“He moved from asteroid to asteroid, carving gashes along their sides”
Can you teach a five-year-old child to play ELITE: DANGEROUS?
Playing Elite:
Dangerous is like parenting—you are continually overestimating and underestimating the abilities of both your ship and child. You think your Vulture could just take on that wing of Deadly-ranked Eagles after an hour of swatting away sad little gangsters, then find yourself floating home. Similarly, my five-year-old son’s suggestion that he play that game where you “become like a police officer, but not, and shoot space pirates” should have given me pause.
However, after a lockdown grinding the Lego Star Wars games past the point where anything has maintained its lustre, I thought this was a good idea. Elite has been woven into my being for 37 years. Could I hand down my love of the big black?
Besides, while bounty hunters are pretty much the bad guys in Star Wars, Elite: Dangerous promises a chance to be the police. At his age, conflict and goodies vs baddies are fundamental building blocks for child development. I wanted to encourage this tendency towards Lawful Good.
FIFA21, FarCryNewDawn
His record as co-op gunner wasn’t good. He once shot a federal security Viper, whose friends turned my ship into a 40 million credit cloud of tinfoil. But we can’t play the simulations, as he wants it to be real. So, I bought him his own Sidewinder, and enough ARX to paint it, install the unnecessary fins and gills, and give his Holo-Me an unpleasant Action Man scar. Thus, the Small Attacker was born.
SHIP HAPPENS
Of course, you can’t start out as a bounty hunter with just nominative determinism. He wanted an
Anaconda, the apex predator of the Resource Extraction Site (Medium). But these monsters cost more credits than I have made in my 300+ hours.
I was more worried about how he’d handle the difficult docking and launch process, but it turns out things have changed since my day. All ships start with a docking computer as standard. That precipitous learning curve is now a gentle slope, and to my immense pride, he breezed through the tutorial.
As soon he had his pilot’s licence, he suddenly wanted to be a miner. He found a High Tech system, purchased a mining laser, installed a refinery and headed for the nearest ringed planet. But when he got there, he just moved from asteroid to asteroid, carving gashes along their sides with his laser.
Then I saw that he was actually writing his name.
There is an exquisite tension between what you want for your children, and what they are. Elite: Dangerous, like life, offers choice. You can be the scourge of the galaxy, go quietly about your business, or just muck about. It’s about doing your own thing, and he was.
“Do my name next,” I told him.
AS SOON HE HAD HIS PILOT’S LICENCE, HE SUDDENLY WANTED TO BE A MINER