When you sit behind your kid and take care of him [...] then almost any game would be ok
I agree about your larger point (there is a huge difference between supervised and unsupervised play), but no, almost any game would not be okay for a four year old. Four is a pretty critical age - kids start grasping the concept of death for example - and really, there are a lot of games that are developmentally completely inappropriate for this age.
The sad thing is that it came down to "my kid liked driving the car". If there is one thing the gaming world isn't short of, it's kid-appropriate driving games.
Kids grow up so fast - why rush it? Let them play the kiddie games now, there will be lots of time for GTA later.
> If there is one thing the gaming world isn't short of, it's kid-appropriate driving games.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find a current gen sandbox driving game that is suitable for children. I think the only one I can think of off-hand would be Test Drive: Unlimited (which is a great game, btw, and probably more suitable for the child in this article).
There's probably more Need For Speed games or Mario Kart clones that I can think of, but very few driving games that are not focused on winning a race.
Thinking back a few years, the Crazy Taxi-type games are also good for children, although a good representation from the genre hasn't really been seen.
Awesome. It was actually called "4D" on my old 386, and I haven't thought about that game in years. I spent countless hours building tracks and driving on them when I was 11 or 12 years old.
Yeah I agree there aren't many sandbox driving games per se, but many race games have open modes, or modes that can be played as open (eg. the Crash Team Racing time trial modes).
The problem I have with GTA is not that the Kid! Is! Ruined! by playing it in the context described, but that once you give it to them you can't take it away - and in another year or so, that kid is going to figure out that there really is a way to properly play the game.
But yes, there is the bigger problem of many gamers wanting to introduce their kids to games and there isn't a whole lot of really optimal material out there.
I agree about your larger point (there is a huge difference between supervised and unsupervised play), but no, almost any game would not be okay for a four year old. Four is a pretty critical age - kids start grasping the concept of death for example - and really, there are a lot of games that are developmentally completely inappropriate for this age.
The sad thing is that it came down to "my kid liked driving the car". If there is one thing the gaming world isn't short of, it's kid-appropriate driving games.
Kids grow up so fast - why rush it? Let them play the kiddie games now, there will be lots of time for GTA later.