Ah shit am I her daughter..? Adorable, but also proof I'm not her daughter. I don't think that far ahead. The article didn't go the way I was expecting. When she mentioned playing Zelda in the 1980s I was expecting a more articulate version of "The games meant something to me back then, and now they don't and they're bloated and my kid focuses on the wrong aspects." I was prepared to reason that my first Zelda experience was Ocarina of Time. It released in what, 1998? I would have played it early 2000s I suspect, given NZ was always behind the times. But, it was my first Zelda, and it was the first big and beefy Zelda in the series. 3D, open-ish world to explore. Blew my fucking mind. I was going to say, "maybe I still enjoy the latest instalments of Zelda because OoT was my first, and so it still greatly resembles what I understand Zelda to be?". My thoughts had barely touched on the concept of using games as escapism and how our perspectives likely differ quite greatly - NZ in the 90s, for me at least, was pretty balmy. It's cool that a parent can practically see their child learning through video games. When I was little, my parents let me and my brother play games - not because they thought of the neural pathways, but because my brother was chronically ill and video games were his only healthy outlet. I was allowed to join in, because we had nothing to bond over outside of that. They see the benefits now, of learning problem solving, developing fast reaction times and letting creativity run wild. Unsurprisingly, video games are a big part of both of our lives, and our respective partners encourage/tolerate this exceptionally well, all things considered. Anyway - thank you for the article. That was a nice read.When we found the abandoned mine carts, the question for my daughter became how many she could glue together and still get them moving along the rusted tracks.
my daughter was also chopping down trees and fusing together the resultant logs to make lean-to structures, just in case she came back to an area later and it was raining and she wanted to “cook something.”