unforum

[gyd]

 Concerned father

[Phaedra]

Well, if you're worried about her not being able to tell the difference between a game and real life, I suggest you read Jane McGonigal's paper A Real Little Game. Jane is one of the (if not the) leading academics studying ARGs and other types of pervasive gaming, and in short, her paper pretty effectively dismisses the idea that people playing ARGs believe they're real.

Of course, any of us could have told you that -- everyone who plays an ARG knows it's a game, except in rare cases where the game is more of a hoax -- but Jane cites things and writes it all pretty and official-like.

But I think it's worthwhile to distinguish between the dangers of not knowing it's a game, and the dangers of "addiction" because they're really two separate issues.

If someone becomes so involved with ANY activity that their grades or work begin suffering noticeably, I really believe that's an issue with the individual, not the activity. You're her dad, you know her best. If this is abnormal for her, not to mention detrimental, you are probably the best person to know what to do because you know her best.

That said, while we tend to joke about how ARGs lower the world's productivity one person at a time, for the most part, their ability to do damage to school or career is limited by the fact that most ARGs don't last very long. (I'd estimate that most of the big corporate games last 6-8 weeks or so; grassroots games can vary.) So even if you get consumed with a particular game, it's going to be over in not too long.

Anyway, I don't know -- I'm not a parent -- but if there's proof her grades are suffering, I guess what I'd do is limit her computer time, and maybe move the computer into a more public room so you can keep an eye on her.

[apcfreak]

Hello, i am 15 and i completely understand your problem. What i did, when my grades were failing because of computer time, i limited my time on the net, and it works. But i think letting usage on the weekends, as long as their are no prior arrangements, to have a fairly unlimited time on.

And as for you playing with her, I would love if my dad or mom got into ARG's with me... =)


hope this helps


~APC

[rose]

[Mikeyj]

Not sure whether this is likely to be helpful or not, but you might want to point out that the studying could actually help with solving that next tricky puzzle. It's impossible to count the number of times I've thought to myself "I wish I was better at Maths, Languages, Literature, History, Geography..."

[gyd]

Concerned father

[konamouse]

It would help to know what is the name of the ARG, or some of the websites she visits. If ARGN doesn't list it (and we don't have a thread for it), we may not know about it. We're good investigators here.

[imbri]

I haven't chimed in as I don't have a child of my own and it's been years since I was one myself, so I doubted my usefulness to your concerns. But, I just did a search on the forums for "vampire" and most of the results were Buffy related. The most recent that seemed promising was from OpAphid, but that was back on October 30th. It's a game that is now an "official" part of the Lonelygirl15 series of videos. Does she happen to watch many videos on YouTube or has she talked about Lonelygirl aka Bree?

It's great to see a concerned father taking an interest in his daughter's online activities by researching them and not just dismissing them fully. I do think that ARGs are a great activity for teens - they hit on a number of their interests (online community, pop culture, etc) while helping to teach how to research and think critically about the information that they find on the internet in a way that isn't quite as boring as a stupid school assignment or activity (which might not be boring or stupid but because it's school related, it's automatically deemed so). So, I think that they can have their place in a teen's activity schedule. But, when they are affecting the school work and such, it does need to be limited or focused. As my mom is so found of saying, "everything in moderation."

[Rogi Ocnorb]

I'd suggest you and Rose get together before our curiosity gets the better of us. Personally, I'm the father of a 13yo girl and while she loves puzzles and this site is one of the most well-behaved and moderated I've seen, I'm not going to share it with her, just yet. If she were to find unFiction, I'd just have to commit to monitoring her activities a lot more closely. IRC logs, PMs, e-mails, Internet history/cache and forum posts.
I'd enjoy playing along with her, but the potential time taken from studies just won't allow me to introduce the genre to her.
If it were to become a major problem, firewall settings might need to be changed or hosts file entries added, sadly.

[Rolerbe]

I think all of us have gotten into a period of addictive behavior at some time in our lives over something or other that interfered with real life. Young people are more likely to overstep to a self impacting level as a first time experience and so need some oversight (as you are providing) to avoid long term consequences.

As a result, (and I'm sure I'm not telling you anything new) you have to set up smaller 'teaching' consequences that are under your control. Based on my experience with my 14 year old "Halo" addict (Gears of War coming for the holidays), I can say that you will almost certainly have to set specific limits, and be willing to follow through with the inevitable "or else" at least once (so pick "or else's" that you can live with).

As for Arg's and the community here, I would echo some of the prior replies. Unfiction is a well moderated, generally PG place to be, and the Arg's themselves are as well. Since the genre and following is small, PM's (those authoring the Arg's) work hard to be inclusive and reach as broad an audience as possible.

The players here (myself included) may sometimes like to think of ourselves as hip, radical or edgy, but have almost universally proven to be well behaved, quickly repulsed by anything smacking of true deviancy (We are no 'MySpace'), and are generally an interesting, intellectually spirited bunch.

I can't say an off color remark or innuendo never crosses the board, but generally I look forward to when my child puts the X-Box gaming aside and takes up ARG's as a more intellectually invigorating pursuit (in appropriate moderation).

[Ofiuco]

Not to repeat what's been previously said too much, but I feel I can contribute a thing or two:

You don't appear to be worried too much about morality or appropriateness issues, but yeah, there are much worse things to be engrossed in. The awesome thing about ARGs is that they are genuinely intellectually stimulating activities. Orbital Colony had a calculus puzzle. I think that's the only time I've ever been excited about calculus. Unfictioners are a great bunch with a startlingly low drama quotient for an Internet community. Sometimes, they'll even help you with your homework (sometimes).

As someone who has only recently moved away to college (and so to using the intarwebs whenever I feel like) I actually appreciated my parents taking an active interest in keeping me from becoming an internet junkie through a variety of methods. One was forcing me to use a computer in a high-traffic room. Another was doing the parent nagging thing - yeah, yeah. It helped. Another was simply making it difficult for me to spend massive amounts of straight time online - making sure I didn't neglect my sports and hobbies and things like that by conspicuously forgetting to go to them.

One thing I would encourage parents and children alike to do is talk about what you're doing. As cheesy as it sounds. I really enjoyed talking to my parents about random ARG stuff - my mom's a doctor, so I hit her up for doctorly things to say to a doctor character, and then we had an interesting conversation about that. It was cool.

Yep. Good luck.