Rob Pardo (pictured)
Father to Logan, 2, and Sydney, 7
(Vice President of Game Design, Blizzard Entertainment)

Playing games with my daughter is great because it really allows me to see what is fundamentally fun about game mechanics. For example, when she was only 5 years old, she would just jump off buildings over and over and collect lots of different outfits for her character.

Tim Gerritsen
Father to Helena, 12, Beck, 10, Roland, 4
(Executive Director, Big Rooster)

I was pretty seriously goal-driven before I had kids, and having kids allowed me to relax and have more fun while working on those goals. I got into the simple joys of just exploring and building for building's sake. It reminded me of how much fun there is in just simply exploring the world around you - and seeing how adjusting a little thing here or a little thing there can change the whole nature of something you are doing. It also opened up a whole new range of interests for me creatively as I was exposed to what my kids find interesting, funny and cool, and that has definitely impacted my approach to design.

One thing that also affected me was the fact that my kids can't play the games I'm working on and that really bothered me. My kids were far too young for Rune, and there's no way I was going to let them play Prey. Honestly, it was one of the factors that led to my leaving Human Head. I realized the only way I was ever going to be able to have my kids play the games I was working on was for them to become adults, and I simply didn't want to wait that long.

Don't get me wrong, I have no issues at all working on an adult- themed or rated game, but I also wanted to make a game that my kids could play. None of my partners had kids (one partner had a kid just a very short few weeks before I left the company), so there was no impetus at all to do anything but adult fare. It wasn't fair for me to keep cajoling my partners on this point, so I decided that if it was going to happen, I'd have to do it myself.

Ironically, my daughter was the model for the creepy little girl in Prey. She's nothing like that, of course, in real life. She knows that she is in the game, but she's not seen her character other than as a static model. She's just too young. She agreed to do it, but all she knows is that she is a villain in the game.

Currently Playing
My kids like games, and we do play together. My older kids absolutely love Age of Mythology, Civilization IV and Galactic Civilizations II, which they found on their own. I don't know why they gravitate to that, as I didn't push them in that direction (we have a ton of games at our house in all genres), but they did.

My youngest likes watching me play games that he probably shouldn't be watching, but he loves Rayman Raving Rabids on the Wii. My older kids are going to play World of Warcraft with me over the summer (under my supervision, as I will be playing online with them at the same time), and my son and I are working on game designs together, both video games and table top games.

We all play board and miniature games galore, including AT-43, Warhammer and Warhammer 40K, Battletech, Talisman, Ticket To Ride, and we're geeking out all together this year and going to GenCon as a family.

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Ash Matheson
Father to Brandon, 14, Haley, 12 and Lacey, 7
(Senior Programmer, Hothead Games)

It's not so much changed how I've worked on games, but what games I work on. For example, when I was at Radical, I was asked to go work with the team making Scarface. I actually declined that offer because it wasn't a game that I'd want my kids playing. Having my kids be able to play the games that I make is a huge part of my decision process now as to what I'd work on for games.

Currently Playing
Guitar Hero II for the 360 and PS2. My son kicks my ass so hard it's not funny. Just this past long weekend we played co-operative GH II, and he used a plain old 360 controller, while I used the guitar controller. He still beat me on just about every song we played. Nowadays, it's my daughter that I can beat at Guitar Hero II (just barely). But she whups me good in DDR for the PS2.

Halo co-op. We do this a lot, just because it's a great bonding experience. I've got a lot of good memories of him actually showing me some special moves with the original Halo.

Actually, one of the things that we do together a lot is *watch* each other play games. I think that goes way back to when he was a lot younger, and he'd watch me play games he just didn't have the manual dexterity to play. Now, it's more like I'll watch him play games like Crackdown or S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and I'll give him suggestions on what to do, or catch things that he's missed.

My daughters don't play a lot of games. My youngest just doesn't care about them at all. My eldest daughter is only into 'active' games like DDR and Guitar Hero. However, we will do more traditional games like Uno and Blitz every now and again.

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Chris Jones
Father to Lauren, 9, Gavin, 7, Nathan, 3, and Ian, 1
(Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder, Obsidian Entertainment)

I think having children has made me more open to playing games that I might not have ever considered playing in the past. Sometimes, I will just pick up one of the Game Boys lying around and play whatever happens to be plugged into it, and I'm often surprised at how much fun some of those games can be (or just how bad I think they are, yet my kids still seem to enjoy them).

It's also really interesting to watch my kids play console games on our TV and see what is intuitive to them and what they get stuck on. There is a lot you can learn about accessibility and game design by watching kids play games and paying attention to which games they keep wanting to go back to and which ones they give up on quickly.

It can sometimes be a little frustrating making games that are not appropriate for my kids to play. My oldest son is at the age where he is really getting into games and thinks that what his daddy does at work is cool, but unfortunately, the games I work on are inappropriate and often too complicated or text-heavy for him and his friends to play. I imagine it must be very satisfying for the parents out there that get to work on games that they can enjoy playing with their kids.

Currently Playing
Games have become a nice way to spend time together as a family, and my oldest son’s obsession with games has provided a common interest and created a bond that might not otherwise exist between us. Our family has been playing a lot of multiplayer Guitar Hero 2 lately.

I recently taught my son how to play chess and backgammon, so we have been playing those together both on the Game Boy and with traditional sets. And it's been pretty common for us all to sit down for a couple of quick games of Pirates Dice (the Disney-fied 4-player liars dice) after dinner before reading a story and sending the kids off to bed.