They Abandoned Their Children to Fortnite

I love the smell of moral panic in the morning. Especially moral panic around video games. Get a load of this bullshit from Maclean’s up in Canada: “They Lost Their Kids to Fortnite”:

A group of Canadian parents say their kids are so addicted to the video game Fortnite that they’ve stopped eating, sleeping and showering. Now these parents want to hold its tech-giant creator accountable.

That’s just the summary. Once you start reading the actual article this bullshit gets even thicker, and the reporter ever more credulous.

Then the pandemic hit. Soccer ceased. School and martial arts shifted online. Instead of bouncing between practices and classes, Cody was suddenly trapped at home. To combat his boredom, he played Xbox. One of his favourite video games was Fortnite, a multiplayer shooter that’s available on pretty much every gaming console, computer, tablet or smartphone. He was partial to the “battle royale” mode, in which he had to outlast up to 99 other players in a Hunger Games–style fight to the death.

Cody’s parents were uneasy with Fortnite’s violence – he was only nine, and the game was rated 13-plus – but its cartoonishness allayed their worries. The game looked less like a battlefield and more like a Pixar-produced acid trip. At the beginning of every round, Cody—or, more precisely, his avatar, a buff combatant wielding a comically oversized pickaxe—boarded a flying blue school bus. Then he’d skydive onto a vast, vibrant island dotted with whimsically named landmarks like Tomato Town and Wailing Woods.

What the hell are Cody’s parents doing? Are they too wrapped up in their own bullshit to check the ESRB ratings for the games their kid plays, making a parental decision, and enforcing it? The ESRB in particular has a whole long-ass article about Fortnite written specifically for parents.

• Fortnite is rated T for teens.
• Players interact.
• There are in-game purchases.

These three points alone should have been enough for a sensible parent to rule out Fortnite for their preadolescent children. Never mind that the “battle royale” mode is modeled after a dystopian Japanese novel by Koushun Takami in which a hundred players enter, but only one can remain standing.

Granted, my parents let me rent R-rated horror movies when I was Cody’s age, and thought nothing of me reading Stephen King and Clive Barker. Hell, my father took me to see They Live when it came out in 1988. I was ten at the time. But they damn well talked to me about what I had been watching and reading.

Incidentally, I’m not specifically hating on Fortnite here. I wouldn’t want nine-year-olds playing Call of Duty¹, Elden Ring², or Final Fantasy XIV³, either. Nor should they have game consoles in their bedrooms.

Hell, I’m not convinced that people under eighteen belong on the internet at all, unless they’re closely supervised by adults and using it for school. Though this probably marks me as an old fogey in dire need of a plate of OK boomer and a tall glass of ice-cold STFU, but this is my website and I’ll hold forth as I please.

Meanwhile, let’s get back to the article…

Alana allowed Cody to play Fortnite for two hours at a time, a few nights a week. When he was gaming, he wouldn’t eat, drink water or even go to the bathroom. If he lost a round, he’d yell and slam his controller on the ground. When Alana would tell him his time was up, he’d beg to continue. “He was miserable when he couldn’t game,” she says. “That’s all he wanted to do.”

What in Baal’s unholy name is this crap? The kid’s so obsessed with the game that he won’t eat, drink, or use the toilet? That’s not a game this kid should be playing, even if all his friends do. Also, if you’re setting a time limit on a match-based game, of course the kid is going to be upset if you point at the clock and demand he quit in the middle of a match. If Alana had been thinking, she would have limited Cody to five matches, win or lose. And if Cody can’t take losing gracefully, if he’s going to yell or slam his controller on the floor (and risk breaking it), then he shouldn’t be allowed to play once he starts losing his temper.

It doesn’t help that Fortnite doesn’t have a pause button, but neither does Elden Ring or its predecessors. Neither does FFXIV, and I still manage to do shit while gaming. In the case of Elden Ring I find a safe spot where I’m unlikely to be attacked. In the case of FFXIV I just do shit between dungeon crawls and raids – and if the other players don’t like it they can boot me out of the party. It’s not like I just ghost ’em; I use the chat feature to tell them I’m ducking out for a few minutes for IRL stuff.

And why were Cody’s parents enabling this behavior? Sure, they’re not gamers, but if Cody were this obsessive about anything else surely they’d see there’s something wrong? Wouldn’t they? Somebody please tell me they’re not actually as stupid as this Maclean’s article suggests they are.

Oh, wait. They are that stupid. Or at least that naive if they thought they could use Fortnite as an electronic babysitter with no ill effects. I bet the Xbox was in Cody’s bedroom, too.

Cody’s parents weren’t gamers. Alana hardly even used social media. As a nature-loving horticulturist, she always imagined her sons would spend their childhoods romping around the family’s forested 18-acre property, not cooped up in front of a TV. But during COVID, video games were one of the few ways her son could connect with his friends. They’d call the house, asking if Cody could come online to play. “Gaming became such a part of his social circle that it felt like we’d be depriving him if we said no,” says Alana. So she reluctantly allowed it, making sure he offset his screen time with bike rides and walks along the river. For a while at least, they achieved a healthy balance.

I was going to say that at least Cody’s parents tried, but then I reread this paragraph and noticed that they own 18 acres of land. This kid’s mom has huge tracts of land and she’s letting her kid huddle in front of a screen because “it was one of the few ways her son could connect with his friends”?

Were these kids really likely to give each other COVID while romping through 18 acres of forest? I don’t think that’s likely, but I suppose nobody really knew for sure at the time. When in doubt, safety comes first for most parents. I can’t really blame Cody’s parents for not wanting to go coffin-shopping for their kid, but with that much acreage why wasn’t the kid outside pretending to be a Shaolin monk on a pilgrimage or something? Surely he and his friends could have played together in the woods as long as they kept their masks on; they probably could have made the masks part of the game. Do kids even play pretend games anymore, nowadays? Or did adults in my generation ruin that?

Really, I’m kinda jealous of Cody and his family. 18 acres of forest? With that much space to explore and play in I wouldn’t have needed friends. I could have found all kinds of ways to amuse myself all on my own as a kid. That’s what I call privilege; I was lucky to have the same back yard for more than six months at a time for the first ten years of my life.

And we’re supposed to not think this is arrant bullshit? We’re supposed to not blame the parents because they imagined a different childhood for their kids? If you want your kids to have a certain kind of childhood, you’ve got to make that shit happen. Otherwise you’ll be like my mother who once lamented that I never went to Disney World as a kid the way she had. Not that I had ever wanted to go, since I fucking hated Disney even as a kid. However, if I had wanted to go to Disney World as a kid but didn’t get to, then whose fault was that?

Regardless, I’m not going to blame them for having a nice big forested property. I do blame them for this:

In September of 2021, Cody resumed in-person classes at a new school, but his mind was stuck online. To make friends, he asked his classmates what video games they played. After his second day of school, he came home and excitedly told his mom that he and another student had agreed to game together that night. Alana refused to let him log on. “It’s not a gaming night,” she explained. Cody whined and pleaded, but she held firm. He started to cry, and then came the screaming. Alana begged him to calm down, but he shrieked for five straight hours. She had to shut the windows so the neighbours wouldn’t hear.

I had to read this a dozen times before I could accept that I wasn’t hallucinating. I honestly think that the way we raise boys in the US and Canada amounts to emotional neglect. In particular, we don’t seem to teach boys generally applicable social skills. We expect boys to figure it out on their own, and if they don’t then there’s something wrong with them.

Also, look at this:

Cody’s gaming obsession ruined Christmas, then New Year’s. He fell behind on schoolwork and looked dazed on the soccer field. “He was pretty much a zombie,” says Alana. “He had no motivation to do anything else.” He tried out for a rep team but didn’t make the cut. Fine, he decided. He didn’t want to be a soccer player anymore anyway

This article is treating Cody’s obsession with gaming as if it wasn’t something over which his parents had any influence. They were victims, or so we’re supposed to think. And yet the only victim I see is Cody, but he’s not a victim of Epic Games, but of his own parents’ inability to parent.

• He’s fallen behind on schoolwork because he’s been out of in-person school for a year or so? What were his parents doing to help?
• He’s out of practice and can’t play soccer as well as he had before the plague? What were his parents doing to help?
• He’s disappointed by his failure to make the team and copes by giving up on soccer altogether? What were his parents doing to help?

Any social skills Cody had before COVID fucked over his life seem to have atrophied from disuse. The only way he remembers how to connect with other kids his own age is through video games, because his parents didn’t teach him any other way to do so, and now his parents are taking that away too? They treat him as a discipline problem and a junkie when he quite understandably expresses his frustration over his lack of control over his own life by lashing out?

Yeah, destroying property is a bit excessive, but if people don’t listen when you ask politely, and they don’t listen when you raise your voice, of course you’re going to escalate further. Of course you’re going to act out if you’re nine years old, don’t have the cognitive or emotional skills to cope in a more constructive manner, and your parents plainly don’t know the first thing about raising boys to be emotionally healthy men.

Christ, do we even know what an emotionally healthy man even looks like after generations of endemic emotional neglect mainly impacting boys? Aside from Keanu Reeves, of course, but I suspect he basically lucked out in that department.

Let’s get back to something mentioned at the start of the article:

Cody, whose name I changed to protect his privacy, had been diagnosed with ADHD, and his parents had detected other signs of neurodivergence: he organized his bathroom countertop fastidiously and couldn’t fall asleep unless his blanket was folded to his liking.

So we know the kid has ADHD and might also be autistic. He evidently thrives on routines he’s designed for himself. Playing soccer probably fed his need for routine and stimulation nicely, but then COVID comes along and blows his life to hell. He adapts, because what else is he going to do? Unfortunately, and I blame his parents for this, his adaptation was online video games.

I mean, you know your kid has ADHD and might be autistic, so you let him have a game console and an internet connection? If Cody’s parents had half a brain between them, they would not have let the kid get into video games, especially online multiplayer games, at that young an age.

But instead of taking responsibility, they’re blaming Epic Games? Sure, Epic has no more business selling video games to kids than Mindgeek has allowing them to access PornHub, but how intrusive do you want these businesses to be with age verification? How much personal data do you want these corporations to retain in the process of age verification, and do you trust them to not leak or spill it to the general public?

And just watch the moral panic-mongering come creeping in.

Since the dawn of Pong, psychiatrists have been debating whether or not to treat excessive gaming as an addiction. In 2018, the World Health Organization recognized “internet gaming disorder.” People with IGD play video games pathologically, continuing long after their habits have negatively affected their physical and mental health and their professional lives. Estimates suggest that up to 60 million people have this condition. It doesn’t help matters that games are cheaper, more advanced and more accessible than ever before, says Jeffrey Derevensky, a McGill University psychology professor who sat on the advisory panel that helped the WHO identify the disorder. “Kids are walking around with a mini-console in their pockets,” he says. “Gaming is a hidden addiction. You can’t smell it on their breath and you can’t see it in their eyes. And so parents are often totally unaware of what their children are doing.”

You know what this bullshit reminds me of? The 18th century moral panic over women reading novels.

“Women, of every age, of every condition, contract and retain a taste for novels …The depravity is universal. My sight is every-where offended by these foolish, yet dangerous, books. I find them on the toilette of fashion, and in the work-bag of the sempstress; in the hands of the lady, who lounges on the sofa, and of the lady, who sits at the counter. From the mistresses of nobles they descend to the mistresses of snuff-shops – from the belles who read them in town, to the chits who spell them in the country. I have actually seen mothers, in miserable garrets, crying for the imaginary distress of an heroine, while their children were crying for bread: and the mistress of a family losing hours over a novel in the parlour, while her maids, in emulation of the example, were similarly employed in the kitchen. I have seen a scullion-wench with a dishclout in one hand, and a novel in the other, sobbing o’er the sorrows of Julia, or a Jemima”

(Sylph no. 5, October 6, 1796: 36-37)

It used to be women reading novels, now it’s boys playing video games. The more things change, the more they remain the same. It’s easy to choose not to choose life when reality sucks for the vast majority of people, but we can’t have that because if most people opted out our whole rotten society would collapse. Doesn’t really matter if the alternative is novels, video games, or heroin.

“Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?”

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

I’ll admit that, being autistic, I also have tendencies toward obsession⁴. Here’s a case in point: I had a week off from work recently for the Fourth of July. Know how I spent most of it aside from helping with the housework (aka doing most of it), tinkering with this website, and working on Spiral Architect? I spent a lot of it playing Final Fantasy XVI. The thing is, I didn’t get into video games until I was 13 or so. I probably wouldn’t have gotten into them even then if not for a well-meaning relative; there was no way my parents could have afforded to buy me a NES themselves, but they couldn’t say ‘no’ to the grandparents.

They damned well set limits, though: only on weekends, and only after I had taken care of my responsibilities. They also made a point of telling me why these rules were necessary; they had seen already how I could get wrapped up in something that interested me for hours on end. Admittedly, I chafed at these rules as a kid, but when you’re a kid chafing at the rules is part of becoming a healthy, autonomous adult. I might play during the week as an adult, but I still make sure I take care of business first and I sure as hell don’t play before work.

Cody’s parents didn’t try to impose that kind of discipline, let alone explain themselves to Cody. And they’re shocked that after being obsessed with soccer and having that taken from him due to circumstances nobody could have foreseen, let alone controlled, he had found himself a new obsession? They’re shocked that when they tried to curb an obsession they had previously allowed that their son reacts with rage?

Cody’s parents didn’t lose him to Fortnite; they fucking well abandoned him. I award them and others in their position no points, and I doubt God will spare the slightest mercy for their souls. They failed miserably as parents, and they’re trying to deflect the blame for their negligence on big, bad corporations.

Fuck ‘em. Their kids deserved better. Instead, they’re going to spend their lives paying the price of their parents’ failures. No lawsuit against game developers is going to give them justice.