YOU LET YOUR YOUNG KIDS PLAY DOOM?!!?!

[Cheesebone]

Yes. Yes I do. 

 

So my daughter just turned 8 this last weekend. For the last 6 months or so, she's watched me play some Doom wads. I felt that she's mature enough to differentiate this from reality and she already has a good foundation regarding what's right and wrong. She understands that this is a game.

 

Either way - she was really interested in what I was doing when I was building my last map ( welcback.wad ) and she asked if I could help her make one of her own. 

 

Of course, I said I would, and so a few days later she comes at me with a hand drawn map of what she wants her wad to be like, lol.

 

But one of my favorite things about this is that she doesn't really try to remember the names of the monsters or other items. She has her own names for them.

 

Now - I'm the kind of person that thinks the Arch-Vile is one of the coolest, most menacing, haunting, and fearsome enemies in a FPS in the history of the genre. This is extra funny to me when I hear her talk about the Arch-Viles. Because she doesn't call them Arch-Viles.

 

She calls them "The Sunshine Boys". I laugh every single time she says it.

 

Do your kids Doom?

[Tompig]

I don't have children, but my earliest memory is playing DooM on my dads knee, does that count?

Also Sunshine Boys is just... its just perfect really.

[Biodegradable]

7 hours ago, Cheesebone said:

But one of my favorite things about this is that she doesn't really try to remember the names of the monsters or other items. She has her own names for them

 

That's adorable. Please tell us the names she's come up for all of them, mate.

[Wyrmwood]

My boys play doom, it's one of their favorites. They actually started with chibi voxel enemy replacement as their only 6 and 8 but after finding it was on Xbox I gave permission for them to play like as is. I think doom uses more brain cells than most modern shooters so I'd rather that than halo to be honest. Only had one issue so far with a toy black and decker chainsaw, seems to have been repurposed as a weapon rather than a tool when they play. 

 

My kids know all the correct names but my youngest calls cacos "happy meatballs" and my eldest really believes BFG stands for big fancy gun. 

[DSC]

I played GTA Vice City all the time as a kid, just using the Rhino cheat and running over civilians, and I turned out fine. So...

[Kor]

I don't have kids, but I remember a long time ago I was in a TeamTNT meeting (on an IRC server) and one of the other members was talking about how he was teaching his kid, who, if I remember correctly, was like two, how to start up Doom. 

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

32 minutes ago, Wyrmwood said:

BFG stands for big fancy gun

Well yeah, what else would it be? 

[Mr. Freeze]

I first played Doom when I was 6, it's perfectly fine for kids. It's all over the top cartoon violence anyway, not like GTA where you go around killing cops or COD where you commit war crimes. 

[gwain]

10 hours ago, Cheesebone said:

She calls them "The Sunshine Boys"

Quote

my youngest calls cacos "happy meatballs" and my eldest really believes BFG stands for big fancy gun

 

when I had doom on gba I thought pinkies were supposed to be wild hogs

Edited May 18, 2022 by gwain

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

I believe I was 6 years old when first played Doom ;-)

 

In a nutshell, I got home in my birthday and found my dad with a Classic XBoX playing Snes Doom. One day I asked "Can I play, daddy?". He said Yes.

 

It was the Snes port, so it was a bit censored and not as "violent" as the PC version. Still, I didn't even know the game had a PC version (Or what a PC was).

 

Two levels I'll never forget are E2M4 (Halls of the Damned) and E2M5. Mostly due to the terrifying atmosphere their respective tracks provided.

 

I miss that XBoX, it really gave me good memories

Edited May 18, 2022 by Lol 6

[Ofisil]

My 4y old daughter has seen plenty of doom during her short life, knows that it's "the game daddy plays" and understands perfectly well that there's nothing bad with it. She has even nicknamed some of the monsters (she calls Pinkies "rozoulides" which in Greek means... Pinkies :D ) and has even asked for a Cacodemon cake. Kids have more than enough intelligence to say yes or no for many things, so if they don't like sth, they say it. My daughter for example hates giants for some reason. Golems in Frozen films, "Cyclops" in SpongeBob, and so on - she tells me that she doesn't like it, and I turn it off. Oh, and she hates lava. When she sees me adding lava floor on a map that I'm crafting she tells me to put an actual floor :)

 

Don't worry folks, when people sit on a therapist's couch they don't start their story with "I was playing Doom" but "My Father/Mother did X"

 

[LadyMistDragon]

I don't have kids, though maybe I'll have a partner one day that'll want adopt one or two. Maybe it's something that we could allow them to play for 15 minutes or something to see if they'd like it at all. Some people only care about graphics though and look at mobile games these days!

[Thelokk]

My daughter is not really into games, but we did have a few 'are you winning mom?' moments. We respect each other's interests. 

[RonLivingston]

I've been playing doom ever since I was 7, and I didn't have any problems with that

[Mayomancer]

My parents certainly did

[Luleta]

i hope we get to play the map! it sounds interesting cant wait to fight all those sunshine boys.

could be a kinda similar concept to the wad "maps by my 6 year old son"

 

also i don't have kids but... its odd how this game which used to be so controversial back in the day, has some graphic content that could be considered kinda goofy and cartoony nowadays and not thaat violent. like i guess it's violent but it's nowhere as graphic as games can be nowadays with more realistic graphics. 

 

this may be weird but i find doom oddly cute, the cheesy horror aesthetic strikes me as more goofy than scary or disturbing, like its trying hard to be spooky and edgy like a kid on halloween but ends up being kinda cute.

 

i know this is because it's an older game, and obviously it doesn't have the same impact that it used to, but i never said that was a bad thing, and some mappers can definitively make doom be scarier.

 

 but at the end of the day, i would probably hug a caco over running away from it if i saw it's pixelated sprite looking ass in real life.

[Ludi]

The story Cheesebone paints is so fucking cute I can't.

 

I didn't play doom till I was like 13, but my dad knew what it was and was proud of me for trying it.

 

If only he knew the obsession he fed xd

[BCHQ]

My 4-year old daughter likes to come and watch, but we're not killing demons, we're "destroying robots". And I tend to turn away after firing rockets.

 

These days we're playing Might and Magic 6 before sleep, she likes to press the attack button, especially when fighting goblins. A green goblin is one of her favourite toys.

 

She is not familiar with the concepts of death and religion yet.

Edited May 18, 2022 by BCHQ

[KeaganDunn]

I do have a younger 10-year-old brother who found interest in me playing Doom, and always wanted to build a map of his own. So he drew a layout and I put that together, with a defined enter and exit - then I let him place the things around. Of course, he was the one to playtest it.

 

The trouble is, he doesn't play games that require as much coordination. He regularly dicks around in Minecraft and Roblox, and when something goes remotely wrong he acts out, so to speak. He makes me getting mad at Doom's RNG look tame and reasonable by comparison.

So when I got the IWADs on the family computer for him to play (on HNTR), he didn't get very far. I do not know the last time he booted up Doom 1.

 

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11 hours ago, Cheesebone said:

I felt that she's mature enough to differentiate this from reality and she already has a good foundation regarding what's right and wrong. She understands that this is a game.

 

I appreciate this, as someone who learned that very early in life. I have been gaming ever since I probably started writing (4-5 years of age).

I also regularly watched my dad play games like GTA, Twisted Metal, Assassin's Creed...on the Playstation 2 & 3. On occasion he would let me play and dick around in GTA IV. I'm not exactly sure how I developed that foundation - maybe it was me being obsessed with the instruction manuals, ESRB ratings, and game mechanics back then. Or maybe it was simply just the fact that I'm holding a controller and nothing even resembling a weapon.

[Grieferus]

My first time playing Doom was when I was 4 or 5. I played Doom 3 and Quake 4 back then (I liked the latter more).

However, my first time playing classic Doom was when I was in elementary school (2nd to 4th grade), it was Adobe Flash version of Doom, and I still remember how my dad was helping me finding secrets in E1M1 and E1M2.

[CraxBaxYT]

If i ever have kids im gonna show them doom.

[Grain of Salt]

Most things in doom aren't remotely scary, however I don't think you should show children the end screen of doom 1. I think kids should play a version with the rabbit edited out or something. Perhaps replaced with a sign that says "we've invaded already hahaha -- yours sincerely, demons"

[Uncle 80]

My 5-year old boy thinks it's fun to watch me play some Doom every now and then... but he's not allowed to play it yet - too complicated control-wise, as he struggles enough using a regular 2-button game pad playing less complicated games on our amiga emulator. He has named the Arch-Vile THE FIRE GIRL - and he knows she is a high-priority target. :D

Edited May 18, 2022 by Uncle 80

[hobomaster22]

My daughter is not quite four and has seen me playing Doom for a while, and my son who is not even two. 'Are you shooting monsters, Dad?' she will say. My son just says 'Boom boom'.

 

I have a setup for my daughter so she can play with some custom code modifications:
Bumping into anything with a special activation will automatically activate use.
Custom forward/backward movement just using the mouse.
All damaged is forced to do only one point of damage, but the pain intensity act as if the normal amount was applied.
Text to speech for key messages.
Infinite ammo.

Sprites are 150% of their original size (mostly to not miss keys).



She has E1M1 and E1M2 pretty well down. The funniest thing to me is she is very afraid of poison damage, which she calls 'green fire.' She has navigated the path in E1M1 a few times, but sometimes she plays and will refuse to go in. Sometimes she stands there and will take 20 points of damage from a monster, but taking damage from the 'green fire' is completely unacceptable. Toddler logic. She has a lot of fun cycling through the guns and seeing how they fire.

[famicommander]

My kids don't get to eat until they beat Final Doom on Nightmare

 

Spoiler

I don't have kids

 

[Nikku4211]

Played since I was 9. First with ZDoom and then later on Skulltag until I eventually tried DOS source ports like Boom as well as the original vanilla Doom under DOSBox.

[Hitboi]

I don't have kids, but my 8 year old brother plays Doom, he mostly plays for fun and doesn't play it as often as me. Just like your daughter he understands that Doom is a game.

My parents bought me Doom and know that I play it, despite that they are not fans of unrealistic fictional stuff like the concept of killing demons.

[Ar_e_en]

Don't have kids, but I was playing DOOM since I was 5 years old! Everyone in my family played DOOM, even my mother played it from time to time (although - she preferred playing HERETIC most of the time).

[INfront95]

My Father brought Doom when i was, like , 4. It was my first game ever. So, yea, high chance i will allow my kids play doom when i get one's.

[Noiser]

I was 4 whan I saw my dad playing Doom for the first time. And now I'm here.

I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not lol