It’s barely past 0600 and already Austin’s battle with the multifarious villains of the Marioverse has begun again in earnest. It’s not enough that he hates Bowser – he needs Bowser to know it.

You and I, as adults, know to call things by their actual names. My kid is 4, and does no such thing.

My kids love Ninja.

When I told them about the shocking thing that happened at the Madden tournament in Florida last month, where two gamers were shot dead, their immediate reaction was “WAS IT NINJA?”

When you play through a game, you probably make notes to yourself — mental notes. It’s unlikely you keep notebooks like these. Maybe you do!

What The Golf's hook is simple: golf for people who don't like golf. But the game's actually hiding an even bigger secret: dad jokes.

"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.