend at work the other day that the way she was tracking points and progress on her diet was a lot like a game. You're presented with a challenge that you need to overcome and the app gives you clear visual feedback on your progress, something that might be difficult to see if your just checking the scales. I know there are apps that do similar things for smoke-quitters - tracking how much money you've saved and "life you've gained". I once tried a browser game that was meant to make daily chores more fun in allowing for my character to level up and become stronger if I managed to do the laundry and dishes, or die if I failed (I died pretty early on...).

So eventhough the book was so-so, I am a big fan of the idea that by making things more gamey, ie fun, there is a lot that can be accomplished. Both on a society-scale and a personal-scale. I am sure you've also had the thought "if only I put all these hours into a degree/learning an instrument/learning another language/actually writing that book I always wanted to write I'd probably be rich by now". I read the book before I decided to try for a kid and I had embraced the idea long before I read the book but I also think I had fused the two in my head a long time ago. That having a kid could in many ways be seen as playing a game. I made the comparison to Tamagotchi in a post once, and mentioned then that I obviously understand that having an actual child is a lot more serious than "just" playing a game. After all it's another person we're talking about here, not my personal object of entertainment. Unlike a game, a kid is not something to give attention to when you feel like it and ignore when you don't. Nerdraging and rage quitting are not options you should consider. Rather than seeing child-raising as a game, I tried to think about how game-playing could affect my interactions with my child.

If you think about it, they do have a lot in common. There are things you do in games that aren't in themselves particularly fun but that you do anyway because the overall goal is worth it (ie grinding for an item). In the same way there are things you need to do with a child that aren't in themselves particularly fun but that you do anyway because it makes you happy to see your child happy (ie change diaper, read the same book/play the same game for the hundredth time). Most importantly, gaming requires a lot of patience. After having died 150 times to the same boss (yes, it happens), after having failed with the same platforming jump for the 30th time, after having spent 20 minutes on trying to crack a puzzle - having fun will give you the patience you need to give it another go.

Having a 1,5 year old, I realize that whether I say "yes" or "no" about something really comes down to patience. No I don't have the patience to make sure you don't break these things, so I'm not going to let you see them. No I don't have the patience for this to take three times more time, so I am not going to let you "help" me. No I don't have the patience to make sure you don't hurt yourself, so I am not going to let you go there. I decided early on I wanted to avoid saying no to my son just because I didn't have the patience to do it. I wanted my "no's" to mean something to him, hopefully making him understand that when I do say no, it's because it really means no, not because mommy doesn't feel like it. And dealing with a child really requires immense amounts of patience. Even if they're completely well behaved they can require so much energy. It also requires so much more patience since you're dealing with someone who has no concept of time and has very little patience of his/her own.

That's why I figured I would probably do us both a favor if I tried to make things more fun, for myself and for him. It definitely helps that I have the time to not have to rush things, I imagine it'll be a new challenge once I am pressed for time, trying to get to work while getting kid and everything else ready (that'll probably be matters for a future post). But now I have the time to let him help out with cleaning, in fact he has so much fun doing something I find quite boring, it gets more fun for me to do as well. Because he loves watering the plants it actually gets done every now and then, I used to forget about it until my plants started turning dangerously yellow (I am sorry!). Because he loves throwing things in the bin we don't have crumpled papers (like receipts) lying around anymore (and have sadly lost some other things when not looking). We can make a game out of putting away things when you're done with them, getting dressed, brushing your teeth (works some of the time at least), sweeping the floor (he loves that too). If he is having fun with it, I don't have to see it as a chore and it's a lot easier to have patience and energy for it. And to be fair I might as well make the most of it while he thinks it's fun, because I am pretty sure that won't last for much longer.

And obviously not everything is fun and games all the time. I can't have my kid help me with everything (like cleaning the toilet) and I can't be available 100% of the time (he still doesn't really get why I need to go to the bathroom). But the mindset definitely helps offsetting a lot of frustration.

In essence, I think games have taught me not to see an unhappy child as an obstacle but as a challenge, an opportunity for me to learn something and maybe try something different. They have helped me to keep my focus on the goal rather than to feel stuck at a problem, knowing that eventually I will get to the reward even if it feels like hard work at the moment. Those countless wipes in WoW definitely helped me forge that way of thinking and I actually think it has helped me in my everyday life.

Baby & Game

Whenever me and the bf have some free time, we pretty much use it to game. We do watch the occasional series or in my case write a bit (reading has unfortunately been put on the back burner for now) but for the most part we try to get some game time in. It's funny how we try to maximally utilize the baby sleep time by pretty much cutting out anything remotely irrelevant and cram in more game time. Make tea? No time. Go to the bathroom? Not now! God forbid he falls asleep while we're out. Run home and maybe there is still time for some minutes of gaming! This is not the actions of addicts, but of gaming deprived individuals (that's what I'm sticking with at least).

Which is why I don't play sim-games - aspertypical.com

It's inevitable however that we go bold enough to try and do something gaming related while the little guy is awake. As much as I love playing "spin the shiny thing", "rattle the plastic thing" or "bang the hard thing", every now and then you need a break from those thrilling games and do something mommy wants to do. This is when the hunt for baby entertainment begins. And I've made some nice discoveries.

Growing up owning a Nintendo 64, I was one of the people who never liked it when other people said that Nintendo only made "kids games" like it was a bad thing. They didn't get it all wrong however. The N64 games are perfectly suited for infants and toddlers!

Watching a Let's Play of Banjo & Kazooie, a game I always liked but found way too difficult for myself to ever finish, I noticed how my little son (currently 8 months old) loved to watch it with me. And not just Banjo & Kazooie, but pretty much anything with big, colorful sprites/figures and not too quick movements. The whole mid-90's segment of video gaming is filled with games that fill that criteria - games like Croc, Spyro, Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose and Lester the Unlikely. These are examples of games at least my kid thinks are absolutely hilarious to watch, often having him even laugh out loud at the funny sound effects and animations (or whatever it is that amuses him, I don't actually know!).

Giant carrots are hilarious to a baby - giantbomb.com

My bf who is a massive Sonic fan was also happy to notice that our son loves to watch him play Sonic. At least Green Hill Zone and definitely the bonus stage - especially in Sonic & Knuckles (I guess he likes the "booap booap" sound effect the balloons do). He snaps his head towards any direction he hears the Sonic tune from, his entire face turning expectant, hoping to see some Sonic action.

In non-gaming but still baby-related news we've also managed to identify at least two songs he enjoys listening to, not counting all the actually-designed-for-children-but-nauseating-for-adult-tunes he likes;
Psy - Gentleman, which almost always silences him when he's cranky and
James Blunt - You're Beautiful, maybe that is mostly because of how horribly highpitched the bf tries to sing along.

Me and the bf have discussed how we want to introduce video gaming to our son, when the day comes that he actually wants to play some himself. He is already curiously investigating our controllers (admittedly he is curiously investigating pretty much anything at the moment) and it's not too far off before he hopefully wants to give gaming a try. We both feel that starting out on the older consoles could be a good thing, as the games often are straight forward and designed with small children in mind - Sonic again as an example. Really older games, talking about NES here, might be a bit too unforgiving and difficult for a really small child to enjoy (or maybe that's just my impatient ass who thinks that, the kids back in the 80'd didn't complain!), but the SNES/Mega Drive era could be perfect for a small kid to start with (although in all honesty a lot of those games are pretty tricky as well).

This is where anger is born - gameskinny.com

Maybe the most important thing I hope to teach him is a respect for where gaming is coming from and different styles of designs - a time when instant satisfaction and reward wasn't as prevalent as it is today. Just looking at my own gaming experiences I can see how the instant gratification system has affected me. I don't want to be one of those people who needs a game to be super fun the first 10 min or throw it out, and I don't want my son to be like that either. It's always easy to think you'll do things one way of course, but we'll see how easy it is to put into practice once we get there. Most likely it is something that'll come naturally. Either he will show an interest for the old consoles or he won't. I just hope I can fill his head with some classics before he gets to the age where he feels the need to play whatever his friends are playing. I have really fond memories of watching my mom play games and I hope I can share the same thing with my son.

It'll be very interesting to see what kind of games he eventually enjoys playing, as me and the bf are quite different in tastes. He likes the late 80's-early 90's console platforming games the best and I prefer the late 90's-early 00's pc games the best. It'd be funny if he decided to fill out some genres currently unrepresented in our household - racing and sports games. Time will tell.