My Son Has Found an Innovative Way to Play an Online Video Game. I’m Worried About What This Says About Him.

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here .

I have a 14-year-old son, “Kevin.” He’s gotten into this online multiplayer game. He’s not letting it consume his life, he still does well on his school and other activities, but some of his actions within the game have made me both proud of his successes and worried about them at the same time.

The game itself is a kind of a very long scale, vaguely medieval fantasy thing. You found an estate, you get resources from it, you improve your resources by building various things on your estate, and you raise troops. It’s very hard to directly damage someone else’s estate, but you can raid them for resources, and this is apparently very common. You’re frequently engaged in an all-against-all war of cattle, crystal, and grain theft, and shifting alliances of raiding each other seem to be what most of the game is about.

Kevin has created a new model for his own playing strategy, and it seems to be working. Instead of simply raiding other people, he’s offered them the opportunity to become a “client.” Clientage does require ongoing protection payments, but he actually does provide protection. If anyone else raids you or demands tribute, he’ll start attacking whoever is bothering his clients, even if it’s an economic loser to fight against a stronger opponent. And he’s started coordinating the raiding efforts of his client base in order to present united fronts against threats and dogpile on the player he’s selected as the next person to recruit in.

But it is working. He was so excited when he checked his messages after school and he had two people asking to be his clients that he hadn’t even raided them to “convince” them to sign up.

So I’m both proud of his skills—he clearly is engaging with the game strategically—but I’m also worried that he’s independently recreated the logic of the protection racket. Is this something I should be taking steps about?

I was totally on board with everything Kevin was up to until you said that he was dogpiling on the folks he was trying to recruit in. It’s one thing to make alliances, but it’s another to beat people up until they agree to join your gang.

One big question I have is whether the game mechanics allow for alliances and protection rackets or if he’s having to communicate with people in the in-game chat to coordinate this. If the game has it built-in, then he hasn’t independently created anything you should or shouldn’t be proud of. The upside is that players of the game know the mechanics exist and shouldn’t feel it’s unfair if they find out what he’s doing.

On the other hand, if he’s doing all of this outside of regular game mechanics, you can turn on your #proudface at his ingenuity and at the same time feel a little concerned that this is his way of having a good time. Does it feel good for him to pummel someone to the point where they agree to become a vassal and spend their game time grinding out grain and cattle to satisfy their lord? What’s his idea of a good time off the screen, anyway? Talk to your little warlord.