Seemingly yesterday, when my first daughter was born, her first and only interactions with a computer was through a Mac game called Baby Smash. She’d bang the keyboard with tiny little hands and interesting shapes and sounds would appear on the screen. Later I wrote a clone called Baby Mush for my OS/2 PC so that she could do the same there. Fast forward to the present to witness me discussing World of Warcraft strategies with my second daughter and her desire for a Builder’s Club account on Roblox! In no time at all, my babies no longer just bang the keyboard, they’re using it to create and play in virtual worlds all over the net with friends from school, around the corner, and across the ocean.
As technology enthusiast and professional, I think it’s pretty cool that they’ve reached the stage where we begin to enjoy some of my favorite things together. In a lot of ways they’re way ahead of me, fearlessly exploring these new worlds and trying to reshape them. Of course, I’m not too wild about this additional evidence that my time is passing, but I can’t wait to start setting up accounts the accounts for us! I’m reminded of a scene from the anime series .hack//Sign in which the character Bear is meeting up with his son in the MMO game, The World. Their meeting wasn’t so great, but I hope that in the future our massive clan, though separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, will join forces on some instanced battlefield to pwn mobs and claim leet loots!