Five video games you can feel good about buying for your kids
I love my child more than anything in the world, but her taste in video games leaves a lot of room for improvement. Of course, that’s partly the old man in me that considers the things I liked growing up to be better than the things kids enjoy today. Even with that understanding of my bias, I still look at the games my kid plays and cringe.
It’s not the content, nor the art, nor the storytelling. It’s the free-to-play nature and microtransaction minefields of what she enjoys. My kid mostly plays mobile games, preferring the kinds of experiences that avoid confrontation and killing and encourage her to squeal, “Awww!” from her room every few minutes. I’m glad she found her niche, but I am always trying to remind her of the world out there where the gameplay stands on its own and progress is encouraged, not stymied by frustrating timers or is otherwise blocked by a paywall.
With that in mind, here are a handful of video game experiences you can feel good buying for your kids that avoid such pitfalls and are just good for the sake of being good. And as a bonus, my kid enjoyed them, too.
Apple Arcade
(Specifically, Sneaky Sasquatch, Word Laces, etc.)
Platform: iOS
My kid often runs to me with her device asking for permission to download something that makes me scowl with concern. With an Apple Arcade subscription I discovered I can just point to the Arcade shortcut on the App Store’s front page and say, “Only get games from here.” I still need to offer my parental oversight to tell her things like, “You probably wouldn’t like Neo Cab,” but I rest assured knowing that whatever she finds in there will at least be free of predatory transactions or other questionable mobile game practices — a requirement of every Apple Arcade game.
The two big hits so far have been RAC7 Games’ Sneaky Sasquatch and Minimega’s Word Laces. Sneaky Sasquatch is a friendly story about a Sasquatch trying to collect food and blend into society. It’s silly, colorful and is good about making sure you’re not always doing the same thing. Word Laces is a word puzzle game that I like for new readers because it helps with spelling and offers all the hints you want without any penalty. You also can’t go wrong with Rayman. He has always been surprisingly comfortable on the phone.
Ring Fit Adventure
Platform: Nintendo Switch
The Wii became one of the top 10 best-selling video game consoles of all time thanks in part to how it encouraged kids to move, which was attractive to parents. They could either buy an Xbox 360 with all those shooty-shooty gun games, or they could buy the one that made their kid stand up and pantomime the act of bowling. That latter option was also cheaper. As a parent who plays video games, I like the idea of my kid playing something that makes them move, but I also recognize the fun-value of a game where you just sit down, motionless, and get lost in an interactive world. Ring Fit Adventure is on this list not because it encourages my kid to move around and work up a sweat (which is a nice bonus), but rather because the video game side of it is engaging and interesting.
Rumor has it the game was built using Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s engine. That fact is difficult to verify because Nintendo doesn’t love to share those kinds of insider secrets, but I am a believer. The world’s grass sways in similar ways, the colors are bright and inviting, and it just makes the world of Ring Fit Adventure an exciting place to visit. My kid and I are competing to see who can make more progress, and she is winning thanks to the energetic vibrancy of her youth. (That and she’s playing at a lower difficulty.)
Untitled Goose Game
Platform: Nintendo Switch, PC
House House’s bizarre waterfowl simulator has moved beyond obscure indie game thanks to its online ubiquity and consistent spot in the top-selling games list on Switch. It also bears the new mark of success that every video game aspires to: tweets from Chrissy Teigen.
All of that success and praise is helped by Untitled Goose Game’s meme potential, but it’s also a fun game, and an especially good one for playing with kids. You can’t play co-op, but it’s great for passing the controller and solving puzzles together, and you don’t have to solve every puzzle to complete the game. You also never enter a fail-state, which means even if you mess up, you never have to leave the game. Nothing frustrates a young player (or a cool adult) more than having to start something over just because you can’t figure it out right away.
Luigi’s Mansion 3
Platform: Nintendo Switch
My wife and daughter basically marathoned Luigi’s Mansion 3 over the course of a weekend and I am jealous they got to experience the game together while I just hung out pretending I was part of their cool ghost-hunting crew. Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a puzzle game with occasional ghost-catching combat. You have to play for a little while to unlock Gooigi (Luigi’s clone made of goo that can travel through vents and pipes), but once you do, you can control Luigi, while your young partner handles goo duty.
Gooigi is genuinely helpful, and also basically invincible so there is no downside to having him around and there are plenty of opportunities to solve puzzles and fight ghosts together. The boss battles represent an occasional difficulty spike, which can be frustrating, but there is probably a lesson for kids about overcoming obstacles or something hidden in there.
Sky: Children of the Light
Platform: iOS
As a cynical adult video game person, I have issues personal to me about Thatgamecompany’s follow-up to Journey. I don’t like that it is currently only available on a platform where my fingers get in the way of the impressive visuals and I don’t like the microtransactions. But with those caveats in place, Sky is a great free-to-download cooperative experience. The story shows and doesn’t tell, which is great for young players, and when the going occasionally gets tough, you can literally grab your kid by the hand and shepherd them to the next destination. The finale is dark and moving, but it’s the kind of entertainment experience where you come out from the darkness happy and optimistic about the future of humanity. Those pesky microtransactions are also, thankfully, very easy to ignore.
Kyle Hilliard is a freelance games writer and co-host at MinnMax.
This story was originally published at washingtonpost.com. Read it here.Q&A: Niantic’s Kellee Santiago talks video game development
Kellee Santiago is a big name in the video game world. She co-founded thatgamecompany, one of the breakout indie studios of the PlayStation 3 era, and her work with Jenova Chen got the small team attention with titles such as “Flow” and “Flower” before soaring to widespread acclaim with “Journey.”
Her latest job at Niantic, the San Francisco-based company that began as an internal start-up at Google, puts her at the heart of one of the Bay Area’s most promising, pioneering video game companies. The maker of “Ingress,” “Pokemon Go” and “Harry Potter: Wizards Unite,” Niantic has leveraged its augmented reality and geo-location technology to create some of the most wildly popular games for smartphones.
“One of the things I love about games (like Pokemon Go),” Santiago says, “is the way they can bring people together, break down walls between us and let us just be playful.
Naturally, we had questions.
Q: What lessons have you learned from your experiences with thatgamecompany, Ouya and the others?
A: Games are hard to make. To embark on creating a video game that was unlike anything you have seen before requires a lot of courage. It can be very hard to see where you are at the beginning – like in “Journey,” an online console game that leaves you with a renewed faith in community. It’s a tumultuous process, and you have to have a lot of faith. You start on a project in unknown territory.
Q: What drew you to Niantic?
A: I’ve been a huge fan of Niantic since Field Trip, (an app that told users about nearby landmarks). Fundamentally, it’s using these computers in our pockets to create engagement in the world around us. I love geocaching, finding these everyday secrets and histories around us. I love that fundamental mission.
Q: What makes the Bay Area special place for the video game industry?
A: Personally, I’m fascinated by the intersection of art and technology, and I find the Bay Area is a nexus for that intersection (of) the rich, cultural scene and the hub of big tech. It creates an interesting cross-pollination of thoughts and ideas. That’s great when you’re a developer.
Q: Why is it important to play games? I mean what’s the purpose?
A: I’m going with (Dutch cultural theorist) Johan Huezinga on this one. Play is a way we practice behaviors. We can look at puppies and see them practicing fighting and gaining skills they need when they’re grown up dogs. Play has that same place in our lives. Games are an important part of our culture. Through games, we practice and behave differently than we might normally. It gives us a safe place to rehearse behavior, learn a subject and explore the world around us.
Kellee Santiago’s five favorite games
“WarioWare” – This game involves successfully completing mini-games, but they are so random and weird, that it takes half your time just to figure out what you are supposed to do. I just love games that have silliness as a core mechanic. Life is too serious sometimes.
“Hidden in Plain Sight” – This XboxLive indie game puts each player in the role of an NPC (a character hidden among identical non-player characters), where you want to win, but don’t want to reveal yourself as a human player. It had low-resolution graphics and a light-hearted sensibility that made it my go-to party game for awhile, as it always had us in stitches.
“Papers, Please” – The player takes on the role of a border-crossing immigration officer in a fictional dystopian Eastern bloc-like country. I know, it sounds like the weirdest premise for a game. But this game marries form, function and story so completely and is one of the most perfect video games ever made.
“Endless Forest” – In this Tale of Tales game from 2005, players are deer in a forest. It blew my mind in terms of thinking of what a game could be and what other modalities there were to explore. Seven years later I would release “Journey,” which delves into some of the same experiments and would be called “groundbreaking.” There’s so much still to explore when it comes to ways we can play with each other online.
“Pokemon Go” – I remember when it came out, seeing so many families walking around together playing it. “Pokemon Go” showed me there was still so much more to explore in how technology can enable this playfulness. I can’t wait to see what happens next.
Some of the people who made an early bet on Google's ambitious attempt to revolutionize video games are losing patience
A different kind of console launch.
Google's Chromecast Ultra streaming device, left, with the Stadia controller. Google
Google Stadia is not a game console, nor is it a game platform, really — it's a digital storefront run by Google where you can buy individual games.
Right now, to access that storefront, you have to pay $130 for the Stadia "premiere edition." That comes with a Stadia gamepad, a Chromecast Ultra streaming device, and three months of access to Stadia Pro, a monthly subscription service that provides free games each month, enables users to stream games at ultra-HD 4K resolution, and offers a few other bells and whistles.
In so many words: The only way to play Stadia games when it launched in November was to spend $130 up front. That remains the case in mid-January, though Google has promised that a free version of the service will launch this year.
With most console launches, you need the game console to play the games. That's what you're buying.
With Stadia, you don't need a box, or a Chromecast Ultra, or a Stadia controller. You can play Stadia games on any laptop with the Chrome browser, and you can connect whatever gamepad you want. Heck, you could just play with a keyboard and mouse if you prefer.
So what are you paying $130 for, other than a few devices you don't need? You're paying for access — access to the Stadia ecosystem, where you then buy each game.
Early adopters.
The Google Stadia gamepad can't pair with Google's Pixel phones, so you have to connect via USB cable to play games. Crystal Cox/Photographer
Over $100 for access to a game store — largely filled with games that are already available on other platforms, sometimes for less money — is a hard sell.
It's an especially hard sell with the kind of folks who buy game consoles at launch: gamers who own the latest consoles, who own many of the games on the launch list, who are distrustful of new entrants in the video-game industry.
But tens of thousands of folks jumped in regardless, and the most dedicated of those early adopters can be found on places like Reddit's Stadia subreddit and the official Stadia Discord channel.
They write glowing threads about their first experiences with the service ("I am satisfied with my purchase ... My experience has been excellent and I'm excited to see what the future has in store for Stadia.") and about bizarre use cases that demonstrate the promise of game-streaming services.
Some are even gaming-PC owners who talk about how surprised they are that games they're streaming look as good as games that run locally. "I was actually shocked and was sure my games looked better on my PC," one said.
But these folks — who not only were willing to take a chance on a new game service from Google but participate actively in that service's community — are also starting to get frustrated.
And there's one reason for that: a lack of updates.
Two months after launch, Stadia still has a small game library and is missing many key features.
Google
Google Stadia has no way to voice-chat, a standard part of the PC, Xbox, and PlayStation online gaming ecosystems, and something that even Nintendo has started to come around to with its Switch console.
"What's going on there?" one user wrote in the Stadia subreddit. "How can it be that there is still no chat in Stadia?"
Moreover, there's no word on when a voice-chat function is coming.
Both Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3, which launched over 10 years ago, had voice-chat functionality built in from the start.
There is no operating system or dashboard on the service, and there's no way to use the Google Stadia controller wirelessly on a computer or with a smartphone — it has to be connected with a wire. If you have an iPhone, Stadia doesn't work there yet, and the same thing goes for most Android phones; the only smartphones supported are Google's Pixels.
Even if you pay for the pro version of Stadia, which is supposed to stream games in the highest 4K resolution, games played through Chrome don't stream in 4K.
That's before we start talking about the promised features of Stadia that differentiate it from the competition, much of which aren't implemented.
Google said you could watch a YouTube video of a game and jump right into it on Stadia simply by clicking a button in the video. That has yet to materialize, nor is it clear when that's coming.
Thus far, Stadia is a digital storefront that sells you games. Many of the platform features that people expect with a game platform are still missing, with no official word on when they'll actually drop.
Since launching Stadia in November, Google has said and done very little about updating the experience — and it's still missing major features that were announced last March.
Among the features touted at Stadia's big reveal in March was "cross-platform play," the ability for games on Stadia to be played with people using other platforms, like Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One. Though there are several Stadia games with communities on other platforms, none of those games support cross-platform play from Stadia. Google/YouTube
"When Stadia launched in November, we delivered a great gaming experience for players, and we continue to work toward our long-term vision for the future of gaming," a Google representative, Patrick Seybold, told Business Insider in a statement. "Stadia is an evolving platform, and we've been busy in the two months since launch adding great content, features and ways to play."
Seybold identified six key ways that Google had improved the service since launch:
He also highlighted four updates coming to Stadia in the first quarter of this year, including additional Android phone support.
It remains unclear when Stadia will support Apple devices, or when a voice-chat feature is coming, or when the free "base" version of the service will launch.
Of note: Google published a Stadia update on its community blog on Thursday morning, after Business Insider reached out for comment on this story. We had asked for any message from Google for the early adopters who picked up Stadia last November — folks who are increasingly asking when Google is going to say something on the Stadia subreddit.
In 2020, Google is promising "more than 120 games," including more than 10 exclusive games in the first half of the year. But will early adopters stick with it?
Google/YouTube
Google is promising a much bigger 2020, with "more than 120 games" scheduled to launch this year, over 10 of which are said to be exclusive to Stadia and launching in the first half.
Whether that will be enough to keep early adopters interested — let alone attract new buyers — remains to be seen.
The sentiment from early adopters isn't looking great for Google. For people who bought Stadia in November, which came with three months of Stadia Pro, there's a question to answer in the near future: Will I keep Stadia Pro, which costs $10 a month, after the three months runs out?
A discussion of who is and isn't keeping their Stadia Pro membership paints a grim picture: Many users have decided to cancel their membership, or are considering canceling it.
Another thread from a few days ago, titled "Let me be real," says it all:
"For anyone that's been around for a new gaming console coming out, its crazy for the first year of it coming out, huge lineup of games constantly being thrown out, this feature, that feature all being announced...so much fun! Here I am trying to enjoy and justify the 130 I spent on this and I just can't at this point. We got tricked into being beta testers and it pisses me off."
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