Back at the Montreal Game Summit, Ben Sawyer did a great lecture - ok, more like a rant - on games for kids and how crap they are. In this case, he meant very young kids: 6 years and under. In short, he was lamenting how it is hard for him and his son to have a fun/shared experience playing video games.
As a father of two young kids, I can certainly relate…
What really struck me from the audience Q&A after Ben’s lecture is the degree to which games for kids are expected to be educational (ie, “edutainment” that teaches ABCs, basic math, etc). Ben was very clear that he was just looking to have fun with his kids. If there was any teaching he was interested in, it was more of the intangible/intrinsic “gaming literacy” style…
Still, audience members just would not stop going on about how hard it is to design gameplay mechanics around early childhood curriculum, etc.
Why is it that parents can buy Lego without the expectation that kids will learn their ABCs from it? Or, build a sandbox without hoping better math skills will result? These forms of play/fun are understood to provide value in and of themselves.
The growth of the gaming parent demographic will likely bring about needed changes; when we can look to kids games as purely fun/shared experiences (without the supposed validation of increasing ABC skills). Meanwhile, I’ll just have to endure the pain of watching my son struggle with simple stuff like driving around a race track in 3D…
Update: Gamasutra recently featured an article by veteran design Scott Nixon titled “Piggybacking: Gaming Across the Generation Gap”. It’s a concept that Ben mentioned during his Montreal lecture, but didn’t have a chance to get into much…