My kid hated action games — until we started using difficulty settings

I have almost never felt like I was as good at video games as my friends, and there’s a part of me that has always felt bad about that, as though it somehow has anything to do with my intrinsic quality as a human being. I won’t get into why I think I have any kind of feeling about this at all, but the good news is that after 43 years and a pandemic-induced bout of self reflection, I’m finally not consumed by those comparisons. 

These days, I find many difficult games rewarding, and I love discovering what they have to offer. My kid — let’s call her, uh, Vestina — is nine and has a different relationship to video games. Her most persistent favorite is Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which makes sense, although not always for reasons you might suspect. 

New Horizons was a bright spot for her mother and me during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Vestina was young enough then that it’s essentially been with her for her whole life. In fact, her third birthday party was Animal Crossing themed. She wandered the yard with a basket and I directed her attention to the low branches of a peach tree and a young live oak in our back yard, where I’d tucked paper cutouts I’d made of the game’s furniture leaves. Once she noticed the leaves, she’d shake the tree, I’d knock the leaf out, and she would trade them in for gifts. She still regularly asks me to come visit her island in the game so she can show me things she’s created, or, you know, to give her some bells. 

How Animal Crossing helped me swim to sobriety

Searching for meaning in the ocean and inside of trees

MothershipNewt Albiston

I tried to get Vestina into other game genres early on, but they didn’t stick. Take Super Mario 3D World or Super Mario Wonder, two colorful and whimsical games that should be ideal for a child, right? Wrong! She hated them! As for why she hated them, well, that was clear pretty fast. I’d thought of their multiplayer modes as cooperative, but their competitive scoring system — which shows at the end of each level who won — thoroughly undermines that idea. She liked the gameplay, but whether I let her win or tried to convince her the scores don’t matter, she was repulsed by those screens. 

I think that sort of in-game judgment gives Vestina that same “I’m not good enough” feeling that washed over me when I couldn’t keep up with my friends. Whereas my response to those experiences was to try to get good), hers is to set the game aside and play something that makes her feel good. I’ve tried to be as encouraging as possible, but I also have to trust that she knows what she wants, so I never pushed it. My takeaway was that she just doesn’t like games that punish you if you’re not good at them, which is fine.

Then I started playing South of Midnight.