Santa bought my 5-year-old son a copy of Sonic X Shadow Generations on the Xbox for Christmas. I’ve watched him play it a few times between Christmas and New Year. You know what? He’s pretty good at it. He dies a lot, struggles with the controls a fair bit, and he’s not fully mastered the game’s mechanics – but he can play it fairly competently for a 5-year-old. My son is a massive Sonic fan. We even took him to see Sonic 3 at the cinema, as it was released a few days after his birthday. So Santa getting him his own copy of Sonic X Shadow Generations was the icing on the cake. As for me, a proud father and keen gamer for over 40 years, witnessing my son get into gaming is a joy.

Still, watching him play the game got me pondering if it is easier for kids to get into gaming than when I did at his age. To set the scene, I need to go back several decades. We had an Atari 2600 in our house. I can’t remember the exact time that I got into gaming, but I tend to say it was around 1980-1981 when I was around 4 or (like my son) 5. Combat is the first game that I remember playing, as the 2600 came bundled with a copy. The thing about growing up through the ’80s is that I got to experience true gaming evolution. When I got into it, gaming was a much, much simpler hobby than today. Most games back then were single-screen things with no real objective other than to get a high score.

Oh, we had a handful of titles with an objective. The rather annoying but pretty awesome Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the infamous and vastly misunderstood E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial spring to mind but, by and large, most games were simple affairs. The classic Space Invaders where you moved left and right destroying aliens, or Breakout where you moved left and right destroying coloured blocks. There was a lot of moving left and right while destroying things in those early games. But the point is that titles were far simpler to understand and play back then – so simple that all you needed was one of these.

That was the standard Atari 2600 controller, a basic joystick and one button. You may just be able to make it out in that picture, but the joystick even came with a “TOP” labelling so you know which way around you were supposed to hold it – that’s how basic things were back then. Now compare that to the standard Xbox controller. Just on the face, the Xbox controller has two analogue sticks – both of which work as buttons, an eight-way D-pad, the four main buttons, the (what should still be called) start and select buttons. Then there’s a capture/share button – for nabbing and sharing screenshots, etc and don’t forget the main Xbox button. That’s just the face of the controller, there’s also the two bumper and two trigger buttons. I’m not going to count the button which you use to pair the controller to the console itself. So in total, the standard Xbox controller has 22 buttons – or at least 22 possible pressy things that a 5-year-old has to contend with… and it doesn’t even tell you which way around you’re supposed to hold it. Even if the game only uses one or two buttons, a 5-year-old is going to press anything that they can. Once more, when I was my son’s age and getting into gaming, we had a simple joystick and one button.

That’s just the controller, I’ve not even mentioned modern games… and I’m not going to just yet because I can’t ignore the analogue elements of the Xbox controller. The two analogue sticks and the two analogue trigger buttons. The more you move/press them, the more the game responds. We never had to contend with analogue controls on the Atari 2600 (maybe the paddle controller qualifies, kind of). The point is, that’s a hell of a lot for a 5-year-old to have to remember and understand. I mentioned earlier about growing up through the ’80s and how I got to experience gaming evolution – and I didn’t just mean the games/graphics. The controllers evolved. We went from one-button joysticks to two-button gamepads (not counting start and select). We had the great SNES pad in the early ’90s which introduced the four-face buttons and bumper buttons that have now become standard, We had that weird but great (when you got used to it) N64 pad and so on. That’s before I get into the arcade machines of the day and their varied controls – like Paperboy where you used the handlebars of a bike, the numerous analogue steering wheels for racing games, Atari’s Basketball with the trackball controller, light guns, sit-down cabinets like Star Wars which used a yoke-like control, etc.

The point is that we older gamers learned to adapt our gaming skills with the changing times and as games become more and more complex. Games went from simple one-screen things to flip screens, side-scrollers, vertical scrollers, four-way scrollers and eventually, full 3D movement and environments. The software grew, the controllers grew, and we grew with them. Now though, kids are thrown into far more immense games with elaborate controls, and they don’t get the luxury of growing and changing as the games and controllers evolve. That really is a lot to expect from a younger gamer, no?

I remember playing games like Centipede on the 2600 and within 10 seconds, you know what you are doing and how to do it. It was simple, move the joystick left and right, and press the only button to shoot. There wasn’t a great deal for a 5-year-old gamer to take in and wrestle with. Games were basic and you just fell into them with little to no effort. Most games from back then were about shooting something… and then I played Frogger. I wasn’t shooting stuff, I was avoiding stuff… and then I played Pitfall! where I was swinging on vines and doing more avoiding. Even by 1981/82, games were already evolving.

That evolution really hit its stride in the mid-’80s and as games changed and grew, so did the hardware. The better the hardware became, the more complex the games and the graphics got. Once more, I (and many others) got to witness this evolution first-hand and by the time 3D gaming became commonplace, I was ready. It wasn’t a sudden jump from Donkey Kong to Super Mario 64, it was a steady climb. However, if I had never played a game before and you put that N64 pad in my hand in 1997 to play Super Mario 64 (when it was released here in the UK), I would’ve been totally lost. I wouldn’t have known how to use the analogue stick for 3D movement, I would have no idea what all the buttons were for. This is where experiencing gaming evolution was a must. Even with years of previous experience and gaming knowledge under my belt in 1997, playing Super Mario 64 for the first time was daunting, and it still took some time to get used to.

So putting an Xbox controller in my 5-year-old son’s hands and having him play Sonic X Shadow Generations must be overwhelming for him – he hasn’t had the fortune to grow with gaming. I don’t know if you have ever played Sonic Generations, but it is kind of complex, especially for a first proper game. You see, you get to play as both young and older Sonic. As young Sonic, the levels are old-school platforming fare. Just like playing the classic Sonic games but with some added 2.5D flair. At its heart, it is simple 2D gaming. But playing as older Sonic, it throws in 3D gaming. The older Sonic levels even switch from 2D to 3D (and back) in a heartbeat. You can be doing some simple 2D platforming, for the game to then change to 3D. You can be running from left to right, and the game changes to 3D, and so now you’re having to change your entire perception and thought process. That’s easy for old-timey gamers such as myself, but for a 5-year-old? The older Sonic levels are far more complex than the younger Sonic ones. Then there is the fact that this updated Sonic X Shadow Generations adds some Shadow-specific gameplay and levels, which adds another layer of complexity and an even more vaired control scheme.

It’s a far cry from the 5-year-old me playing Missile Command on my Atari 2600. We hadn’t even considered 3D gaming back then – at least not how it is today. We were impressed that games were starting to have more than one screen in the 1980s. We were amazed that you could walk off one end of the screen in Pitfall! and appear on a different screen. That was mind-blowing, so 3D gaming wasn’t even a pipe dream to us. As I said in the intro to this article, about my 5-year-old son playing Sonic X Shadow Generations – he dies a lot, struggles with the controls a fair bit, and he’s not fully mastered the game’s mechanics – but he can play it fairly competently for a 5-year-old. That’s insane to me. How is taking everything in? How does his brain cope with the game switching from 2D gameplay to 3D and so on?

Add on that Xbox controller with all of those buttons. It’s an inordinate amount of information for a 5-year-old to take in. Now, my son has not only been playing the rather complex Sonic game, he has also been playing Bluey: The Videogame. He loves the Bluey TV show (me too), so him running around Bluey’s house while playing as Bandit brings him a good chunk of joy. I don’t know if you have ever played Bluey: The Videogame, but it barely qualifies as a game by today’s standards. You don’t do a great deal, other than run around the house (and a couple of other locations) and pick up items that are easy to find. There are a handful of mini-games such as keepy uppy and the floor is lava – but there is very little challenge and everything is aimed at younger children. If I’m being honest, even with the lack of gameplay here, it’s still more complex and has more layers to it than the kind of games I grew up with at my son’s age. Even with Bluey: The Videogame, there are multiple buttons to press, and you do a lot more than move left and right while destroying things.

However, while my son does like the Bluey game, he tends to get bored rather quickly. He’ll play for 10 minutes or so and tell me that he wants to play something else, usually Sonic X Shadow Generations. It’s weird how the game that is aimed at his age group bores him easily, but the more complex game, and the one aimed at older gamers, is the one that holds his interest longer. Maybe that is the key, these games aimed at younger kids are not all that entertaining for kids. Maybe there needs to be a happy middle ground between kids’ games that are too simple and ones that are too complex. Game devs need to learn that not all 5-year-olds are going to be entertained by something as basic as Bluey: The Videogame. 5-year-olds now aren’t the same as when I was that age and while they may not have had the knowledge and experience of gaming evolution, kids these days do have something I never had.

Tablets, iPads, etc. Both of my children have had tables since being about 3 years old. I know some parents would say giving a 3-year-old a tablet is a bad thing, but I strongly disagree. It’s a very different world now from when I was growing up. Tech is king and getting kids used to it early is now a must. My kids would play simple and educational games on their tablets, games that taught them letters, numbers, colours and so on. It also taught them hand-eye coordination and it helped to sharpen their reactions and more. Both of my kids are doing very well at school too, just maybe using the tablets helped out with that.

To see how computers/hardware has grown since I was 5 is insane. To see how much has changed in terms of technology when I was growing up is unimaginable if you hadn’t lived it. As an example, the Internet, I didn’t have that as a kid and not until I was well into my late teens, but it has revolutionised the world in a few short years. I still marvel at how far games have come since I first played Combat on the Atari 2600 to the vast scope that they have now.  Kids need to get used to tech ASAP these days, because it is the future and pretty much everything that my children will do when they are older will involve using some form of tablet or computer – it is inevitable.

But back to my point. I went from playing on my Fisher Price Chatter Telephone and Little Snoopy pull-along toys, to the Atari 2600. While the games were primitive by today’s standards, it was still quite the leap for 5-year-old me to comprehend. One minute I’m pushing a brightly coloured square block into a square hole, the next minute I’m flying through space and shooting big rocks into smaller rocks with Asteroids. I didn’t have the bridge that kids have today with their tablets and I think this helps them to get to grips with gaming at an early age. Tapping on a tablet is not quite the same as getting used to the many buttons on an Xbox pad, but surely all that tapping helps in some way. The jump from using an iPad to a game console now is a lot shorter than the leap from Stickle Bricks to a game console back then.

Our games may not have been as complex as today, we may not have had quite as many buttons on our controllers – but our brains were far less prepared for the technology. Kids these days are introduced to technology before they can even walk. Toys for toddlers have some kind of modern tech in them these days. Look at some of the LeapFrog range of toys for babies and toddlers. Laptops, electronic books, smartphones and more. Obviously not real laptops and smartphones, but toys specifically designed to look like and work (kind of) like the real thing. Toys that are educational, but also created to mimic real tech. Even as an infant, the little ‘uns are already being trained to use modern technology. The closest thing we had in the 80s was Speak & Spell… if you could afford one. Even then, Speak & Spell wasn’t aimed at infants and toddlers, it was for an older child.

Have you been inside a modern classroom? I have. The classrooms when I was at school featured a massive blackboard that the teacher would scratch onto with chalk. Not any more, they now have large screens and projectors linked to laptops. Even in school, technology is taking over and kids are born into the digital age instead of having to find and grow with it as I did. So yeah, games are far more complex today than when I was growing up. The controllers are much more elaborate and confusing but even so, I think that kids get into gaming is easier now than when I was my son’s age. A 5-year-old’s brain today is taking in and processing a lot more information than I was over 40 years ago and they are surrounded by technology at a much younger age. And do you know something? It’s really great to see too.