My 9-year-old has tried to explain Clash of Clans to me at least a dozen times and I’ve successfully ignored him until now.
Forget the touchy-feely modern parenting stuff, when it comes to video games I don’t care. But in a weak moment, I finally paid attention, and when I did I felt guilty. Disinterest is no excuse for ignorance about something your child loves.
After an extensive CofC tutorial that at one point involved me screaming, here’s what I’ve learned. Clash of Clans is a multi-player game where you build your base, fight goblins or other players, steal gold and elixir, earn trophies, and upgrade resource collections — essential to building defenses and getting better troops. You need WiFi to play. It also helps to have gems, which speed up every process. Gems are hard to come by — but you can buy them with real life money.
Valuable players join in clan wars and donate troops. Inexperienced players are easy to spot because they have low level trophies. Gemmers are people who use credit cards to upgrade their resources.
If your child plays Clash of Clans the most important thing for you to know is how clans are formed. Some clans are open, some are closed, and some are by invite only. Your son or daughter might be fighting with a clan formed of real-life friends from school — or they might be socializing with total strangers.
Either way, players risk being kicked out of clans for a variety of reasons, including lack of participation. If Mom or Dad takes screen time away as a punishment, the child could come back to their gaming device a few days later and face rejection.
Even after my son explained all of this to me, I was still confused until I downloaded it on my phone and spent the better part of a Sunday morning “researching” under the username “onebadmuda.”
My eyes hurt after 10 minutes because the animation is so small, but being in charge of my own barbarian horde was addictive. I was sorely tempted to spend $5 buying gems, until my son said: “Don’t be stupid!” I was glad to see evidence of his common sense.
There are a lot of ways parents can thoughtfully engage their children in conversations about Clash of Clans without training giants. Find out who your child plays with and don’t rush to assume that a clan formed with real-life friends is inherently better than strangers. If a kid gets kicked out of a clan of anonymous players it’s annoying, but if he or she gets banished by a clan of classmates it really hurts. It’s also essential to know that the CoC YouTube tutorials can contain very explicit language. (We learned that lesson the hard way.)
As for me, I’m not sure anyone will ever invite “onebadmuda” to join their clan.
Unless of course … I buy gems.
Jennifer Bardsley is an Edmonds mom of two. Find her on Twitter @jennbardsley and at www.heraldnet.com/ibrakeformoms and teachingmybabytoread.com.
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