Free Rice

I’ve been reading some exciting statistics lately about the growth of the game industry. In March, sales grew 57 percent over the year before. That’s before the release of Grand Theft Auto IV which broke sales records. But sales of a game like Grand Theft Auto IV don’t excite me in a good way. Just like I get dismayed that so many people would pay to see the latest violent sexed up blockbuster movie, I also get dismayed about some of the other “entertainment” that our society consumes. This doesn’t mean that video games “bad”, it just means that I don’t choose to play/watch some titles and I don’t want my kids playing or watching either.

When I was 10 or 11, I begged my mother to allow me to go see the movie “Billy Jack.” All the kids at school were talking about it and I wanted so desperately to fit in. So, my mother finally caved and took my sister and I to the thin theater at the corner of 26th Street and Washington. Just a few years before, it had been a bowling alley. I missed the bowling alley, but it was nice to have a movie theater just a few blocks from home. My mother never allowed us to have popcorn or snacks at the movie. Too expensive, I think. It was a dead give-away that she wanted to get you out of the theater if during the movie she started saying “Do you want to get a drink of water?” Or if that didn’t work “Would you like to go get some popcorn?” I honestly don’t remember “Billy Jack”, but I do remember my mother pulled out all the stops. I think she was offering Junior Mints by the time she finally gave up and insisted that we leave. I was mortified. I suspect most of the inappropriate content had just gone sailing over my head. As a parent, I now believe that she did the right thing. But at the time I hated her.

The purpose of this blog is to help parents find the games that they can feel comfortable playing with their kids or allowing their kids to play without fear that they will be exposed to scantily clad women characters with breast enhancements or male characters who look like they are on steroids. My kids aren’t stupid. My 13 year old daughter has asked “Why do computer games always make the women look like that?” More on that later, but for now, here’s what we are playing in our house this week…

The current favorite is Free Rice. In this fun little vocabulary game, for every word correct, 20 grains of rice is donated through the UN World Food Program. There is a little rice bowl that fills up with a few more grains of rice every time a word is correct. (insert screen shot) Game play lasts just a few minutes (that’s how long our attention span is) and that’s just fine. It’s fun to have just a little something to pop in and out of. It’s a hit with my 10 year old son, me, and the brother of my friend the English teacher who will play while on the phone asking “Alan, what does ‘expurgate’ mean?”