Welcome to GamerDad: Gaming with Children. My name is Andrew S. Bub - the GamerDad - and I've been writing about videogames, movies, and children for over 15 years now. After working as a magazine journalist, I switched gears to write about how media violence affects children, educating parents about them, and working closely with magazines, newspapers, major retailers and even politicians. GamerDad is an internationally recognized expert in this field. Games, movies and media are fun, kids and families love them, they aren't going away. So join me in cutting through the hype and lets have a real conversation about the things that matter: Video Games, Violent Media, and their supposed effect on children and families.
Welcome to GamerDad: Gaming with Children. My name is Andrew S. Bub - the GamerDad - and I've been writing about videogames, movies, and children for over 15 years now. After working as a magazine journalist, I switched gears to write about how media violence affects children, educating parents about them, and working closely with magazines, newspapers, major retailers and even politicians. GamerDad is an internationally recognized expert in this field. Games, movies and media are fun, kids and families love them, they aren't going away. So join me in cutting through the hype and lets have a real conversation about the things that matter: Video Games, Violent Media, and their supposed effect on children and families.
Game Review: Igor: The Game (Wii, DS)
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Posted on November 8th, 2008 by
In the land of Malaria, evil scientists from all over come together once a year to compete in the Evil Science Fair. But behind each evil scientist is a hunchbacked Igor to pull the switch. But one Igor has a dream to be an evil scientist himself. In Igor: The Game, based on the recent animated movie, play as Igor as he overcomes all odds to enter the Evil Science Fair. The Igor game for the Wii is a typical movie-based 3-D platformer, but the DS version is, surprisingly, a puzzle game!
Welcome to the Namco Museum’s 360 Virtual Arcade Tour!
Posted on November 8th, 2008 by
Welcome all, to the Namco Museum! We all have dream jobs that will probably never come to fruition because those jobs may be too far away from reality. Well I have one such dream job. I’d like to be a curator and tour guide of the Namco Museum! Too bad there’s no such thing as a REAL Namco Museum, huh? But hey, this is MY blog and I can do whatever I want, so today I’d like to take you all on a tour of the newest edition to the Namco Museum series: Namco Museum Virtual Arcade for the Xbox 360! And we’re walking, we’re walking…
Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon Wii/DS
Posted on November 6th, 2008 by
Spyro the cute little purple dragon is back with The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, a 3D game that promises flight, fire, and fearsome foes. Spyro and his friend have to save their world using elemental magic powers and players have to switch between the two characters frequently to get through the game. In what should be a standard feature in every game aimed at families, they offer drop-in cooperative gameplay. Yep, at any time a more (or less) skilled player can drop in to give the youngster a hand and then jump back out again to continue making dinner. Content review comes in Wii and portable DS versions.
GD Keynote: Reviewed Part 2
Posted on November 6th, 2008 by
The American Library Association’s Official Gaming Blog posted a summary review of my keynote: “Andrew Bub, parent and game reviewer and creator of the site Gamer Dad promised that by the end of the session we would all be gamers. He built on comments from our other kyenote speakers: that everytime a new art form enters our media, hysteria ensues. Movies, horror comics, rock & roll, even penny dreadfuls etc. The video game discussion always seems to boil down to violent or catharsis? Perhaps Nintendo did a disservice by promoting the concept that video games are for kids.”GD: Again, thank you kindly ALA – I recommend clicking in. It’s a great summary.
GD Keynote: Reviewed Part 1
Posted on November 6th, 2008 by
Greg Landgraf of the AL Inside Scoop (the blog for the magazine for the American Library Association) reviewed my Keynote at the Gaming Libraries and Learning Symposium:“GamerDad was born of my frustration at what passes for common sense in the media,” explained Bub, particularly in the wake of the Columbine shootings, where the media treated the fact that the shooters played Doom as a cause of their actions, rather than observing that most kids did. GD: Here’s the article. It dramatically shows that I reached them, I think, and maybe taught them a few things about gamers. All in a days work. We’ll have the video soon. Promise! Oh, here’s another review!
NBA Live ’09 All-Play for Wii
Posted on November 5th, 2008 by
NBA Live 09: All-Play makes the round ball a little more easy and arcade-friendly for the presumably more casual Wii audience. It also adds a couple unique modes and subtracts the career mode and the create-a-player mode found in the PlayStation3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game. It’s basketball with all the teams, all the stars, all the likenesses, but presented in a way that makes the game a lot more party friendly. Passing is done via a gesture with the remote, the nunchuk handles movement and easy to reach buttons let you switch players or make a shot. Check the rest of the content review here.
Soul Bubbles DS
Posted on November 5th, 2008 by
Soul Bubbles is exclusively sold at Toys R Us, which is shame because the game literally feels like a breath of fresh air (assuming you don’t have halitosis) in that you blow into the microphone to play the game. Soul Bubbles is a gentle game. The protagonist is a strange little cherubic creature who’s job it is to shepherd lost souls to the underworld. The souls are fragile, so he creates bubbles to protect them and guide them through ever-increasingly complex and hazard-ridden mazes. Click here for the content review.
Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy
Posted on November 5th, 2008 by
Nancy is Maid of Honor at a wedding in a old spooky castle … but where’s the groom? Is he pranking? Is he kidnapped? Or did the banshee get him? Check out WhatTheyPlay for the content review and know that this game has my highest recommendation for girls AND boys. Best for 10 and up.
GD Keynote November 4th GLLS08
Posted on November 4th, 2008 by
We’re back! 4 surprisingly warm days in Chicago in an executive suite (got a deal, yay Orbitz), a couples massage, several fine bottles of wine accompanying several excellent meals and we saw a Second City show (that’s the improv troop that most of the classic SNL stars came from). Ah, what a great 10th anniversary with the woman I’m still mad for. Then it was off to Oak Brook to talk to some librarians. How’d it go? Fantastic. Libraries aren’t fond of censorship and they’ve been lending movies and music for long enough that they don’t fear games.
GamerDad Votes ’08
Posted on November 3rd, 2008 by
Politics at GamerDad are never simple. On the Right, you have the Cultural Conservatives, the “Moral Majority” (evangelicals and other people who want to impose “morality” on a society they see as slipping downward). While on the Left we have the “It takes a village” and the “protect the children” crowd (the people who attempt to ban all “play” violence). Both ban videogames for the same reason – violence – differing only in how much language doesn’t bother one side and how much sex does the other. Because of this, I serve both sides and don’t want to alienate either. But Tuesday is important and I have something to say about Barack Obama.
