My “game plan” for raising my future child(ren)

When I was younger, I was certain I didn't want children. Whenever I went to the store with my mom and heard a kid screaming and crying, it reaffirmed my decision. When I met Jimmy, who is now my husband, in high school, I was beginning to imagine a future where he was the father of my children. Then, when his sister gave birth to a sweet little girl named Kendall, and later a perfect baby boy named Atticus, I knew that I wanted to be a mother someday.

Now, Jimmy and me being the geeks that we are, talk often about the games we played as kids, and the games we want our future kid(s) to play. I'm excited to play games with them, and also to introduce them to games they can play by themselves.

I want my kid(s) to play the games Jimmy and I played growing up for two reasons: Firstly, because many of them are truly great games; and secondly, because I want them to appreciate the technology used in games today. I'm afraid that if they start off playing something like, say, Uncharted, they might think Super Mario Bros. 3 or Ocarina of Time are lame...and then we'd have to put them up for adoption. (Spoiler alert: I'm totally kidding.)

I want Jimmy and I to experience playing Mario Party 2 on N64 with our child(ren). I want to see their eyes light up when they play Donkey Kong Country and Crash Bandicoot for the first time. I want us to share our love of video games with our offspring. Even if they don't enjoy playing games (which would honestly make me question if they got switched at birth in the hospital), we want to make sure they're exposed to all kinds of games, sans the overly violent ones, which they can choose to play when they're older.

Since Jimmy and I have all of our consoles from childhood - including the NES (or, simply the "Nintendo" as many older gamers call it), Sega Dreamcast, SNES, Sega Genesis, and many more - it will be easy to expose our child(ren) to all different types of games spanning across many console generations.

If our future offspring end up loving games as much as we do, you can bet they'll be coming to MAGFest with us (assuming it will always be on the east coast). Games have really changed our lives, and we hope to pass that on to the next generation.

Do your kids play video games? What kinds of games do they like? Do you play any games with them? Talk to me on Twitter: @gottosaurus