"We're just going to play video games, all day?" my nine-year-old asks. "Pretty much," I reply. "I'll have to talk to people, too, and you should write down what you thought of the game."

Since I don't work in an office, Bring Your Kid To Work Day doesn't exist. Instead, I brought him to BitSummit.

Mother's Day isn't this weekend, but it's not far away. I know this, because my inbox is already getting a barrage of emails about it. And because I'm not brave enough to put "Tell Us About Your Mother" as a headline on a website with gamers, for this week's Off Topic let's talk about parents in general.

Tencent Games, the world's largest gaming publisher and owner of the makers of League of Legends, has announced plans to introduce "digital contracts" as a new mechanism for parents to control their children's game time.

For the past year, my original Xbox One hasn't been working properly.

In the past couple of months there's been a phrase that haunts me. It reverberates in my dreams and my darkest nightmares. It's the first words I hear when I arrive home from work. It's the first words I hear when being woken up at 530am on a still-dark Saturday morning.

"Daddee. DADDEE. Can I play YOUR game."

Friday was a snow day in Austin, Texas. I told my daughter she couldn't just watch videos all day. This is what she made.

My daughter is seven, and a few weeks ago her class spent the week choosing a subject to "investigate" (basically write reports on). The teacher might have been hoping they chose something like "nature", or "factories", or "history", but the room of seven-year-old kids did the seven-year-old thing and chose "Pokémon".

Kotaku reader Ian Wenstrand has written and illustrated a children's book called Plugged In, where a kid obsessed with video games wakes up in a land that "blurs the line between the real and virtual worlds".

In 1990, Bill Watterson created a Calvin and Hobbes storyline in which Calvin is bullied into playing baseball during recess. Watterson drew a relatable, cautionary tale about the dangers of cramming boys into neat little boxes. Everyone in this story wants Calvin to do something he hates, but even when he commits to it, nobody helps him succeed.

I have never beaten Dark Souls 3 and, also, I have never had a glorious father-son fishing moment. Part of why I love Twitch is because it lets me live those moments vicariously.

Reminder: Children born post-smartphones/tablets have not been conditioned to use buttons.

"I would love if DC Superhero Girls were really alive." "Why?" "Because I really like them. I'm their biggest faaAaaAan."

As previously discussed, my son is getting pretty good at video games. Because of this, despite being only four years old, I've started letting him play Zelda: Breath of the Wild by himself. It has turned out to be a very good decision.

NBC is hosting a 2v2 Rocket League tournament this weekend, a big deal for 2v2 players like Josh "JumpOnStuff" Russo who could potentially make a national broadcast debut. But when Russo's teammate couldn't make it down to the open, one man was willing to take up the controller and fill in: his dad.

Dream Daddy is a new dating sim where you play as a father and date other fathers. On the surface, it looks like a light game about hot dads and the dad jokes they make. It is that, but it's also a sincere look at what it's like to be a father.

June 2 was National Doughnut Day in the States, the day of celebrating fried sweet dough, torus-shaped and otherwise. Nabisco celebrated this joyous holiday by reminding us that there's nothing quite like a warm jelly doughnut, especially not a creme-filled sandwich cookie.

Dream Daddy is a dating sim headed to Steam on July 13. In it, you'll help sexy dads hookup with other dads. Naturally, the game announced itself to the world on Father's Day.

I remember it through glassy eyes. Christmas morning I woke up, 20 years old. Hungover.

To my Dad, as we opened presents: "whatever happened to magic of Christmas?"

"It'll come back," he replied. "When you have kids."

One minute my five-year-old was giggling along with the playful antics of Yooka-Laylee on the PlayStation 4. The next he was in Persona 5, erasing over 35 hours of Phantom thievery in the blink of an eye. It's the closest I've come to crying over a video game in years.