So I (34F) have a son (6M) who is really into video games. He got his Nintendo Switch almost 2 years ago and is loving it! At the age of five had already finished Mario Odyssey. I know very little about video games but even I think that was a pretty impressive accomplishment. He is still really young so while he doing great with playing the games he is still learning how to take care of his games and the console. There have been many times he has taken games out before ejecting them and other times he has taken them out correctly but he will just put the game down in a random place and loses them (not hard to do, have you seen the switch games? They are tiny). So, this is where I f*ed up. Every so often my husband and I will do what we call a “game audit”. We will get all the switch games from the 3 switches in the house and console travel cases and put them back in their original cases so we can make sure no one lost any. My husband had shown me in the past how to save progress and safely eject the game. On this day my husband was out of town and my kids were at school so I was doing the “audit” by myself. I get to my son’s console and he had Pokémon Scarlett in it. I went through the process of ejecting the game and take it out and after I did that I remembered that I never saved 🤦♀️ I feel awful, my son had put a ton of time into the game and was working so hard. I know he had done so much work and I just had a brain fart and completely forgot to save it.
TL;DR I took my son’s Pokemon Scarlett game out without saving his progress.
Update:
Thank you all so much for your comments. So many of you I’m sure were thinking “how stupid is this lady for not knowing about auto saves and save points in game?”. Yep, pretty stupid. After hearing so many of you telling me about that I felt so much better. I truly thought I set him back at least an hour or 2 of work in the game. To most adults this wouldn’t be a big deal but kids have a much different view of time. Well either way when he got home I told him what happened and at first he was upset (more at himself than me) and then I told him to check and see where he last saved. It tuned out that it saved super close to where he stopped. So it turns out it wasn’t as big of an f up as I thought. Either way just the fear of it is going to having me remember to save from now on anyway. To the people that commented about video game addiction thank you so much. I know addictions of any kind can be hard to overcome let alone ones that start so young. I can say that he is more balanced in it now than he was when he finished odyssey. He is in sports and goes outside with friends all the time and we have been limiting him to 4-5 hours a week total for video games. I will do more research and talk with my husband about other ways to make sure addiction does not become a problem. In the end I guess it all worked out and my son was so kind to me even when he thought a significant amount of his game play was lost.
Comments
3yo account with one karma, one post, and no comments. I’ll bite.
You said you’re concerned about the games being lost, but how would a game inside of a Switch be lost without losing the entire Switch itself?
You don’t need to worry as Pokemon has an autosave feature. So he might lose a bit but he will retain most of his progress
It’s usually fine, the switch is pretty good with save points (I have one and I have half a dozen games I regularly just close the software on)
I can’t speak for Pokémon but I imagine it’s got many checkpoints that wouldn’t prevent a full wipe
He’s never saved the game ever in the entire time he’s played it? This post doesn’t make sense.
He’ll likely be upset but it’s fine after you explain it, especially if he’s already well aware of the ‘audit’ process that you do. He might’ve also saved at some point, as most games have auto-saves built in alongside cloud saves, so it’s highly likely that the game might’ve saved, unless its the type that he leaves on 24/7 and never closes, then it might be a little bit unfortunate.
But again, it’s highly likely the data might be fine, but at the end of the day it’ll teach him to save his games. Nothing’s a better tutor than losing hours of data. Old Video games didn’t have auto saves, and i can count over 5 times i’ve lost 6+ hours in video games. Not only will he get the lesson for saving, but it might convince him to better take care of the games to convince you to stop your game auditing haha
The game has an autosave feature that saves your progress automatically at key points, and even if he turned the autosave off (many do), you only made him lose what he was doing since the last save. It’s likely not that big of a problem.
It’s also a good learning moment for him to save his progress before he puts it down. Good habit for when it’s real work he would be losing later.
I don’t know Pokemon Scarlet in particular but a lot of games these days autosave. And the switch stores all saves on internal memory, so chances are you didn’t destroy the existing save state, just maybe <60m of progress. It’s annoying but shouldn’t be catastrophic.
As others mentioned here, it auto saves, you should be fine. Did you put it back in and see if it saved?
I thankfully the newer games do have a auto save feature If turned on
Fortunately that’s not how video games work. If you eject without saving it will just go back to the most recent save point, it won’t completely erase his progress.
When I was like 5 or 6, we were visiting a friend of my dad’s house, and he had a kid who was playing Pokémon. It was probably like red/blue, but idr.
Anyhow, they convinced him to let me play for a bit even though I couldn’t really read, and he told me the most important thing was I couldn’t save because he had a save file.
Being so young, I did surprisingly well – but when we went to eat dinner, my mom thought she was being helpful and saved the game before turning it off.
That poor kid cried in the basement for quite a while until we started watching cartoons. I did apologize, but I’ve always felt sooo bad about that. =/
The fuck up is a 6 yr old playin video games.
Starting the mind rot of starin at screens way 2 early
Yeah, it’s hard for parents to understand how valuable this data is to their kids. As others have said, you might be able to recover it. But you might also be able to show some vulnerability to your child and help them understand adults make mistakes.
If that’s the worst you’ve done then you’re a fantastic parent. Mine would have deliberately turned out off at the wall to ensure the game wasn’t saved and then scolded me for complaining.
I think it’s a good learning experience for your child. If things aren’t saved, data loss is inevitable.
Maybe add BOTW as a consolation.
Someone is getting put into a home when they get older
When I was 5 my moms best friend gave me Pokémon yellow for my birthday, along with the guide book, didn’t read very well I was 5 but I worked hard and got decently far. My sister wanted to play, she’s 8 years older than me. Started a new save and saved ever all my progress. To this day I still bring it up. I hope your son doesn’t hold that grudge
Did you save your game over his? Like when I was at final cave in final fantasy ready to go into the dungeon and throw the smack down on chaos and someone in my household bricked my shit? No ?
It’s a reminder for your son to save and it’s not your responsibility
Only fu is teaching poor organization. Let a favorite game “disappear” for a week if it doesn’t get put away.
Where did you leave it? Did you put it away?
There was no way to save in Math Munchers, and my mother reset it to the beginning for the younger neighbor kid. I was upset but didn’t show it.
Thanks you listening.
It’s fine it builds character and he will have a story to tell about how you’d destroyed their childhood.
Also better now than later in life.
videogames are addictive
You’re a good mom, don’t worry. Just the fact you see this as a fuck up means you care. Even if everything is lost, I think your son won’t be hurt that much if he understands it was a honest mistake.
There should be 3 empty cases if games are being left in Switches. Why not just leave them in there, unless you find more than 3 empty game cases? That way you don’t even have to touch the games in the switch most of the time
My dad did that to a game of mine once (The Neverhood).
I didn’t play it again.
I agree with other commenters. Whilst a mindless action, Pokemon ought to have auto saves on by default, and even if disabled hed only loose his last session.
At least now you will always remember this, and keep yourself from doing it with more sensitive games 😀
You got a 4 year old a nintendo switch!? What could possibly go wrong!!!
Im a gamer with over 2800 hours in escape from tarkov and can confidently say giving a child access to this stuff is genuinely not safe i started playing halo 2 at 8 yrs old and it lowkey fucked me up bad dude im to this day obsessed with throwing away my time on video games
> son (6M) who is really into video games. He got his Nintendo Switch almost 2 years ago and is loving it!
That is your real fuck up
Thankfully there’s auto-save for this game. This is not as bad as a guy who accidentally overwrote his room-mate’s entire Witcher 3 progress and was even downplaying his mess-up.
Why did you need to take the game out of the Switch? You knew where it was, its not lost. To what point is putting it back in its case other than to just be extremely annoying?
I remember being six years old and playing Super Mario 64 on release. That “Quit without saving” option always made me wonder why that was even an option. Still mad that I got an N64 instead of SNES….
Having said that, I was also playing The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall on PC at 6 (wouldn’t recommend playing it that young, by the way) and that game REALLY teaches a kid the value of saving often.
You did the right thing. No 6 year old should be addicted to video games.
You’re a good parent for being concerned about that st all
Eh. It’s only Pokémon. Now if it were, say, Animal Crossing, there’d be issues.
Edit: Pokémon games are easy enough to start from scratch.
Lmao. There used to be a time where I didn’t know how to save in Pokémon Silver. That was back in maybe 1st grade? So I ended up starting anew every morning lol.
My son learned that lesson the hard way himself when he was 7 last year. I started letting him play FireRed on one of my GBA SPs. He’d just caught a Pikachu in Veridian forest, and when he was done, he forgot to manually save. Once he realized what happened, the tears started flowing and I wasn’t at home to help, so my wife had to try and diffuse it. It was a good lesson, but using my cartridge reader I was able to get him a Pikachu back, with the caveat that this wasn’t something I could always just do.
Harder to do on a Switch game, but as others have said, autosave is likely present. Never a bad idea to teach kids young that if there is a manual save method to always do that before leaving a game.
I don’t think ‘my 5 year old completed an entire video game’ is quite the parenting flex you think it is.
Six years old and already with a video game addiction. Get him off the games, limit time he has on them. That dopamine addiction is real and well documented. Just because he likes something doesn’t make it good for him.
Reminds me of my Playstation 1 that had no memory card for a while. MGS1 and Crash Bandicoot were roguelikes to me.
No worries, almost every single game has an auto save feature these days, the only risk is corrupted data when you remove the cartridge without properly shutting down the current game but it’s very rare. Your son will just have to redo a little bit of the game (which, I would say, is a gaming thing most of us had to experience due to data corruption, bad hardware, ripped discs etc).
Therefore, it’s heartwarming that you consider your son’s interest with seriousness and comprehension.
🤦♂️
Most games have autosave. Don’t worry about it. Maybe a little bit was lost.
And doing a “game audit” is what my family does as well. Surprisingly, my kids have lost 0 of those tiny cartridges over the last 6 years.
Also, I don’t know if this is only a Switch 2 thing or not, but virtual cards are a thing. Letting you share digitally downloaded games with your family. Check it out – takes away the chance of “losing” games.
How many hours had he been playing without saving once? Not to absolve you completely, but you’d think he’d be saving often.
At 6, he is old enough to learn that if you don’t save your game when you put it down, if you lose progress, that’s on you.
Also, as mentioned, Pokemon any many other games on the Switch use autosaves.
Good. Give him a book instead.
I have literally read this story before some months ago
I know it’s a cute little story, and nothing actually happened..
But the fact that people my age and younger are still this technologically inept in today’s day and age is just even more proof to the worry of how the world is going.
People might think I’m being harsh. But the fact of the matter is easily accessible knowledge, and basic knowledge is not usually retained or cared to be known nowadays, and that’s part of the decline of society.
The fact that you care about this makes you a good parent.
Just be careful in future, some games dont have auto save. I’m a gamer and have fucked up before, so don’t worry, it happens.
My parents made me play little league and could give a shit about video games.
Kids dont know how good they have it these days.
I can’t remember how many times the battery died in my Gameboy, and I hadn’t saved in hours and would be absolutely devastated with how much progress I had just lost.
I thought you were about to say that you deleted his Mario odyssey save file, and if that kid beat the stupid jump rope challenge and had it deleted, he deserves at least a “I’m sorry” ice cream.
Holy crap, this kid is lucky. I don’t mean that in a negative/bitter way at all. Just, this is incredibly wholesome all around. You sound like an amazing parent.
I started to say “kids these days” at the start, but then I remembered this story of when I was like 5 or 6 and trying to get into one of the NES Ultima games. I was clearly in way over my head. But, I really wanted to get horses for my party because I thought they’d look cool.
I came home one day and my mom had been trying to play the game that whole day to get enough money for horses for me. I’m not sure I recognized how much that kind of commitment meant at the time. And your kid might not recognize it now either. But they will someday, just like I did.
> Thank you all so much for your comments. So many of you I’m sure were thinking “how stupid is this lady for not knowing about auto saves and save points in game?”. Yep, pretty stupid. After hearing so many of you telling me about that I felt so much better.
My dad wanted to play Pokemon Blue, no auto-save at the time.
What he did was launching a save then ask “how to pick the save file”.
Pokemon 1st gen had one save file, that he just asked to overwrite.
honestly this is such a sweet story. the fact that he was more upset with himself than you shows you’re raising him right. i was the kid who would obsessively save every 5 minutes because i was terrified of losing progress. glad the autosave worked out! pokemon games are pretty good about that
Glad everything resolved well! You sound like a really sweet mom, trying hard to empathise with your kid and connect with him over his hobby, even if it’s not your thing.
Glad you’re putting a lot of focus on making sure he has hobbies outside of games, too! Sounds like he’s lucky to have you as parents.