Video games for all

I am not going to lie, I love playing video games. In fact according to the numbers from The Australian Bureau of Statistics,  35% of gamers are parents, so I am not alone. It's not easy with two boys under 12 in the house as the games I play are definitely not kid friendly and are rated MA15+ the highest current rating in Australia. So how do you incorporate the two things together? Well we are trialling some of the games that I would not normally play but are friendly to the growing minds constantly present, whilst still being fun. I know people will argue that they are just games and they are no different to cartoons but I say they are, as a cartoon has no interaction with the child, they just sit and receive the information / message and move on. The video games require constant input and decisions to be made. So we made a short list and then debated which games to buy. The criteria was that everyone could play the games and that they weren't 1st person shooters (wife gets motion sick and they are mostly inappropriate anyway )

So here is the list of games we settled on :

Game                                          Console                             Via                               Price
Lego Star Wars 3                          PC                                Steam                         USD39.95
Minecraft                                        PC                               Minecraft                      E14.95
Plants vs Zombies                            PC                                Steam                          USD9.95
Lego Indiana Jones                     Wii                                EB Games                 AUD39.95


I'll  monitor usage and publish the results later on.

Oh and we also have placed limits on how long each game can be played for (lets see how that goes !)