10 ms·

That was a fascinating and well-written article, and for a parent of young daughters, a depressing one that makes me doubt my strength to be a sufficiently good

• dictum 12y ago
  > it reinforces the idea that you ought to be so awesome that bullies leave you alone — which will never happen. Anecdata: bullies don't leave you alone because you're awesome, they leave you alone because their bullying doesn't work on you (because you're resilient to personal attacks, or you pretend to not care until they exhaust the possibilities and leave you alone etc.) or backfires on them somehow.
  • Domenic_S 12y ago
    Which is what makes this game weird. Just some quick initial thoughts: > The game tracks Gemma’s emotional state. When she’s running fast and jumping high, she feels good and the world is filled with light and color. When she gets laughed at, her mood darkens and the world darkens with her. That just reinforces that bullying inevitably and inexorably leads to depression. And then it also reinforces that acting happy ("running fast and jumping high") is the way to counteract it. In other words, it's the old standby advice of "just ignore them" in video game form.
    • Mithaldu 12y ago
      Nope, you need to keep the game's context in mind. The task is to get the pizza from point A to point B as fast as possible. Thus Gemma isn't simply fleeing, she's ignoring the bullies and focusing on doing what she wants to do. Depression comes from letting the bullies control her and happiness comes from refusing to do so. This very concept is in fact expressly embodied in the game with a little sequence where letting them get to her makes her fall to the ground, and she has to force herself to get back up and keep going.
      • ohitsdom 12y ago
        "You don’t kill the enemies in Ninja Pizza Girl. You can’t even knock them out. Sure, you can bowl them over for a second or two but if you hang around they’ll get right back up again. Running away is just as viable as attacking and sometimes more so. Running fast makes Gemma feel good about herself and feeling good is the most fragile resource in the game." I'd say running fast isn't just about delivering pizza fast, it seems to be about avoiding bullies too.
  • rsp1984 12y ago
    > bullies don't leave you alone because you're awesome, they leave you alone because their bullying doesn't work on you (because you're resilient to personal attacks, or you pretend to not care until they exhaust the possibilities and leave you alone etc.) or backfires on them somehow. I can tell from experience that this is not how it works. Real bullies never leave you alone until you stand up and fight back. It's the amount of energy it takes for them to bully, not the amount of damage they do. They don't care how resilient you are or whether you care about the bullying or not, when their bullying doesn't have any bad consequences or the potential for bad consequences. Only if you make it hard for bullies to bully it stops.
    • dublinben 12y ago
      >Only if you make it hard for bullies to bully it stops. One way of doing that, that many people have found successful, is to not let them bother you. If you're no longer interesting to bully, they'll ignore you for someone who is.
      • rsp1984 12y ago
        I wish it was easy like that. I don't know anyone who has successfully "not-bothered-away" bullies. They will stop as soon as it's socially no longer a gainful action for them. Not bothering may be part of it but it's certainly not sufficient.
        • oalders 12y ago
          It's hard to simplify something like bullying, but there can be a pecking order involved, where people who are bullied in turn bully other people whom they feel they can influence in some way. So, in some cases you may only need to push back to the point where you're not the easiest target in the room. ie, you don't always have to be the fastest runner to get away from animal who is looking for easy prey. You just have to be faster than the slowest runner.
        • danielweber 12y ago
          It's like stepping in the same puddle every day on the walk to school. It's not out-and-out fun, but it's a habit, a pattern, and if it might provide 3 seconds of entertainment, that's worth it. "Not being fun" won't make it stop.
  • Liesmith 12y ago
    This is the attitude of a bullying victim. Bullies leave you alone if you fit in, they don't leave you alone if you don't. It's not about being awesome or resilient, it's about conformity.
    • saraid216 12y ago
      It's not about conformity; it's about visibility. If you're conforming, you're a lot more invisible (and, it must be said, protected). There are other ways to become invisible, but I'm not sure the cost is worth the independence.
    • sheepmullet 12y ago
      It is not about conformity, it is about power. At my high school people didn't bother the goth kids because they stood up for each other. In the same way the openly gay (this was back 15 years ago) guy in the drama team was never bullied because he was friends with the cheerleaders who had the power to stop it. The problem is nerds rarely stick up for each other. Whenever I saw a nerd get bullied in high school all his friends would be acting as small as possible in order to avoid getting involved. The conflict avoidance enables bullying.
• MichaelDickens 12y ago
  > That aside, the game has a problem, in my view: it's too real. Exactly. I don't play zombie-based video games because zombies scare me. I play them because zombies are fun to kill. This game seems a little too realistic. Then again, it might be a good thing to confront some real-world fears in a video game. I could see a game like this working really well if it's designed right.
  • saraid216 12y ago
    People are allowed to play games that aren't fun.
    • jdmichal 12y ago
      Dwarf Fortress, for instance, has lots of Fun.
  • gknoy 12y ago
    I think it's a neat premise. We've had several critically acclaimed games that dealt heavily with "realistic" things -- Heavy Rain, for example.
    • Forlien 12y ago
      I don't disagree with your point, but Heavy Rain is a pretty out-there example. The game revolves around rescuing a child from a murderer. Though there were realistic aspects to Heavy Rain, the game itself is centered around a very unrealistic core story.
• spiritplumber 12y ago
  I'm not a parent, but have had to "babysit" teens and young adults with slowed development (autism etc) for a while now. That's really the extent of what I teach them: Be awesome. Love can only be freely given and respect can only be hard-earned.
• ams6110 12y ago
  Historically, males compete and establish superiority by fighting and physical strength. Females do it with mind games. That's why females are more emotionally manipulative than males are, in general.
  • muglug 12y ago
    Wow, how incredibly simplistic and wrong-headed. You're discounting politics, which has been an all-male or male-dominated arena for millennia and which thrives on emotional manipulation. The idea that women are mostly feelers and men are mostly doers writes off both men and women as useless stereotypes.
    • AnimalMuppet 12y ago
      Context: We're talking about teenagers. Yes, teenage boys have politics, and emotional cruelty. Still, on average, teenage boys are more physically aggressive and less emotionally manipulative than teenage girls.
      • saraid216 12y ago
        Fun fact: the physical aggression comes after the emotional manipulation. The difference isn't that boys are more physical; it's that they don't hide the results.
        • Crito 12y ago
          I don't think it is correct to speak in such absolutes. Sometimes a fight is just a fight. I got into my fair share of trouble when I was a kid; both starting fights without any real provocation and being the recipient of aggression without any real provocation. Much of the time it was caused by an unnecessary escalation of previously fun 'play' violence (towel fights in the locker room was a biggie). I can only think of two fights that were prompted by some form of emotional argument or dispute: In middle school I fought a bully at my bus-stop, and a year or two later a kid I had been bullying in boy scouts nearly broke my nose.
• dclowd9901 12y ago
  Agreed -- reading it, it felt like it needed to be more allegorical. As for the lesson, I think it should be "learn how to love yourself, so people's negativity can't penetrate you," but I didn't see anything in the article that indicated that was the takeaway. Then again, maybe games shouldn't be purveyors of morality lessons.
  • TheCraiggers 12y ago
    >Then again, maybe games shouldn't be purveyors of morality lessons. I don't see why not. Video games are no different from any other form of information delivery method, except that they're more interactive. Actually, I think this would make them even better tools for helping to teach morality. While you can pick up some morality from books or movies, those are other people's stories in which you're simply an observer. In a game, (especially more modern ones) you typically have more control over the character's actions. Take, for example, a game which gives you a choice to steal from somebody and, if you do, it shows you the repercussions of your choice. Maybe you come back to that town later and the person is a beggar who pleads with you to give him some coin so he can feed his kids. Or maybe you come back and the entire town is like that because you stole everything that wasn't nailed down. Written well, I don't see why dialog and visual cues like these can't be powerful morality lessons- more powerful than any other teaching method we have except perhaps for real-life experiences. Of course, the idea is to teach our kids those lessons before they learn them in real life, with real life repercussions.
    • CocaKoala 12y ago
      I remember reading something by the designer of the Putt-Putt adventure games where he ran up against this issue. The Putt-Putt games were adventure games designed for kids, say 6-10 years old or so. And obviously since they're adventure games, you have to pick up everything that isn't nailed down because it might be useful in a puzzle later. But the publishers of the game didn't want to encourage kids to just pick everything up in real life! So the developers had to, every time Putt-Putt picked something up, make him say "This looks like somebody lost it; maybe I can find the owner!".
• wglb 12y ago
  In regard to being a father of daughters, I can share one thought, as a parent of one (now grown) daughter. Create a time or place where each daughter feels totally safe in sharing with you whatever is on their mind. This requires a serious dedication to honing the skills of listening. I find that total listening is no small feat.
• mzs 12y ago
  Jason I am father of 12r old daughter, hang in there. It does not have to be like described in the article, try to show her that being liked is not important and know the families of her friends, those are the keys. It's tough, not 100%, but worth it, good luck.
• JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Its a storey brought to life. As such it can explore what your children will inevitably encounter, and lets them experiment with responses without being really hurt. Its wonderful.
• CodeMage 12y ago
  What you see as a problem is exactly what I like about the game. To me, parenting often feels like walking a tightrope: you have to preserve a delicate balance between presenting the world as it should be and presenting it as it is. The former is meant to instill values, the latter is meant to prepare and protect. Too much of the former sets the kid up for a huge disappointment. Too much of the latter would be crushing. That's why I would love to see a game like this, a game that addresses the problem, but ultimately remains a game you can have fun with. The best works I've ever read/seen/played are subtle: they don't shove their ideas down your throat, but make you think about their nuances later.
• breadbox 12y ago
  Sometimes we turn to art (such as games) to forget about the problems we face in our reality. Sometimes we turn to art because we're desperate to see our reality reflected somewhere else, to be reassured that we're not alone.
  • mainguy 12y ago
    This is the most insightful comment I've read in a long time. Kudos!
• bostonvaulter2 12y ago
  The game isn't even designed yet. How do you already know that it will be "too real" once it is ready to play?