Reluctantly we watched as first my 10-year old son, and then my 6-year old daughter caught the bug for yet another MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game). Last year it was Club Penguin, and this year it’s Wizard 101. As a responsible parent, I always check these out when they crop up, as I want to know what my kids can and cannot do online, to see what the culture of these communities is like, and to get in touch, at least a bit, with what my kids are into that may not be so obvious around the dinner table. I played Club Penguin with them for a couple of weeks, but they quickly lost interest. We were glad to see that happen as the focus of the game was pretty much having Penguin fun and buying Penguin stuff. Interaction was a rarity except to compete in games and contests. Thus, it was with little enthusiasm that I logged onto Wizard 101 a couple of weeks ago; expectations were low, to say the least.

I was quite pleasantly surprised, and in fact, have gotten sucked into the game playing it with my kids. The basic story is that you are a wizard-in-training and complete a whole variety of quests, either by yourself or with the help of your friends, and play a bunch of cool age-appropriate little games to get additional wizard money and strength. Your character can talk to and interact with others in the game, and features let you you’re your friends and cooperate to solve problems and complete quests. The game is beautifully rendered, and easy enough for a young kid to play but also challenging enough the older kids and even adults can enjoy. In addition, unlike many MMOGs, this one is really quite clean, with little violence, no blood or gore, and no drug or alcohol references. The emphasis is on achieving goals and cooperating, not just on having fun and buying stuff, which is nice. It’s a fun diversion, and my current guilty little secret is that I reached level 20 this weekend playing with my 2 kids- really quite fun on a snowy day, sitting in front of the fire talking to each other while we’re all on our laptops playing together.

An added benefit is that I get to hang out online with my daughter, who loves to play with the bigger kids, but gets frustrated and falls behind. Frustration is a big part of her real and virtual life right now, and every day at school and home, we work with her to channel her emotions form frustration and anger into problem-solving. To my surprise, Wizard 101 has provided another venue in which to work on these skills in a “fun” way; when she is on a quest and I am helping her and she gets frustrated, she and I can work together to help her find a way to stop being upset and solve the problem. In her virtual world, as in her real one, she gets reinforced for not getting upset and finding a solution to her problem. Every little bit helps…

I also enjoy watching and interacting online with my son, who is clearly identifies himself as a “gamer”. He’s at the point now where he is starting to design his own games and wants to learn to program, and it’s great to see him both having fun online with his buddies, but also writing down the features he likes and beginning to sketch out mock-ups of what he wants to create in his first programming task, which his Dad is eager to help him with in the future. He’s also risen to the occasion in helping and collaborating with his little sister to teach her how to play and to cooperate with her on her quests. They are at an age where the difference between 6 and 10 is HUGE and on Wizard, it is smaller. It is a nice break, and they have fun together online in a way that is a little harder offline that it was when he was younger. He is really rising to the occasion and has commented to her that he is impressed with how she plays and that he likes playing with her on Wizard; you can imagine the smiles that generates.

In any event, I know in a few months Wizard 101 will be out of vogue, but for the time being, it is a fun online world for my kids that has at least a shard of value in that in addition to being a lot of just plain fun, it helps to foster cooperation and respect between my kids and gives us all a virtual world in which to play together on snowy, lazy, Saturday afternoons.

Tags: family time, having fun, kid online games, mmog, MMOGs, safe online games, Wizard 101

This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 4:54 pm and is filed under family, work/life balance . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.