In defence of games for children – growing up is overrated

There’s more to maturity than gore.

For a medium that’s already at risk of being branded ‘childish’ whenever it dares peep over culture’s parapet, games that are openly for children have a special kind of infamy. Mostly, we try to pretend they don’t exist. “The average age of a gamer is 35 and up and we all have mortgages!” We’ll splutter, when somebody asks whether their nephew can borrow “that Ben 10 game all the kids play”. If we allow ourselves to play ‘children’s games’ at all, it’s with an expression of ghastly irony, as though we’d been petrified in the act of reading a Christmas cracker joke. “For the young and the young at heart,” we’ll chortle, furtively stuffing a prized copy of Skylanders into the mouth of a passing dog.

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