Taking Play Seriously: How Video Games Can Have a Positive Effect on Our Kids
Like all fathers, I want the best for my kids. And like all parents, I have that innate desire to provide them with a healthy environment that nourishes in every way possible. But apps don't come with the equivalent of nutrition labels, and I'm often frustrated to find myself in the dark, unable to tell just what it is that my kids are consuming. That's a big problem. Keeping up with the casual gaming market is harder than keeping up with the Kardashians. Casual gaming is expected to mushroom to an astonishing $8.64 billion by next year, and it's clear that a large portion of casual gamers are children and young adults. This leaves us parents in a lurch: with thousands of titles out there to choose from, and with life growing busier by the minute, how might we tell what's valuable and what's dross?This question is particularly vexing to someone like myself; in addition to being a dad—my first and most important job—I run a successful gaming studio that produces apps for kids. When we started TabTale, my partners and I knew that we weren't going to be in the educational games market, but we also realized that we would never want to produce something we wouldn't like our own kids to play with.