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I have a 7 year old. He's never played a video game outside of a DIY version of online chess against me.
I notice a lot of kids play Minecraft. I've never played it. This is a little odd since the entire reason I have a career is because I wanted to get into game development and learned to program C.
I would like to expose him to video games since I believe they have upside, but I'm pretty worried modern games are crack and educational benefits or whatever are oversold and not real.
He has an excellent attention span right now and we play a lot of card (MTG) and board games (Catan Jr) and I don't want to ruin that. Other families say once their kids play video games they stop caring about all of that other stuff and see their attention spans go to shit.
We homeschool him so he's not exactly surrounded by other kids trying to relate to him re: games but it's only a matter of time.
I'm staring down the barrel of this as well, my daughter is 5. We play a smattering of board games with her, with the occasional concession (Carcassonne, Ingenious, Kingdomino, My First Castle Panic), and she's watched me play some old games (Super Mario Brothers, Gradius, Galaga). I'm trying to plant the seeds of good behavior by choosing games that have a natural end time (1 credit, 3 lives, etc) and then walking away when I'm done. I also emphasize that I finish all my "daddy chores" after dinner, and she has to have her teeth brushed and get ready for bed before she can watch me play.
Lately she hasn't really cared to watch me play anything, and has preferred I read Lord of the Rings to her instead.
My wife has most of the same fears you do about video games devouring her attention, but none of the first hand experience to discern addicting slop from a fun game, so it's all scary to her.
Personally, I think going with old, offline, preferably couch coop experiences is best. Any old two player NES or SNES game or old arcade games. I have a retro lan in my office, and that may come into play at some point, but it's not part of the plan at the moment. I plan to keep it limited, and keep it in person and social within the friends and family. I do want to avoid hard time stops though. I knew kids who's parents put everyone on strict 15m time limits, and it drove me up a wall when I'd be having a really good run in say, Super Mario Brothers, and they booted me off in World 5 with 4 lives left. I do want my kid to have that sense of accomplishment that video games can give you, and not cutting her legs out from under her with arbitrary limits. But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it I suppose.
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This is true of many modern games (nearly anything you can play on a phone...) but not all.
This is true of nearly all games, both modern and ancient. Minecraft is a great way to share a game world with your kids, but unless/until you go down the "making a microcontroller out of redstone" path, it's not an educational game. By far the greatest educational benefit we've seen from any video games is the simple fact that our kids will happily do extra educational activities to earn a little more of the limited "screen time" we allot for them.
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MTG and in-person gaming is always going to be less "damaging" than vidyas. I strongly disagree with the other comment here about that. Especially if you're getting them exposed at 7, they'll get over the insane excitement phase before the most important part of their development, and you still have a huge amount of control over when they play (What are they gonna do? Drive themselves to FNM and invest in a $300 booster box? I think MTG sucks compared to 10 years ago but whatever.
Another point for it over modern video games is they're all completely devoid of a social element. Every single one is locked down for no cross-gamer communication. To me this is a point against them - yes you're developing hand-eye coordination and problem solving, but you're doing so in isolation.
I'm a couple of years behind you, but my plan is to replay co-op games with my kids to start and give them single player games to get into. Once they're older I may open up the floodgates for multiplayer stuff, but probably I'll have them scratch that itch with MTG and board. We'll see!
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My father made me play and complete some of his "old man" video games before he would allow me to get a gamecube when I was around your son's age in 2001. Mainly it was Dungeon Master for the Atari ST. Things are different now with the always-online attention farming microtransaction slop that we call modern video games - but maybe some older titles/consoles at first. I cant imagine what my brain would be like if I was exposed to something like Fortnite at age 7.
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I don't myself play MTG and board games (that much), but I sorta knew guys who did in college. If I am in uncharitable mood , the MTG/Warhammer/tabletop looks almost as bad as gaming. It can be huge time-sink, which can ruin your education / early career transition, it becomes a "hobby" that furthers no other adult life goals, and your peers are likely to play inordinate amount of video games, anyway. Phone media is the technological designer drug, video games are the 80s crack epidemic, in comparison MTG is more wholesome, but in way as cocaine was when they put it into Coke.
I am only guess here, but I would recommend:
(1) Diet of limited amount of computer games, but important thing is not only the time limits but developing the mental muscle to cut off the "one more turn in Civ" getting in way of other more adult priorities.
(2) Try to avoid them starting socializing with kids who are failing at that.
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I'm of two minds with regards to this. On one hand I wish that my parents would have been stricter about video games. I sunk so many hours into CK2, Civ, Dark Souls,etc. that could have been spent hanging out with friends in real life (perhaps one of the reasons I don't have any friendships remaining really from this period), learning a language, or just chilling out/running slightly more. On the other hand, these games got me interested in history and geography (CK2, Civ), and philosophy (Dark Souls). Also my ex-girlfriend and her siblings were raised with no video games/social media. It didn't really help at all: she still got addicted to instagram/tiktok, her brother still got addicted to video games in adulthood.
To synthesize, I think some kind of exposure is good to be able to handle the super stimuli in adulthood, but I would recommend some kind of limits to be put in place. My parents let me play video games for 2 hrs Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Sometimes I would go over a little, but these limits were pretty well enforced. Maybe you could do something like this?
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