Crossplay

Like most parents, my days are often driven by routines. This has to be done by X, so that Y can happen. One child has to be dropped off at A, but before you leave, you need to pick up the other child from B. Routines become habits, habits become familiar, and days quickly blur together. There is comfort, at times, in monotony. But it also tends to leave you with little free time. If you’re reading Crossplay, I presume you’re into video games.

Earlier this year, scores of critics in their 20s, 30s, and 40s reviewed the new Yoshi game, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. They enjoyed it generally but often questioned the lack of difficulty, the aimlessless of its structure, and the repetitive nature of its goals. They also scored it from an adult perspective. And adults, with our impending mortality and looming mortgage payments, tend to have finish lines on the mind.

Last week, I got two surprising emails from Roblox titled “Your child’s activity on Roblox.” Inside them, much to my surprise, was a detailed but still succinct roundup of what both my 10-year-old and six-year-old have been recently doing in Roblox. The roundup started out big picture: how much they were playing daily, how much they played the past week, their single biggest Roblox day, and generally what days were “peak” Roblox time. Plus, it detailed the top three games they had been playing.

My goal for this week was to download Apple’s new operating system, iOS 27, and test drive the revamped parental controls. Despite the prevalence of Apple devices in kids’ hands, Apple’s lagged behind competitors like Google and their excellent Family Link app. iOS 27, with a slick and refined interface, promised to help Apple finally catch up. The ability to pause a child’s device whenever you want, regardless of the amount of screen time you’ve granted them? Oh, thank god.

In all of the initial trailers for Marvel’s Wolverine, we’ve seen Loganslice through baddies, covering himself and others in blood, cuts, and who knows what else. But in one of Wolverine’s final pre-release trailers, Insomniac Games—developers of the family-friendly Ratchet & Clank series and Marvel’s Spider-Man games—revealed that they’d be offering a different kind of accessibility feature for players: reduced blood, gore, and dismemberment.

There are flaws in the heavy handed approaches schools, states, countries, and platforms are taking in regards to ongoing criticism of social media, but one change most people can agree on is the disabling of algorithmic feeds. Letting adults opt into such feeds is probably the middle ground for everyone else, but young people? See ya.

I am not sitting beside my daughter cheering her on while she plays mini-games in Kirby’s Return to Dream Land. I am backseat gaming. “No sweetie, if you want to win, you need to time your button press with the reticle.” “Well, they beat you because you aren’t doing the action right.” “Try reading what the instructions say.” She ignores me completely. The same thing happens in Mario Party and Kirby’s Dream Buffet.

I, personally, am deeply stressed about how much fun I’m going to be having this month, given how many incredible-sounding video games are arriving in September alone. On the family friendly front, September is often a little lighter because kids are headed back to school, but as you’ll see below, there’s a lot of games to choose from. What games are you looking forward to playing with your kids this month?

On Sunday evening, my 10-year-old and were on the couch. The rest of the house was asleep, following a weekend that had people up early and in bed late. We had some time to kill. She wanted to run a few rounds of Fortnite, but while an update for that downloaded, I turned and asked “How about we play that space game for a minute?” Her eyes lit up.

Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash My newly minted 10-year-old has been writing down birthday gift ideas in a notebook for months now. Some things, like what kind of makeup she might want, have changed. One request, however, has not. It started at the top, it stayed at the top, and when we were done opening presents this week, you could tell she was bummed because the wrapping did not contain that one thing.