First, it sounds like you're trying to connect with your kids and build relationship where you are all closer to peers and I want to commend you on that. You s

First, it sounds like you're trying to connect with your kids and build relationship where you are all closer to peers and I want to commend you on that. You should also know what you're signing yourself up for. Video games (especially if you haven't played many before) demand more of you in a way that a movie does not, and simply cannot. A movie will continue at 1 second per second whether you are distracted, confused about the plot, or completely engrossed. A video game does not. Until you can do the action required of you to progress, you are not progressing. Period. Can't figure out this puzzle? Try harder or look online. Can't hit those jumps? Tough. Your aim is bad? Practice. I think that's the biggest takeway from video games, they set a standard for you to meet and they will not give you an inch until you meet them. Much harder to fool yourself into thinking that you can do something when the game keeps telling you otherwise. > 1. best video games to expand teenage minds Expand them how. Through the actions of playing the game (e.g. Baba Is You), or by discussing the context of the game (Fortnite/Candy Crush/Farmville). Baba Is You is a great example of the kind of game that will challange you to think in new ways. Fortnite/Candy Crush/Farmville are a great opportunity to discuss manipulation, addiction, and preying on the most vulnerable. And, where are they starting from? What do they currently play? What skills do they currently have? Whatever they're playing, get them to play something different. Have they try the FPS game, see what it's like to have to play aggressively and at 100 miles an hour (Doom, either the original or the 2016 version for this). Play an RTS game and learn to act now, not when you have the perfect setup (StarCraft II). > 2. What does the "best 100 video games" look like Some parts of that list looks similar to the top 100 movies of all time lists. Genre defining movies and movies incredibly important for their time, but kinda boring now. Others hold up remarkably well and are much better as emulated. > 3. "And what does scene construction, story arc and so on mean when you can do anything?" For starters, you cannot do anything in video game. You are actually restricted to doing only those things which the designers allow you to do, intentionally or otherwise. This is a virtual world that they have built from the ground up themselves. Games can and do have story arcs, many AAA titles have a story in them or have the story as the focal point of the game. The developers built this world, if they want you to experience an arc they can force you to. They can make you enter cutscenes, or force you to talk to certain characters and make certain choices before the plot can progress. I personally dislike story and skip past the story as much as possible. If I wanted a story with moving images I would have watched a movie. *The* defining characteristic of the medium is its interactivivity, its ability to let you do anything within the reals of possiblity of the game world. Why should I squander that ability in order to read lines of dialogue. So back to your question, what do they mean? They mean essentially the same thing as in movies if the game shows you a story. We've all heard "show don't tell" as advice for movies/show. Well someone will come up with a similar phrase, and I'm betting on it having the form "__ don't show". Finally, I'll give you some of my own recommendations. Take a look at those tentpole games, they're the blockbusters and Marvel of the video game world. Then try some of these: - The Witness (don't look up anything and if your using trial and error you're doing it wrong) - Passage (by Jason Rohrer) - Democracy (really internalize the idea of token gestures) - Phasmaphobia (play it together) - Doom (both the original and the 2016 version) - Patapon (rhytm game, psp emulator needed) - Monster Hunters Freedom Unite 2 (plan, adapt, grind, coordinate, psp emulator needed) None of these need expensive hardware (except maybe doom 2016), and monster hunters has a newer version that's made for PC, but it'd reccomend the older one with emulation