Like movies, video games have contributed to a massive and diverse industry. The video game market place Steam has over thirty-thousand games available for sale and only 47% of developers sell their games using steam. This article will teach you what you need to know about the diversity in the gaming market, the games that came out of home projects, and what you need to know for you young gamers. Here at GKIS we care about the internet safety of your young gamers and we want to protect them from digital injuries. Check out the GKIS Social Media Readiness Course to prepare your tweens and teens for the dangers they will face while playing games and interacting on social media.
What is an indie game?
A video game can be classified into one of two groups based on who produced the game, AAA games and Indie games. AAAgames are produced by a major company that can back the game’s production with money, personnel, and any other resources the production may need. Indie games are produced by either a small team or a single developer with minimal resources at their disposal. An indie game developer is typically a single person with a good idea and access to game developing software.
A video game is a large time investment for any developer. Large game developers have teams of experts who each work on the pieces of the game resulting in a short production time. Indie developers, on the other hand, typically have minimal resources. They often crowd-fund projects and make sacrifices to release games in a reasonable amount of time. Indie developers tend to rely on social media for brand awareness and marketing.
Well Known Indie Games
Indie games may start out as small passion projects, but well-made games can gain popularity and become just as popular as AAA games. When an Indie game becomes popular enough, AAA publishers may buy the game from the original developer. This allows the publisher to put their formidable resources behind the project and then reap the rewards of the new and improved game. Here at GKIS, we put the formidable resource of Dr. Bennett’s years of knowledge and experience as a licensed clinical psychologist to work to create the Screen Safety Essentials Course. The Screen Safety Essentials Course provides parents and children with access to a comprehensive program that will help families to create safer screen-home environments and foster open communication.
Here are some Indie games you may recognize:
Minecraft
Minecraft is an incredibly popular Indie title, having sold over 200 million copies to date, and was sold to Microsoft the company behind the Xbox game console in 2014. Microsoft has since updated Minecraft with new content, released two more games under the Minecraft title, and expanded the game into other profitable areas such as toys.
Undertale
Undertale is a game that was crowd-funded and released in 2015 with an estimated 5.8 million users. Created by a single developer, this game has reached a level of acclaim that Nintendo licensed one of the characters to appear in one of their own games. The game also has its own line of merchandise and a much-anticipated sequel currently in development.
Among Us
Among Us is a more recent success story of a small social deception game that rocketed into the public eye, and boasted 60 million active users a day at the peak of its popularity. The game was very popular amongst YouTube and Twitch creators, which acted as a very successful marketing campaign. The game has become so popular that, during Halloween, kids were running around in inflatable costumes of the Among Us space suits.
The Benefits of Indie Games
Without a big corporation behind them forcing big decisions, indie developers can make any game they want. For example, Cup Head is an extremely difficult game with an art style designed to be an homage to the early era of hand-drawn cartoons. Some games are designed off of a single weird concept or a specific labor of love based upon an obscure passion.
Most indie developers try to get the funding they need to produce a game using crowd-funding. Crowd-funding is when a designer puts out a concept of a project online and gets funding from the potential fanbase to make the game through a mixture of donations, pre-purchasing the game before development begins, and additional benefits for backers of the game. Benefits can include anything from your name in the credits of the game as a backer to having input into a part of the game or a character in the game being named for the backer. Crowd-funding allows a developer to pool money for a passion project from people who are excited about the game. Crowd-funding success helps to attract investors because it reflects customer interest.
The Dangers of Indie Games
Indie games have been a source of some of the greatest titles of the last two decades, but that doesn’t mean that every Indie game is going to be like Minecraft. Indie games can be whatever the creator wants, and that’s not always a good thing. For example, some developers push the boundary of horror games and explore themes AAA horror would never touch. For example, The Binding of Isaac is one of the most popular Indie games of all time. The game explores themes of child abuse, religious extremism, and child suicide.
Indie games can explore any theme no matter how dark or twisted and the limit to what can be made is limited only by human imagination. That doesn’t mean all Indie games are horror games. But the range of themes available is significantly more diverse than the AAA scene for games.
What does this mean for your young gamers?
Within the gaming industry, Indie games are incredibly diverse. The diversity of genres and topics can create games that range from poorly made first attempts to truly frightening horror games and all the way to amazing successes like Minecraft.
So, what can you do for your young gamers online?
Read the summary.
If your child wants to get an Indie game it will often come from a website that allows developers to post and sell their games. There is a store page on Steam associated with a game that will give you a description of the plot, gameplay, pictures of the game, and reviews from people who have played the game. This will allow you to make an informed decision if this game is right for your child.
Our family course is designed to bring your family closer and get your kids working with you to stay safe on the internet. Our connected family course is outcome-based and will help you close screen risk gaps and increase family closeness and cooperation.
YouTube
You can often find YouTube creators that have recorded gameplay of popular new Indie games. If your child wants to play the new game their favorite YouTuber is playing, watch one of their videos with them. It’ll show you what kind of game your child is looking at, and you’ll get to hang out with your kid while you do it.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Jason T. Stewart for researching advances in the video game industry and co-authoring this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Coble, V. (2021, September 30). 10 most disturbing psychological horror indie games. CBR. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://www.cbr.com/indie-games-disturbing-psychological-horror/.
Curry, D. (2021, November 11). Among us revenue and usage statistics (2021). Business of Apps. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://www.businessofapps.com/data/among-us-statistics/.
Curry, D. (2021, November 11). Minecraft revenue and Usage Statistics (2021). Business of Apps. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://www.businessofapps.com/data/minecraft-statistics/.
Donnellan, J. (2021, June 8). 50 best indie games of all time. Cultured Vultures. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://culturedvultures.com/best-indie-games-all-time/.
G., D. (2021, November 1). 45+ video games industry statistics, facts, and trends for 2021. TechJury. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://techjury.net/blog/video-games-industry-statistics/.
Lowry, B. (2017, November 29). This is what sets ‘indie’ and ‘AAA’ video games apart. Windows Central. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://www.windowscentral.com/indie-vs-aaa-which-type-game-you.
Mikolić, M. (n.d.). Undertale stats by Playtracker Insight. stats by Playtracker Insight. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://playtracker.net/insight/game/1122.
Oddo, M. V. (2021, August 2). What’s an indie game anyway? Collider. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://collider.com/what-makes-an-indie-game/.
Who (or what) makes the content your kids watch on YouTube? In some cases, it’s hard-working creators who strive to make quality videos for entertainment or education. In other cases, it’s a computer program designed to efficiently produce videos for a lot of views and big profit. With this in mind, it is up to parents to ensure that their kids have a safe and fun experience while online. For helpful and empowering tools to establish a safe screen home environment, check out our Screen Safety Essentials Course. Today’s GKIS article tells you what you need to know to make YouTube viewing safer for your kids.
Bots!
Bots are computer programs designed by people or other bots to carry out specific online tasks. Not all bots are bad. However, they can run without any oversight from an actual human being.
One application for bots is creating YouTube videos for kids. More specifically, in this capacity bots combine video segments and post them over and over to test how many views they get. Once the tests are completed, the bot has created and run videos that ultimately make money for the programmer. Now that’s artificial intelligence!
Bot-Made Videos
Bot-made videos can look like a normal kid’s video, but they are typically a bit stranger. They often contain just enough story to string the randomly chosen segments together, but not enough story for everything happening to make logical sense. There are just enough familiar elements to hold a child’s attention but nothing educational or valuable to a child.
These videos distract kids long enough to get them to view ads and may even cause harm. After all, many times a human’s eyes have not viewed the video, and bots can’t discriminate a harmful video from a harmless one. At a glance, parents can’t discriminate either. Plus, most parents simply don’t take the time to preview thousands of videos their kids browse each day – especially from beginning to end.
Using Branded Characters to Bail Kids
One element that gets kids searching and watching are recognizable characters. Although branded characters are used without permission and are placed in a disjointed storyline for the video, kids will select them and stay entrapped expecting entertainment. For example, in her book Screen Time in the Mean Time, Dr. Bennett describes an alarming video portraying popular kid’s cartoon character, Peppa the Pig, screaming while being tortured in a dentist’s chair. The beginning of the video looks like a regular Peppa the Pig story. But near the middle of it, the story takes a confusing, terrible turn. Inappropriate video content make be shocking and even funny to older kids but vulnerable young children don’t have the insight or sophisticated skill set to look away. This can feel like a violent ambush and result in confusion, shame, and trauma.
Auto-play
Kids don’t always view these videos because they searched out the characters. Sometimes it is offered to them automatically in their feed. Auto-play is a YouTube feature where a new video is automatically
started after the one currently playing ends. Auto-play will select a video that is similar to the one you just watched based on tags that content creators mark their videos with when they post them. If auto-play is left on too long, it can lead a viewer down a rabbit hole of similar but stranger and stranger videos until they fall into bot-generated content.
The Algorithm
Unfortunately, bot-made videos and more can slip onto YouTube relatively easily. The huge volume of content uploaded to YouTube every day means that having a human being review every video uploaded to the site would be impossible. Instead, YouTube has another way to filter the content uploaded to its site, a bot of their own.
YouTube’s algorithm is, in essence, a much more advanced form of a bot that can scan through every video as it’s uploaded and automatically flag anything that violates YouTube’s terms of service, or at least that’s what it’s supposed to do. Unfortunately, YouTube’s algorithm can’t detect every inconsistency. It’s looking for the very specific things it was programmed to look for. Videos that don’t contain these specific violations slip by the filters. Many content creators have learned what exactly the algorithm is looking for, and some of them use it to slip inappropriate content past the sensors.
YouTube’s algorithm is also responsible for other features on the site including auto-play. The algorithm is what decides what’s worth showing next after a video, and what isn’t. However, the algorithm is only capable of discerning what videos are similar to others based on the tags assigned to a video. If a bot learns to place all the relevant tags for child content on an automatically generated video, then the algorithm will suggest it as if it were normal child content.
What can you do about bot content?
There are a few things that you as a parent can do to protect your children from bot-generated content:
Check in on your kids when they’re watching YouTube
So you can be sure the algorithm hasn’t drifted too far away from where it started.
Get Help
Monitoring everything your child watches can be a daunting task GKIS is here to help. Our Social Media Readiness Course is designed to teach your tweens or teens how to spot red flags on social media sites and when they’re gaming.
Turn off auto-play
The auto-play feature can be disabled by clicking the auto-play button at the bottom of YouTube videos. The button appears as a small black and white play button and is replaced by a black and white pause button while disabled. By turning off this feature, YouTube will no longer pick the next video your child watches next and instead will wait for you to manually choose the next video.
Limit your child’s time on YouTube
The bot-generated content of YouTube is at the bottom of the algorithm’s list of choices. Children often end up being presented with bot-generated content after spending too much time watching videos on YouTube. Our Connected Family Course has screen management strategies and safe-screen home setup ideas to help you manage your child’s screen time.
If you do catch your kids being exposed to an inappropriate video, report it.
Videos reported to YouTube as inappropriate are reviewed by real people who can catch the video for what it is. An offending video will be deleted permanently and can get the channel it comes from deleted entirely.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Jason T. Stewart for researching bot-generated content and co-authoring this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Ancestry.com launched their genealogy company in 1983, allowing millions of people to research their family history.[1] Since that time, Ancestry.com and similar companies like 23andMe have added additional features. You can find out your entire genetic code by simply taking their saliva swab test. Within a few short weeks, you will receive your genealogical makeup and access to their social media account. This allows you to “match” with previous individuals who have taken the test to find your genetic connection. Although these tests seem intriguing, they leave out one crucial aspect: unexpected matches. Here’s my story on how my unexpected match changed my life.
How does it work?
For $99 you can mail in a saliva sample and, six weeks later, receive your 99.9% accurate DNA report.[2] Features of Ancestry.com and 23andMe saliva swab test include:
An ethnicity estimate
Updates of new DNA matchups as new information comes out
Social media connection to members who have already taken the test
Estimated relationship to matches (sister, aunt, great-grandma, etc.)
Regions in which your DNA is predominant
It Can Happen to Anyone
Here is a personal experience from my GKIS intern, Kaitlin. In December 2018 I got a phone call from my father. He was happier than usual, and I could tell he had important news to share. He told me he had taken the Ancestry DNA swab test and received a notification stating an estimated relationship – his previously unknown twenty-seven-year-old daughter!
At first, I felt devastated for a woman who had missed out on a relationship with her biological father. I realized how lucky I was to have had my father in my life. My father was really sick and at the end of his life. Meeting this new person meant incorporating her into one of the hardest moments of my family’s life.
The timeline of when she was born and when my parents got married was extremely close. The family was shocked. The news created problems between my parents at the end of his life.
My newly discovered sister had reached out to someone she thought was her father years prior to the discovery of my father and was brutally rejected. She was traumatized from his reaction. Once Ancestry DNA became popular, she decided to take the test to find the answer to this life-long identity question.
Upon learning the news, I felt obligated to encourage their relationship while also comforting my mom. I was confused and didn’t know how to react. I reached out to my new sister, but she seemed more interested in getting to know her biological father than getting involved with me.
That didn’t bother me as much as how she reacted when my dad passed away this year. After not talking to each other, despite several attempts to get to know her, she said some extremely hurtful things about what my father would’ve wanted and how I wasn’t fulfilling his final wishes. It seemed she thought her six months with my father meant more than my twenty-four years. It broke my heart and left me feeling resentful towards my biological sister. Now that my father is gone, I honestly just wish he never took the test.
That’s what they don’t warn you about before taking these tests. The possibility of finding the information you might not be ready for.
Why don’t they warn us?
Both 23andMe and Ancestry craft their advertising to intrigue and draw customers in. Their entire marketing strategy is solely focused on finding your genetic makeup and finding yourself. Ironically, you might find an entirely new person as well.
Absolutely nothing is said about the risky possibilities.
I couldn’t even find a warning in the “What to expect from AncestryDNA” post on Ancestry.com.[3] Identity can be fragile, and learning something as life altering and traumatic as an unexpected connection can change your entire life[4] One can only imagine how hard it must be for people to find out the parent that raised them isn’t actually their biological parent. There is also a possibility of finding out about infidelity or sexual assault. There was even a news story about a woman finding out that her biological father was her mother’s infertility specialist!
We at GKIS believe that these companies owe their customers more than they’re giving. Customers would be better served if there was a warning about the serious and potentially unintended psychological consequences of the information provided. Preparing customers for the unexpected at least offers an opportunity for making an informed opinion.
Online Support Groups
If you’ve had a psychological trauma resulting from DNA testing, you don’t have to go through it alone. There are several Facebook support groups available. For example, the NPE Friends Fellowship is an organization dedicated to people who have received answers they weren’t expecting.[5] The goals of these groups include receiving recognition and validation and finding a supportive community of people who understand and help each other heal. These groups allow the option of anonymity, along with a vulnerability backed by trust amongst peers who have experienced similar stories.
Families are complicated and so are the reasons behind family secrets. My family decided to handle this with open arms and offer support for my new sister. If something like this has happened to you or a friend, here are some options for you:
Stay calm and supportive.
Talk it out with your family members.
Join a Facebook support group.
Consult with a clinical psychologist like Dr. Bennett!
