TL;DR Want to teach my 8 year old sister video gaming, but she can't read well. Suggestions?
I find myself in a conundrum. My little sister is 8 and I wanted to introduce her to gaming. She watches me play video games very often and enjoys doing so and I would love to teach her how to start gaming, but there's a problem. It's not the state of the industry, exclusively preaching to the choir instead of truly appealing to children as they used to, though that plays part of the problem. No, the big problem is that she can't read. Oh sure, she can-with some direction-sound out words and grasp the meaning of a sentence, but she's dyslexic and can't read fluently. This is a problem. I personally began gaming for myself with Pokemon Blue which I thought I might be able to use to help her get a general idea of controls and a non-action combat system so there would be no reliance on lightning gamer-reflexes, but the text. It dominates everything. If you can't glance at a word on screen and immediately know what it means it quickly becomes overwhelming. Remember, she's only 8 and hasn't played video games before so she doesn't have that button-brain link that surpasses the fingers yet, so leaping into most action-based systems is a no. My question to you all is this: What games could I use to break her into the field? Something that doesn't immediately cry foul at every slip-up and with a minimal reliance on reading such that I can easily tell her what she needs to do in order to build those gamer instincts. Run to the right, talk to everyone, how to go about exploring a standard JRPG town will come with her ability to read more fluently but getting past that "pressing the button labeled 'A'" cure to just "pressing 'A'" is what I would think the first step should be. Any suggestions?
I find myself in a conundrum. My little sister is 8 and I wanted to introduce her to gaming. She watches me play video games very often and enjoys doing so and I would love to teach her how to start gaming, but there's a problem. It's not the state of the industry, exclusively preaching to the choir instead of truly appealing to children as they used to, though that plays part of the problem. No, the big problem is that she can't read. Oh sure, she can-with some direction-sound out words and grasp the meaning of a sentence, but she's dyslexic and can't read fluently. This is a problem. I personally began gaming for myself with Pokemon Blue which I thought I might be able to use to help her get a general idea of controls and a non-action combat system so there would be no reliance on lightning gamer-reflexes, but the text. It dominates everything. If you can't glance at a word on screen and immediately know what it means it quickly becomes overwhelming. Remember, she's only 8 and hasn't played video games before so she doesn't have that button-brain link that surpasses the fingers yet, so leaping into most action-based systems is a no. My question to you all is this: What games could I use to break her into the field? Something that doesn't immediately cry foul at every slip-up and with a minimal reliance on reading such that I can easily tell her what she needs to do in order to build those gamer instincts. Run to the right, talk to everyone, how to go about exploring a standard JRPG town will come with her ability to read more fluently but getting past that "pressing the button labeled 'A'" cure to just "pressing 'A'" is what I would think the first step should be. Any suggestions?
