Was recently chatting with Ben Sawyer (the “serious games” guy) about playing games with our kids - we both have two kids, all under the age of five. I was commenting how my 4-year-old son was struggling to grok game interfaces, joypad manipulation and navigating in a 3D space (he does somewhat better in a 2D plus mouse type environment).

Also, I was lamenting the fact that there aren’t many good games (or, more appropriately “software toys”) for very young kids. For example, a big pile a dirt with a big bulldozer to dig it up would be hugely entertaining. And, the simplicity would likely enable my son to slowly “learn how to game”.

Ben mentioned similar challenges and noted a project he and some industry friends were working on: First Games, an initiative dedicated to research, development and advocacy for simple, fun, quality games for kids ages 5 and under, AND their parents.

The hidden agenda here is that these “first” games would serve as tools to teach gaming literacy to young children, enabling them to play more complex games sooner.

Connect the dots to Ben’s serious games efforts, and we can envision the power behind the concept. That is, the motivation is NOT to produce ever younger consumers for the mainstream game industry, but more digitally literate youth that can learn/do more via serious games.

Imagine, there will come a day when game playing will be taught in kindergarten! Crazy? Well, I can only guess at the interesting discussions that happened when the idea of literature/book literacy was introduced into academia so many generations ago… (Anyone got a good reference?)

Also, makes me think of Ken Perlin’s efforts to evangelize procedural thinking and programming as a form of literacy that should be taught to kids.

Tangentially related, Erin “ea_spouse” Hoffman wrote up a great article on being a parent in the game industry and the value/perspective it brings to the development process. Case in point, refer to Gas Powered Games’ Chris Taylor discussing his career re-prioritizing after he became a father.