Tuesday, 28 April 2009

Games for the times we live in

My older son T has been playing a bad taste game called Pandemic. I watched the different screens, my mouth wide open in shock. Apparently in the game Madagascar always stays free of disease because it can shut down its airport and shipyards quickly.

T and H kept on saying, 'it's only a game Mummy'. I calmed myself down by remembering that chess is a battle to the death too, so some things never change. It's just not so close to the bone as this computer game with the news flashes rolling down the left hand side of the screen.

Maybe Monopoly could be seen as bad taste too. My brother and I used to ruin the bank all the time and had to bail it out from our heaps of cash! We used to put all fines in the centre and who ever landed on free parking got the lot. The poor old bank never stood a chance with us.

4 comments:

  1. I know what you mean....my 8 yr old loves to play all sorts of whatI would call violent games on Mini clip....it shocks me, and I hate them.
    But is it so different to Space Invaders? It is still about killing isn't it? Just the graphics are better these days!!!
    And he has no desire to kill anyone...he even got upsetthe otherday when he saw a spider killing another spider!!
    I think he'll be ok!!

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  2. Does this pandemic game show how the pandemic is engineered by humans for maximum fear impact and control of people's freedom? And does it show that more people die from taking the vaccine than from the actual 'pandemic'?

    Then it would be of educational value.
    :-)

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  3. Well, he engineered it so all the people were ill but alive, then altered one variable so they all died at once!! Nice.

    There are lots of symptoms to choose from! It really is tasteless!! Just the thing for children. No vaccine in the game, or politics as far as I could tell, but plenty of unfortunate events like earthquakes, floods etc to complicate the situation.

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  4. DS has played and enjoyed that too! He now tells me there is a vaccine in Pandemic 2, though of course, as the virus generator, the vaccine is the BAD thing...but is only made if your virus is sufficiently potent.

    Am wondering, given your DS enjoys this, if my DS would enjoy reading the same books as yours...any particular recommendations, gratefully received. He is currently reading Twilight and loving it.

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