The author as an intern, Summer 2001Sing it with me now. Schoooooool’s out. For. Summer! In the television and video game industry worlds, this means offices are filling with college students on summer internships. If you were lucky enough to secure one of these coveted positions, you may be wondering what you can do to turn this internship into a real job. Read on, young grasshopper. (If you haven’t snagged your dream internship yet, check out my earlier article on how to get your foot in the door.)

Earlier this month at Dust or Magic AppCamp, we spent part of an afternoon with a panel of kid gamers, aged 4 to 13.  They passed the mic around, and were asked to say what their favorite game was.  The 4 year old said "Ladybug," and we adults in the audience pressed her for more information about it, because no one had heard of it.  She said it was a board game.  Everyone laughed.  Poor kid.

We Americans don't take board games very seriously.  Video games are at the forefront of consumers’ minds these days.  A recent article in Wired magazine suggested board games lack popularity in the US because most American board games don't ask players to strategize very much, and the winner is generally determined early on in the game.  That leaves the other players to painfully and politely play along until the game is complete, which in the case of Monopoly, could take hours.  But not all board games are this boring.

As a game designer, I feel playing board games gives me an edge, because board game mechanics are more obvious than those in video games.  For example, if a game is 4 rounds of 3 turns for each player, you can think about why the designer made it that way, why he chose all of the elements the game includes, and how the game would be different if you changed any one of those things.  You can see all the parts of the game right in front of you at once.  In fact, many video game designers build paper prototypes of their games and playtest them with friends before they begin investing time developing a computer version.

Here are some kid-friendly board games I think any children's game designer would find interesting:

Aquarius:  Ages 5+  This game operates much like dominoes.  Cards have colorful illustrations of air, earth, fire, water, and ether on them.  On your turn, you lay one card down on the table, the next player must attach a card that connects to one of the elements already in play.  The goal is to connect seven cards of your goal element together.  I confess that part of the appeal of this game for me is that the rules state the player with the longest hair goes first, and with waist-length hair, that is usually me.  There isn’t much strategy in this one, other than trying to fool your fellow players into thinking your goal element is something other than what it is.  If you're too obvious with your moves, your friends may try to block you. 

Fluxx:  Ages 8+  This card game is very simple.  Each player starts with 3 cards and on your turn, you draw one card from the deck, and play one card from your hand.  Pretty soon, it becomes more complicated because cards in the deck allow you to modify the rules.  Certain cards allow you to set a goal for the game that determines how to win.  But of course that can change too, if you play a card with a different goal.  It’s very silly, and it appeals to kids because who hasn't wanted to change the rules now and then?  It's also a good exercise in reading directions and following them, which is something kids we all have trouble with sometimes. 

Guillotine:  Ages 8+  Another card game.  This one's a bit morbid, but in a comic way.  In Guillotine, you play an executioner, and your goal is to kill only the people the public despise in order to get the highest score.  One set of cards forms a line to the cardboard stand-up guillotine, and on your turn, you collect the person at the front of the line.  Action cards in your hand allow you to strategically change the order of the line.  Not super educational, but you do have to strategize when the right time is to play each action card in your hand, and the French Revolution theme may expose a child to people he didn't know about before, like Robespierre, and Marie Antoinette.  

Blokus:  Ages 8+  A visual strategy game where each player has an identical set of polyomino pieces, which is just a fancy word that says all the pieces are made out of different arrangements of squares, like Tetris pieces.  Unlike Tetris though, the pieces are made out of different numbers of squares.  Your goal is to use as many of your pieces as you can, and the winner is the player who finishes with the least number of pieces left over.  A great visual math game.  The manufacturer says this game is for ages 5 and up, and while young kids may be able to play, you need a level of sophistication in thinking to really plan a strategy.  Without that ability, young children may get bored.

Chrononauts:  Ages 12+  In Chrononauts, you play a secret agent with a mission that you must travel back in time to achieve.  It’s another card game, but in this one you create a sort of board by laying out many of the cards in a timeline that goes back to the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865, and has a card for many significant events through 1999, the year the game was published.  If playing this with children, I highly recommend also purchasing the recently published "Gore Years" expansion so you’ll be playing with recent history she’ll be able to remember.  This expansion continues the timeline through the election of President Obama in 2008.  The game is very interesting, because actions players take reverse events in history, which cause 'ripple' effects that alter other historical events.  A great game to play with kids studying history.

Settlers of Catan:  Ages 12+  A classic that is recently gaining fame in the United States.  It's a good strategy game to start with because it appeals to a lot of people.  It's a crowd-pleaser.  The game features a board of hexagonal tiles that you layout, and can thus alter in subsequent games.  Each player settles cities on different areas of the board, and you win by building roads and increasing the size and number of your cities (not unlike trading up from houses to hotels in Monopoly).  Settling in different locations gives you different resources.  Forests mean you'll have wood, meadows mean you can raise sheep, fields mean you'll have wheat and so on.  It's difficult to get all the resources you'll need on your own, and so you'll have to negotiate with other players to get the resources you'll need.  The game is so popular that it's been released in video game form on XBox Live, and iPhone.  It'll be released in mid-June on the PS3.

Carolyn Handler Miller is not someone I knew of before this event, but now that I have met her, I think she's a rock star!  She has worked on tons of great interactive products for kids, and she has terrific intuition.  Here are my notes on the talk she just gave.

Seven Kisses of Death for Kids Games
1) Kids Love Anything Sweet
    True for food, not entertainment

2) Give ‘Em What’s Good for ‘Em
    The medicinal approach.  Too heavy of pedagogy, too light on fun.

3) You’ve Just Got to Amuse ‘Em
    Junk food

4) Always Play It Safe
    Don’t always remove action, conflict and tension.  Too safe = too boring.

5) All kids are created equal.
    Kids games are not one size fits all.

6) Explain everything
    Adult fear of not being clear.  Faulty assumption that kids can’t figure things out on their own.

7) Makes Sure All Characters Are Wholesome!
    Yes we want positive role models, but if they are too positive and perfect, they will be dull.

Ten Ways to Avoid the Kisses of Death
1) Devise a Way to Hook Your Players
    Build a compelling mission, goal or challenge.  Should be clear-cut, easily understandable or highly desirable.

2) Inject Meaningful Tension
    Add excitement without violence, essence of drama.
    Some techniques: The ticking clock - must succeed by certain time.  
    Conflict/Opposing characters after same goal.  Challenges to overcome.

3) Offer Genuine Substance.
    Kids are hungry for meaningful content / themes (pic of The Lion King, treachery, murder, courage)

4) Create Characters Who Are Multifaceted and Dynamic
    Example: Mia the Mouse, not perfect, overly curious, tiny but plucky, gets into     trouble, has an enemy character.  Kids can identify with non-perfect characters.

5) Create System of Rewards
    Rewards: Powerful Motivators, incentives to keep going, ways to measure progress

6) Make Product Easy to Understand and Use
    Classic picture books model.  In interactive media, this translates into good interface design. No lengthy explanations, intuitive and enjoyable experience, like looking at a picture book.

7) Make Product Adjustable to Child’s Abilities
    Provide easy or difficult levels or challenges.  Many advantages: Avoids frustrating beginning players.  Keeps more skillful players challenged, involved.  Makes product more repeatable for child.

8) Supply Liberal Doses of Humor
    Humor adds life and color, makes product fun.  Caution: Kids humor is not the same as adult humor.

9) Build in Meaningful Interactivity
    Player’s choices should have an effect and impact.  Interactivity should be abundant.  Should not be overly repetitive.

10) Respect Your Audience
    Don’t talk down, understand who they are, give them something worthwhile.

For more details, see slides.

I’ve heard it said that the English language is inadequate.  Because we have fewer words than other languages, there are some things we can’t say or accurately describe.  One of these instances is that we have no word or phrase for ‘educational quiz program’.

Browse things labeled as ‘educational games’, and you are sure to find many of them.  Programs where the ‘player’ (or perhaps in this case, ‘user’ is a more accurate word) is asked a series of questions.  Which one of these items will fit in the gap shown?  Click the word that starts with the letter L.  Sort these numbers into powers of 2 and powers of 3.  There are a few different definitions of the word ‘game’ out there, but set ups like this don’t really fit into any of them.

To me, programs like this are not games because you either know the answer, or you don’t.  If you do, you might enjoy yourself because it feels good to be correct, and computers are good at giving positive feedback.  But if you don’t know the answer, you’re generally left to guess.  Maybe the program will have helpful feedback that you’ll be in the mood to listen to and remember, but maybe not.  In any case, the experience isn’t likely to feel game-y at all, if you don’t know the answers the program is looking for.

Take the experience of many of these so-called educational games, and try to recreate them in person with a child.  If another person asked the child afterward, “Did you enjoy the game,” I venture to guess the child would say something along the lines of “Oh, we didn’t play a game. The lady just asked me a bunch of questions.”

So why are so many computer quiz programs calling themselves games?  Beats the heck out of me.  I suppose it’s part of the “Kids won’t even realize they’re learning!” phenomenon.  I don’t know where that comes from either.  Adults who use this phrase must have hated learning when they were growing up, if they can’t remember what is inherently fun about it.  My question is, why are these adults attempting to teach, if they hated learning so much?  Another possibility is that adults who don’t play games observe that children enjoy playing video games, and they assume children will find anything to be fun, so long as it is delivered via a video game system or computer.  Clearly these adults do not really comprehend games at all.

There are times when drill and practice is necessary to master a topic, and a computer program might well be a useful tool.  But ‘game’ is not an accurate word to describe the experience.  Shall we try to coin a new phrase?

My stake in the matter is that I want ‘educational games’ to have less of a dirty stigma.  The number of educational quizzes poisoning the educational games category is so pervasive that many kids assume that’s what all educational games are.  Parents sometimes fall in this trap, too.  I recently read a review of an educational game where a parent left one star and said, among other things, “The game never asked any educational stuff.”  Ouch!

Last week, I sat down with my Girl Scout troop to play Fluxx.  Before I even had the cards out of the sleeve, one of the girls said, “Is this an educational game?  I’m not playing an educational game.”  I told the girls I had a theory that all games were educational, it was just a question of what you were learning.  A different girl said “What about Hide and Seek?”  I paused to think about it a moment, and responded, “Well, to play Hide and Seek, you have to think about the people you’re playing with, and where they might hide, or where they would look, right?  That’s creative thinking.”  Actually, I suppose it’d be more accurate to say it’s metacognitive analysis.  But Hide and Seek is clearly a strategy game.  The first several times you play, you may hide and look in the same few places.  Under the bed.  Under the kitchen sink.  In the closet.  But play it enough and many players get more creative.  They hide behind the billowy curtains that reach all the way to the floor.  Or under a pile of stuffed animals.  Maybe in an unmade bed with a lot of pillows and blankets.  I remember sneaking from one hiding place to a place I had already heard the seeker check.  That’s leveling up into Advanced Hide and Seek!  (Or maybe it was just cheating.)  Regardless, there was clearly learning going on.

I don’t think we’ll ever reach a point where most kids seek out educational games.  Kids do spend hours in school each day, and no one could blame them for wanting to relax and not purposefully learn something every moment of the day.  And then there’s always the social stigma of not wanting to appear too smart.  Educational games will probably never be as cool as action games or fighting games, at least in the popular sense of the word.  But I’m okay with that.  I just want my genre to get more respect!

What is an educational game then, you may ask?  (If the one star review parent above is reading, I hope she asks.)  I believe an educational game is one that was deliberately designed to make the player think about, or experience something academically or practically useful.  Some examples would be Lemmings, World of Goo, and Enigmo.  In each of these games, the player must think about how to solve a new problem each level, using only a limited number and type of tools and supplies.  The Carmen Sandiego series games give children an experience of real world geography as they do the familiar video game task of pursuing a criminal.  The Oregon Trail simulates the experience of leading a family across the country in a conestoga wagon, with challenges the pioneers would have faced. 

Many of these examples have been around for decades, are still popular with kids today, and are fondly remembered by those of us who grew up with them.  See?  Educational games don’t have to be experiences to endure just because they’re good for you.

Photo by ArSISa7, shared via Creative Commons.

Math educational products like textbooks, games, and TV shows such as Square One and Cyberchase, are often written by people who are “good at math.”  When I say good at math, I mean people who did well in school at it.  It’s an important distinction.  In the United States, math is traditionally taught as a set of procedures to memorize.  To a lot of people, that’s all math is.  People who rise to the top of this system and earn degrees in mathematics don’t see what’s wrong with it, because the system worked so well for them, and so we keep perpetuating much of the same things in math ed.

The thing is, you don’t have to be good at memorizing procedures to be good at math.  You might have to be to succeed on standardized tests, but that’s a different matter.  

I did kind of poorly in math myself, growing up.  I definitely fell into the camp of kids who simply thought “I’m not good at math.”  Now that I’m grown, I realize I need to think about math visually, not as a set of symbols.  For example, I never remember what 3 + 7 is, but I’ve learned to think of it as 4 + 6, which I know is 10.  I suspect the only reason I know 6 + 4 is 10 is because I quickly internalized that 5 + 5 = 10, and I had some years of practice remembering six and four are each one away from five.  Maybe with time I’ll remember by rote that 3 + 7 is 10, but it’s been over twenty years since I was made to memorize the addition facts in school, and it hasn’t happened yet, so we shall see.

When I think of these concepts in my head, I don’t really see the symbols 3 and 7, or 4 and 6, or even 5 and 5.  What I do see are visual representations of five and five.  I simply shuffle the cubes in my mind until they’re organized in clusters I can work with.  If I’m calculating a 15% tip on $35.00, I know I need $1.50 for each of the three sets of $10, and then half of that again (75 cents) for the remaining $5.  $5.25.

What makes the new iPhone game Arithmaroo so awesome is that it supports visual thinking of quantities.  I wish I had made this game!  A similar idea has been kicking around in my mind for a few years, but I had conceived of it a little differently, and I dare say, Arithmaroo is better than what I had thought of.  Bravo!

Playing Arithmaroo is very simple.  The player is presented with different arrangements of numbers, and you are to select the corresponding numeral from the grid at the bottom of the screen.  If right-brain thinkers like me are ever going to succeed at performing math at the speed that symbol-oriented rote memorization thinkers do, Arithmaroo is great exercise.  Equally important, Arithmaroo gives visual thinkers an opportunity to play an overtly mathematical game and experience success.  Hurrah!

And lest you think I’m no good at math, I protest.  My boyfriend may be getting a degree in mathematics, and he may have passed several levels of advanced calculus with flying colors (Who even knew there were different levels of calculus?) but I can run circles around him efficiently packing the dishwasher, a suitcase, or the trunk of a car.  I can also cut a perfectly straight line into a roll of wrapping paper like there was nothing to it.  These tasks are all mathematical, they’re just spatial and not procedural.  I can’t truly comprehend the way some people find spatial tasks difficult, and in this way, I’m not much different from teachers and school administrators don’t understand why some students just can’t seem to do well in math class. Three cheers to Arithmaroo for bringing other ways of thinking about math to a video game for kids!

Arithmaroo is available on the App Store for $1.99.  Today only (Friday 4/23/2010), the game is FREE as part of a special promotion.  Check it out!