Let them play!

One of my favorite conversations this summer involved listening to a certain set of parents complain about their kids. Before I tell you what the ‘rents were complaining about, let us begin by establishing the context.

For most of the year, their spawn are locked away in prisons called “classrooms.” Each morning, the entire household wakes up with the express intention of leaving one another — the kids to get institutionalized, and the ‘rents to chase dreams of getting rich by making their bosses richer. (Okay, that’s material for an entirely different anti-social commentary, so for now let’s stay on point: the ‘rents are at work, the kids are in school).

So the only time the ‘rents have to deal with the annoying directionless bundle of energy we call their children is when they come home. And even then, what is typically on the agenda is to make sure the wide-eyed little devils pipe down so they can eat and go to bed already.

Sometimes (not often enough) there are special events called “weekends” and “holidays” where — if the kids are lucky — the ‘rents can drive the fam to Resorts World and stuff the gang into a cinema so they can watch G.I. Joe over and over again while the ‘rents hit the slots.

Inevitably summer comes, and the ‘rents find themselves completely at a loss. Now the kids are in the house all the time. The whole time!  For the first time in the year — without school to fall back on — the ‘rents actually have the task of entertaining their insatiable little thrill-seekers: to try to fill up their days with activity. The ‘rents finally get to see what these creatures are all about, and this is when I get their calls.

“All she does is play! She wakes up, borrows my iPad — I don’t even know why she has to borrow it anymore, since I always feel like I’m the one who has to borrow it from her — and starts playing some game that I didn’t even know was there. She stops to eat, then starts playing some other game. It never ends! Meanwhile I’m waiting to check my e-mail, which I have to sneak in to do when she goes to the bathroom.”

They don’t really have to tell me how this goes. Aside from being that way myself, I also have recently slogged through a long Sunday with a kid who swapped Xbox games every half hour for the entire 16 hours of his waking time. He did not care if we were right in the middle of a boxing match (he was getting wtfpwnt, if you must know) — he would just suddenly decide it was time to play something else, unceremoniously eject the disc, and insert another one (whatever disc his hand randomly attached itself to).

The Super Secret Law of Finite Play Time and Conditioned Game Gluttony: Once school starts, or dinner is served, or the parents arrive home, the fun is over.

Can you really blame a kid for desperately trying to squeeze every possible game into his life when he knows his play days are numbered? He lives in dreadful fear of the fun being over!

Now I’m not telling you all this to call attention to the ‘rents in the hopes that some social service will clue them in and tell them to back the eff off of their kids, but I do think summer is a good time to be reminded of what I personally feel is the most important part of life: play. Most important.

“All he does is play,” the ‘rents cry to me, because I’m apparently such a good listener. “Why is he like that?”

NEWS FLASH: that’s all kids want to do.  PROFOUND PHILOSOPHICAL EPIPHANY: isn’t that what we are all supposed to do? TRAGIC DRAMATIC RHETORICAL QUESTION: When did we stop being kids?

When did we stop wanting nothing else but to play?

I won’t answer that, because it’s too depressing to get into. And I did say it was rhetorical. What I am here to campaign for is that we don’t let our kids follow suit. And if my campaign happens to bring some of the adults back into the kids’ camp, that’s a bonus.

You know how we tell our kids to watch the elders so they can learn a thing or two? Here’s my campaign: To be a better person, watch the kids. See them for what they naturally are: They are gamers. All of them. Let them play.

“But I thought he’d spend the summer going to the karate classes we booked for him,” the relentless rents bewail.  “And she was supposed to go to summer art classes every other day, and ballet lessons on Sundays.”

“I see,” is my shrink-like reply. “You thought you’d take their vacation — a break from all that learning you put them through for five days a week for the last 10 months — you thought you’d take that part of their calendar and fill it with even more learning, so they can... well, what? Become the people you want them to be and get out of your hair?”

Yes, I make for a very sarcastic shrink. But people like that about me.

“Here is my proposal: just watch them do their thing for a change. Instead of trying to fill their calendar like you do yours, empty it. Stop trying to constantly train them to excel at something you chose for them. Watch them wander about and see what they pick up. See what they like to do, see what they’re good at.  Watch them play.”

Is his head buried in that iPad-knockoff gadget trying to figure out what six-letter word best matches the four pictures on the screen? What one might see as a kid wasting away in front of a computer, I see as a person getting smarter, wanting to do better, and having fun doing it. Help him play.

I’m not going to sit here and talk about why puzzles and video games and sports are good for our health and well being, but as a proud member of what I believe to be the Gamer Generation, I am going to campaign for the continuous promotion of “The Gamer’s Mindset.”

The Super Secret Law of Compulsive High-Score-Setters: Once you are of the opinion that life is something to be enjoyed, all you will want to do is get better at it.

And because I’m such a nerd, I will now attempt to sum up the benefits of a Gamer’s Mindset in a corny acronym: “ACT.”

“A” is for Aptitude. Gamers become lateral thinkers who not only think outside the box, but happen to live there. They do not get there by accident, but by natural experience. Gamer nerdiness comes from a multitude of games that are based on history, city building, governance, trivia, puzzles... Who needs flash cards when a gamer can learn to add by being the banker in a Monopoly session?

And after a young gamer masters the art of addition and subtraction, he learns the subtler art of screwing over another player by trading Boardwalk for two red properties straight up.

All this aptitude comes from direct experiences, which in turn fuels a desire to become better as the experiences build. Gamers are infowhores who want to read, watch and know everything that has anything to do with whatever they are currently into. 

Hey, you know who else wants to touch and check out everything in their path?  Babies. And if you want to meet someone who never stops asking why, you won’t have to find a gamer or any of Aristotle’s protegés, you just have to chat up a five-year-old.

Gamers are cinephiles, and — more than anyone else — inherently understand what there is to learn from fiction. Movies and books have made me a wizard at geography, history and culture, as well as a brilliant conversationalist. They drilled in some extremely important life-facts: humor comes first, good guys win, everything works out.

Gamers know how to tell a story, because we’ve read and watched so many of them. We know how it ends, and that gives us supreme confidence in everything we do.

“C” is for confidence. Nobody has Faith with a capital “F” like a gamer.  Gamers know in their hearts that there is ALWAYS a solution — that every game is built to be beat. This grasp of how the world works might be what Gary Valenciano meant when he was singing about how God “won’t give me what I can’t bear…”

Gamers don’t need an all-powerful deity to have this confidence. We just know that there is an answer somewhere, and we are going to find it. Nobody says FUUUUUUU with a capital “F” like a gamer.

We are backed by a community of similarly competitive and confident minds. Somewhere out there is another gamer writing a walkthrough to get me past any wall I might hit. Gamers may seem like loners, but we are never alone, and there is no game we can’t beat.  We know this, and this makes us tenacious.

The Super Secret Law of Sucking At Life: You can’t maximize an experience by getting it right the first time.

“T” is for Tenacity. Gamers are used to failure and we never give up. We know what it’s like to start from zero over and over again. We know that “Game Over” does not mean anything as long as we want to keep playing. No one says, “Hey, I did it before, I can do it again” like a gamer. Broke up with girl? Create new character. House burned down and lost everything? Load saved game.

This makes gamers fearless leaders and unapologetic adventurers. We will try anything if we can imagine it. We will even build a World of Warcraft Dwarf Rogue to be a Guild tank, if you know what I mean. No one can tell us what we can’t do.

The days when the word “Gamer” was synonymous with “slacker” or “stoner” are long, long gone. My generation of gamers has grown up to produce some incredible role models.

Gamers are not slackers, they’re doers! And as a parent, you would be well rewarded in welcoming — no, cultivating — in your child the Gamer’s Mindset!

My good friend is a high-powered businessman. He snaps his fingers and things get done. He makes some calls and deals are made. He is on top of his food chain because he is always trying to level up. He makes a lot of money because he needs it to keep his Magic: The Gathering deck ultra-competitive.

My brother was the country’s first official Gaming Guru. He ran the World CyberGames in the Philippines and turned teenaged video game addicts into local heroes representing the country on international stages. He proved to parents that one can make a living playing StarCraft, and that playing CounterStrike (as opposed to finishing school and working hard at a nine-to-five for 10 years) can get a kid a passport, a visa, and a plane ticket with hotel accommodations to the United States, Italy and Korea.

My Professional Poker Coach showed me that my approach to the game mirrors my approach to my life. He showed me that making small changes in how I play not only improves my game results, but also snowballs into bigger changes in how I play at life. When I accept the realities of game results, I become more forgiving as a person.  Oh, and paying the rent by playing a game I love all day?  Priceless.

Inventors, politicians and movie stars can take a hike. Gamers are the new role models. Do you want to be your kid’s role model? Embrace the Gamer’s Mindset and trust me on this: Let them play, watch them play, help them play, and most importantly, play with them.

The family that plays together, stays together. You see what I did there.