Kids club opens a gaming center - National effort aims to use Xbox to keep children off streets

A local Boys & Girls Club has a new strategy to get kids off the streets after school, and it's one that rarely fails to attract children: video games.

"It's another way to engage them," said Andrew Jones, branch director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Twin Cities' East Side branch on Ames Avenue in St. Paul.

Marcus Hudson, 16, and Houston Williams, 17, battled it out Wednesday playing the Xbox's "Madden NFL 07" on a single 46-inch LCD screen that takes up a good portion of a wall in the club.

"Yeah, OK. That's right," said Williams, taking in the game.

"Came outta nowhere," Hudson lamented.

The gaming center -- placed in a room used for homework three hours a day -- is the club's newest attraction. The 10-game library includes mostly sports titles, a single racing game and nothing beyond a "teen" rating -- which a supervisor will make sure only teens are playing, Jones assured.

And Jones said he hopes the kids won't come just for the games.

"Once we get them in the club, we can have them explore any number of other activities," he said. Most of the 150 or so kids at the club Wednesday night were playing other games and sports.

Lending their support at the center were St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington, Tim Flynn, acting commander of the department's gang unit, and Paul Strong, commander of the St. Paul police's juvenile unit.

"Saves Tim and I a lot of work," Strong said. "Your idle time leads you to get in trouble."

Delores Henderson, principal of Ames Elementary, just down the street from the club, also supports the new Xbox.

"I see it as a good thing -- if it's going to be heavily supervised and structured," she said, noting that many kids in the area are stuck at home alone or have parents who have problems securing day care.

Still, Williams said, concentrating on homework while others are playing the Xbox "might be tough."

Nora Paul, who directs the Institute of New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism and Mass Communications, had mixed reactions.

"If it's the equivalent of sitting kids down and watching cartoons so they'll be anesthetized, that's one thing," she said.

"But there really are fantastic learning games out there," she added. "And video games are much more social than watching TV."

"The cheerleader in me says 'Yeah,' but the cynic says, 'Why are they doing this?' " she added, referring to the gaming center's sponsors: Best Buy and Microsoft, which makes Xbox.

Best Buy spokeswoman Paula Prahl, who also is a Boys & Girls Club board member, said the company's philanthropic efforts always have centered on youth-oriented technology and learning.

The St. Paul gaming center is the third of 10 to open at Boys & Girls Clubs across the country and the first in Minnesota.