| ▲ | nucleardog 5 hours ago | |
My daughter's been playing "Hello Kitty Island Adventure"[0]. Besides "dexterity", "hand eye coordination", etc... It's just a lot. There are a couple dozen characters with their own preferences that need to receive gifts to progress in the game. Each has their own preferences. Many items need to be crafted, out of supplies that need to be collected (or received from other characters when giving _them_ gifts). This creates a pretty complicated supply chain to keep track of. There are a number of major quest lines on the go at once to keep track of. Though the game does have a quest log to help, you still need to keep up with short term goals (talk to this person) and long term goals (craft this thing that needs 100 items I need to save up). Sometimes these need to span over multiple days, or require choosing to save and delay gratification by accumulating an item rather than using it for some fun thing today. Many mini games require solving word problems and using your working memory. There's a cafe where characters come and place orders, sometimes communicating three or four different decisions. They may be combined with "and", "or", or some combination there-of. Once it's communicated, you go into a crafting screen where you no longer have access to the order and need to remember and select options (sometimes from lists of several dozen items) to complete the order. It's easy to see the difference in how she interacts with this over "watching TV". Watching TV is passive. If you ask her what happened ten minutes ago, she has no idea. Nor even that ten minutes have passed. She's very engaged with the Hello Kitty game. She's actively engaging with us to discuss, get help thinking through plans and strategies, etc. I'm on the same page with everyone asking "what _kind_ of screen time?". I don't mind my kid spending an hour watching some educational TV, or a couple hours playing Hello Kitty. I don't want her spending 15 minutes watching Cocomelon. | ||