GrizzlerBorno said:
I started gaming around say... 7 years old I'd think (might've been earlier with some handheld stuff, not sure, but I remember a handheld tetris at some point). Mind you that was pretty much playing Minesweeper and having not a fucking clue as to how the actual thing worked (Tetris/Solitaire came much more naturally
). I did move onto some other games in time though, mostly stuff on my old Sega and Nintendo/PlayStation at friends at first (games like Sonic, Mario etc.), but I was always into PC gaming more. Played stuff like Commandos for example quite early on as well as a good number of adventure games.
I see you're not from an English-speaking country so two things - it's both a blessing and a curse. The blessing part is that you can teach him a second language through gaming and I can tell you from personal experience, it's an awesome motivator and a way to learn, especially if you go through some text heavy stuff like RPGs and adventure games. The curse part is that he'll have a lot of trouble gaming at first and will need some help because while it's easy for an English speaking kid to figure out "hey, key bindings, awesome and see here, says press shift to run, great", a non-English speaking child will have to rely a lot on instinct at first (which is not actually a bad thing, you'd be surprised how much gaming instinct you gain when you're forced to interact with games for a long time without actually understanding the language they're "speaking" to you)
Anyway, 3.5 years old is a VERY young age. At this point I'd say stick a normal phone in his hands and just give him some simple racing games or something. Personally I've started my niece off on the gaming route a bit with Worms Armageddon, but she's 8 and already knows a bit of English, so yeah, still a way to go with your nephew imo. Take him to the arcades for now, it's actually a terrific place to start as it's well geared towards button mashing
I'm gonna probably tick someone off, but I'd say at some point introduce him to GTA. Before you jump at it, sorry, I don't buy into the "violent games (or any other media for that matter) cause violence" for a fraction of a bloody second seeing as I grew up playing the most violent shit I could get my hands on since early on (Mortal Combat, Tekken, GTA, Commandos, Resident Evil etc.), as has a number of my friends and none of us ever caused trouble/started fights while most other kids that never touched a computer at the time would constantly beat on whomever weaker they could find, start fights every chance they got over football or whatever else stirred them up etc. Just explain to him the difference between reality and games and the fact freedom from consequence is not something that exists in the real world (never had it told to me, was always obvious, but it's good 'parenting' imo).
Anyway, back to GTA, I played it since the second installment and gotta say, from GTA 3 on, you can pretty much learn nearly all the game mechanics around by playing the series - you have running, crouching, shooting, aiming, driving, flying, quests, etc. plus - since the games are very sandboxy and free, save for the GTA 4, he won't have much of a hard time playing it as the odds are stacked heavily in the player's favour.
As I said though, introduce him to it "at some point" it doesn't necessarily need to be his first game. The old point&click adventure games are a very "simple" introduction to gaming and I'd suggest them not just because they're a great starting point, but also because they'll likely instill a great amount of love for storytelling in gaming. He will however need a lot of translating, but encourage him as often as you can to try and figure it out on his own cause it'll push him to both learn the language and get a hang of how games work at their sort of base level.
Sports games are also good cause they're relatively simple (particularly the older games which you should be able to find cheap as chips these days, check some bundles or old compilation CDs) and he'll have an easier time understanding the concept of the game itself if you give him something like a football game when he already knows for the most part how football itself works.
Well post's getting long enough so I'll wrap it up, but think you've got enough info there
edit: Huzzah for making the post longer, but one more important thing. Browser games. Honestly, as simple as you can get, kids love them and they're often geared to not require that much English knowledge too. You have sites like gamesforkids.com or something, if you look around on Google, you'll find them quite quickly, he can take his pick there
