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[Dexerto] Dad calls out Nintendo for turning off Animal Crossing: New Leaf servers leaving his daughter devastated
- Thread starter Bill Gaitas
- Start date
She didn't like the game. He goes into detail during the latest podcast about it.
My kid doesn't playing AC anymore, but she'd be absolutely gutted if she couldn't do the dreams or play it with her friends anymore.
Reading this makes me feel very happy but also share in the sadness and the struggle. Kids deserve better!!
Ahaha same. Opened the thread out of curiosity and you got a good laugh out of me with that image. Well played OP.
New Leaf's online experience was so much better than in New Horizons :(
In theory, yes. It's part of their goal, but it's going to take some time.
OP
OP
Sorry, this is a bit beside the actual topic, but whenever I read about something like this or listen to Vinny Caravella talking about his kids on Nextlander, I get super confused about what is appropriate and also possible in terms of video games for kids. I thought I had this all figured out. But now I have a 5 year old and a 1 year old at home and screen time in general and video games specifically are quite complicated to handle for me. The little one is fine for now, she doesn't get any screen time at all yet. The 5 year old can decide if he wants to watch TV or play games. I don't think he was even interested in video games a couple of years ago, so I find it confusing that 3 year olds are even playing. Now with 5 he is quite interested. He mostly plays Mario Kart on the Switch. And he wants to play Lego Fortnite, but that game seems way to complex for him. It's really hard to just boot it up with all the menus and pop up crap in that awful Fortnite UI. And the controls use A LOT of buttons. So I wonder: Would he like Animal Crossing? How does one play this without being able to (properly) read? Should I try to "teach" him Fortnite? Would he be interested in something else? What are age appropriate video games for 5 year olds? Is there even a good answer to that?
Shin Megami Tensei Iv Apocalypse is my suggestion. He'll love it.
Failing that, maybe one of the traditional Lego games? The Marvel ones perhaps?
I mean, the kid wanted to do dreams, and can't anymore. So no, the game doesn't work the way it did before.
Man, this made me realize my kids would have loved the dreams feature as well. I guess I'm glad I didn't introduce it to them.
My 4 year old has been playing Astro's Playroom for the last 2 years. We put 100 hours into it on my account just messing around, then I made him his own profile and now he can play most of the game himself. Just a handful of things he can't do now. He just plays the levels over and over again.
I guess my point is it's hard to know what will gel with a kid that young. He has tried and enjoyed other games, but he always wants to come back to "Astrobot". If that somehow went away I think he'd be devastated. Luckily it's a fully offline game aside from leaderboards, which he doesn't care about.
My 4 year old has been playing Astro's Playroom for the last 2 years. We put 100 hours into it on my account just messing around, then I made him his own profile and now he can play most of the game himself. Just a handful of things he can't do now. He just plays the levels over and over again.
I guess my point is it's hard to know what will gel with a kid that young. He has tried and enjoyed other games, but he always wants to come back to "Astrobot". If that somehow went away I think he'd be devastated. Luckily it's a fully offline game aside from leaderboards, which he doesn't care about.
I think the question of "is this game appropriate for my young child?" Boils down to 2 things: initial interest and barriers to play. If the game has a lot of menus that stops play they're gonna stop wanting to play quickly, however if they have a really high interest in whatever the game is about they'll find a way to power through the menus to keep playing.
If you find a game they can easily access and get to playing by themselves they'll find an excuse to get into it. So really it's about finding a sweet spot. My oldest (4) has practically zero interest in playing any game, however if pokemon are involved she'll find an excuse to get into it at least a little bit, even though she can't read.
If you're kid is into the idea of lego fortnite teach them to navigate the menus to get to playing and they'll figure out the rest. I have a feeling they'll not be that interested in playing the 'normal' way, but just navigating the world will keep them interested. I think Jeff mentioned his kid likes the 3ds because of how easy it is for them to get started playing without the help of an adult. So if you really want them to play a game find a game and system that has a really low barrier to entry.
If you watched the video you would know that she wanted to do dreams, but when he broke it to her that she can't anymore due to it not having online she burst into tears.
As someone whose experience with AC is mostly NH, could you tell me why, or at least point me in the direction of where I could find out?
The comments here along the lines of "slowly an calmly explain to the child that the online features for the game are not available anymore" are so funny to me. You can't even present a child's dinner plate to them rotated 90 degrees to the left from what they are used to without a fuss.
At this rate, the Switch will be taken offline before its sequel is here.
No, and I'm not trying to debate or argue, I just wanted to know.
It's not about the game and more about the console. His daughter prefers playing on the 3ds. Probably because it is easier to use and the form factor of the 3ds is more comfortable for a 3 year old than a switch.
It was to do with the focus on crafting, I think, and that the other residents don't seem to have as much depth or interesting conversations as previous games.
I believe local play is unaffected and still works after the shut down. This specific complaint is about the dreams feature, which I never used, but it apparently let you jump into a copy of a random online town.
But still, fuck Nintendo for shutting all of this down.
It is startlingly easy to tell the difference between who has kids/has kid relatives and who hasn't interacted with a child at all since becoming adults.
Simply put, there's no way to rationalize why something that's worked for like 25% of a toddler's life no longer works and that it'll never work again. They'll be heartbroken over it for the day, move on, then bring it right back to you tomorrow asking why it's not working, just to cry their eyes out about it again. It's emotionally exhausting for both parent and child. So I have some empathy for Jeff because I've been there before a few times now and it's not fun. The nice thing is children are resilient and she'll put it behind her as long as they find other ways to occupy her. But highlighting how consoles shutting down online functionality affects people is worthwhile imo.
Simply put, there's no way to rationalize why something that's worked for like 25% of a toddler's life no longer works and that it'll never work again. They'll be heartbroken over it for the day, move on, then bring it right back to you tomorrow asking why it's not working, just to cry their eyes out about it again. It's emotionally exhausting for both parent and child. So I have some empathy for Jeff because I've been there before a few times now and it's not fun. The nice thing is children are resilient and she'll put it behind her as long as they find other ways to occupy her. But highlighting how consoles shutting down online functionality affects people is worthwhile imo.
Hahaha. I used to unironically say/think this about him.
Then I listened to him more and realized...the man has played a lot a lot a lot of video games. Like a lot.
And a lot of video games are just....ABSOLUTELY GARBAGE!
I get him now. Someone who has played that many games and knows so much about them is just gonna approach them differently at one point.
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