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.
10 Things I Hate About Bioshock (& Five I Love … & Two goodies)
21 Comments
Posted on August 31st, 2007 by
You might not believe this based on reviews and the general hype in the media, but Bioshock is *not* perfect. “Game of the Year” material to be sure, but not perfect. While I do not expect that Bioshock will become like Oblivion and be oft-quoted in articles using it as a whipping-boy for the latest and greatest features of upcoming games (for example, the game has level-scaling, but it isn’t idiotic like it was in Oblivion), I do envision some form of ‘backlash’. It is almost inevitable due to how high the scores are that people will begin to get overly negative about the game. Indeed, while I love the game the more I think about it the more little things bug me. I have seen articles about this sort of thing starting to crop up, but I’m going to give it a bit of a twist – rather than just bitching about things, I’m going to highlight a few things I love and give you the drop on a couple of extra special treats for Bioshock lovers. Needless to say this is chock full of the biggest sorts of spoilers. Avoid clicking until you’ve finished the game. more…
The Cloak of Invisibility
Posted on August 30th, 2007 by
Did you hear about the game that was released last week? No … not *that* game. Indeed, there were several games that came out last week. Some managed to get a LITTLE bit of mind share – Brain Age 2 was notable because of the cool looking new DS color that launched along with it, but pretty much everything else that launched last week might not have existed at all. They launched, as I said, under a Cloak of (Bioshock) Invisibility.
Achievement Unlocked: Cary Gots An Xbox 360!
Posted on August 29th, 2007 by
Well folks, as most of you regular readers might know, I just bit the bullet and got me an Xbox 360 last week. So I thought I’d post a blog about my first experiences with it. Let’s rock:
An Open Letter to PAX ’07 Attendees
Posted on August 29th, 2007 by
My name is Andrew S. Bub and I run a site called GamerDad.com and GameSanityblog.com. The purpose of GamerDad is to go beyond the ESRB ratings and help parents. The purpose of GameSanityblog is to comment on games more intelligently than most – and to reflect the political advocacy work I do. more…
Hilarity in Gaming #1 – Well Do ya, punk?!?
Posted on August 29th, 2007 by
Sometimes game developers deliver narrative so rich and deep that it feels like you are having a great author read you their work. However, most times you can feel the seams of your credulity restraints tearing away as you read or listen to some of the absolute garbage these characters are saying. Add in the need for translating game dialog from another language and you are transported to another realm of possibilities.
Metroid 3: Corruption – Controlling Samus
Posted on August 28th, 2007 by
I … cannot … harvest …
Posted on August 28th, 2007 by
Yes, more talk about Bioshock. There has been much discussion here and practically everywhere else about the quality of the game, the immersive environments, the wonderful narrative and so on. There are also a number of little annoyances that I’ve been compiling to discuss later. But there is one thing that has gotten relatively little attention in the wide world of gaming that I was interested in talking about. If you are being a purist about staying ‘spoiler-free’, don’t click to see this rest of this post until you’ve played the game. But since the basis of what I want to talk about occurs in the demo, I’m pretty confident saying that you won’t find any ‘major’ spoilers here.
PAX mini-update #2 – Done, can’t sleep!
Posted on August 27th, 2007 by
At E3 2006 I ran into Tycho of Penny-Arcade. He told me that he loves GamerDad and that I should come to PAX because: “The people there are young but cool and one day they’re all going to be big fans of your website.” I came to PAX last year and found he was right. Lots of parents, but lots more young cute gaming couples. Future families. I had to return this year. So I did. I came to PAX and I hope I conquered, but most of all, I had a hell of a good time. I ended up doing a bit more work than scheduled too. Here’s how it went, in brief: more…
Metroid Mania!
Posted on August 25th, 2007 by
Since Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is coming out soon, I thought I’d do a short retrospective blog about all the Metroid games and my experiences with them. Let’s rock!
PAX mini-update #1 – Local News Mishap
Posted on August 25th, 2007 by
PAX is off to a brilliant start – mainly because Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) gave a fantastic keynote about how social gaming is, gaming with his kids (he was clearly an Expos fan in the early 80’s), and being proud to be a “gamer.” Great stuff I plan to build on in both my Sunday seminars. But I come not to praise Wheaton, but to bury a Seattle local news station.
