Learning Family Values While Killing Monsters

Robin Torres posted an article on teaching family values to children over at WoWInsider.com, a Joystiq site. It may seem somewhat incongruent to non-gamers, but Torres makes a good case for the idea of instilling positive attitudes in children while playing popular MMOPRGs like World of Warcraft.

Torres warns against the potential negatives that may occur when children spend hours on end in these gigantic virtual worlds unsupervised. But, she insists that with proper parental supervision, valuable life lessons can be imparted to the youngsters.

Children go to school to get educated, but they are supposed to learn their values at home. I believe that playing WoW with your children can be a great way to instill them with some very basic yet important values.

Torres relates a story of playing in EverQuest back in the day with an 8-10 year old boy she never met in RL:

His typing was good and his spelling wasn’t too bad (I’ve seen much worse in adults) and there was no leetspeak. He didn’t volunteer any other personal information about himself — though he did say that while he was sometimes allowed to play by himself, he often played with his father. He showed me his most cherished (virtual) possession: the sword (not too uber) that he had acquired when hunting with his dad. Over a few months, we often hunted together. Sure, I couldn’t say naughty stuff in front of him, but I never felt like I was babysitting.

This is the kind of good family fun Torres feels is highly beneficial for kids. And really, her bigger point is it doesn’t matter where family time occurs, whether playing together in a virtual world or going on a trail ride. It’s the together part that truly matters.

But the virtual aspect of playing together in World of Warcraft will surely raise eyebrows. Even so, Torres states that with good parental supervision the following characteristics can be instilled in children while playing in WoW: manners, respect, computer skills, following instructions, teamwork, achievement, independence, problem solving, self esteem, and preparedness. I have to say, she has a point.

References:
Torres, R. (2007, October 8). Azeroth interrupted: Using WoW to teach children values. WoW Insider. [Online]. Available: http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/10/08/
azeroth-interrupted-using-wow-to-teach-children-values/

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categories Game Discussion, Game Studies, MMORPGs, Making Video Games, Related Sites, Virtual Worlds, World of Warcraft | John Rice | datetime November 5, 2007 8:58 pm

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