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.

Richard Weil of Cartoon Network and Rebecca Newton of CrispThinking.com follow up on their 2008 GDC Austin presentation, which I did not attend.

11:00am  Rich Weil is the community director for Fusion Fall.  They plan to talk about regulatory changes in the last year.  Rebecca Newton is in charge of safety at CrispThinking, which monitors children's online behavior.

Rebecca starts us off.  COPPA changes as of Oct 2008.  Tell a Friend system- no email addresses or real names revealed.  No more than 10 characters in From field to prevent most full first and last names.  Email collection from <13 kids: You must notify parents if kids' email is in "retrievable form".  Any PII gathered and retained, parents must be notified.  See COPPA FAQ.  CyberBullying laws vary by state.  45 states have laws or pending laws on CyberStalking.

Self harm is a common theme in kids online interaction.  Guidelines / terms of service on sites should define self injury or self harm as inappropriate behavior, and point users to proper authorities for help.  (selfharm.net)  Suicide threats online are a misdemeanor "inducing panic" in Ohio!  Sexting is a common problem because children exchanging nude pictures with each other via text or email is child pornography legally.  Vermont just decriminalized it in July 09.  Ohio intriduced legislation to decriminalize it in April 09.  Helpful guidelines for child abuse and child pornography are available here.  (My note: The Oprah Winfrey Show did a mind blowing episode on child pornography this year.  Here's a detailed episode runthrough.)

11:23am Rich Weil takes over.  Boys spend 7% more time online than girls.  Girls viewed 9% more webpages.  (Boys go to the same sites over and over again.)  Top Ten Kids Gaming Sites traffic has gone down.  Rich attributes this to traffic spreading out among many sites.  Top sites include miniclips.com and clubpenguin.com.  Kids still play more games on the computer than anywhere else, including consoles.  (My note: But this could be because they measured different popular consoles separately.)

Rebecca: You should do a criminal background check on all employees who interact with children or children's data online.  Check out http://www.export.gov/safeharbor to learn more about compliance with customer data.  Review ethics and code of conduct with your staff periodically, every 6 months or so.

11:39am Rich: Several children's online virtual worlds do not keep logs.  On Fusion Fall, they do.  It's defensive to track all users, let them know and let people feel safer.

Advertising is decreasing as an online revenue source in kids' sites.  Product placement is a gray area legally.  People aren't doing much of it yet.  Parents are vary wary of recurring charges.  There are too many sites out there that kids want to play with, and it's too much to have subscriptions to all of them.  Business model updates: microtransactions, freemium, mix and match models.  It's all over the map right now.  (My note: Parents must find all this variety confusing and overwhelming!)  'Free' attracts kids!  Habbo, Webkinz and Club Penguin are the big three, but it's hard to get specific data on traffic and success.

11:49am Maine pushed an act to prevent predatory marketing to children, but it is not going through.  Follow Rebecca on Twitter for updates. 

Someone asked about data for what kids do within games.  Rich says they do have some data in Fusion Fall.  They have 2 people on staff for metrics.

Someone asked when we'll reach the point where there are so many regulations that we can't successfully do children's games online.  Rebecca doesn't see that happening in the next 8 to 10 years.  She says government wants it all to be credit card based, so we can know that a parent approves.  Legislators currently aren't too familar with child behaviors online.  Studies show predatory behavior offline is much higher than online.  Statistically, children are in more danger from predators at school or on playground.

Alright!  This is my first attempt at live blogging.  I'm excited, and waiting for the session to begin.  It's so cold in this room, my hands are shivering and it's hard to type.  But this session should be great!  It's Reaching a New Demographic: Kids AND Their Parents with Jesse Schell, Laralyn McWilliams, Matthew Schwartz, Megan Geiser and Sheri Graner Ray.  The only name I recognize there is Jesse Schell, the author of the excellent book, The Art of Game Design.  It's the most useful book on the topic I've ever read.  I'm looking forward to "meeting" the other panelists!

I'm very interested to see what they have to say.  'Kids and Their Parents' is far from a new demographic for me, because Sesame Street has been serving this demo for 40 years.  They write episodes to encourage co-viewing between kids and parents, so parents can talk to kids about what they've seen, and thereby increase the learning.  It also gives kids another opportunity to have a shared experience with mom or dad.  And what kid doesn't want mom or dad to spend more time with them?  But Sesame Street is TV.  Games are different.  Similar in some ways, but still different.  More active and engaging.  Requires more participation.  You can't knit or catch up on email and play a game with your kids at the same time.  And to enjoy a game, both parents and kids should be challenged, not simply entertained.  So here we go with the session!

11:03 am : Sheri Graner Ray is moderating.  Been in industry since 1989, has worked on arcade games and MMOs.  Asking panelists to share something about themselves that's not in their bio.

Laralyn McWilliams has worked on Over the Hedge, Lilo & Stitch, Fear & Respect with John Singleton!  Creative Director for Free Realms.

Margaret Wallace - online virtual worlds, virtual pets. CEO, Founder, Rebel Monkey, Playmatics

Matthew Schwartz - Cartoon Network's Fusion Fall, at CN since 2000, film and TV background, once bought Michael Bolton album on purpose

Jesse Schell - Disney Virtual Reality, teaches at Carnegie Mellon, owns game development company, first movie in theatre was Fritz the Cat.

11:07am : Where does parents and kids playing together work well?

Jesse: Theme park design!  You have to design things for both parents and kids.  Has been shown to work very well. 

Laralyn: Console games, kids play, parents watch and comment. Parents enjoy watching and being involved that way. 

Jesse: Club Disney failure, Chuck E Cheese style for parents and kids to play together.  Games didn't work unless kids played together (needed short and tall player, etc).  Parents didn't like it though, they wanted to watch.  Kids were left to play these games by themselves, and they couldn't. 

Matthew: Traditional board games.  Parents are active and involved.

Laralyn: Up until age 5 or 6, parents help kids.  6 and 7, play together.  7 and 8, parents expect kids to play on their own. (because kids beat at games parents at that point?)

Margaret: Generation shift too.  Today's parents are more computer savvy than our parents were.  Parents today are not as hesitant to play.  Learning curve is not as steep as it used to be.

11:15am : Why is this demographic important?

Jesse: It is children's job to play.  Long term entertainment properties are things that people want to pass on to their kids.

Margaret: Lego Star Wars - retro feel, parents love both Legos and Star Wars.

Jesse: Kids are honest.  If it appeals to them, it must be solid.

How important is teaching?

Margaret: Learning is a natural process (YES I AGREE!) Games like World of Warcraft develop leadership skills. (leading a guild) 10 year old plays Medeval 2 and Age of Empires and loves history, learns through the game. 

Laralyn: Are you making the game the parents want kid to play, or the game kids want to play?  Do you allow chat feedback to be negative?  Kids don't like games that feel like school.  Kid should not be embarrassed to talk about your game to friends at school.

Margaret:  It's tough, we're still working it out.

Matthew:  <18 year olds don't have credit cards, so you must appeal to parents on some level.

11:20am : How do you handle competition in the game? Do kids and parents compete together, or against each other?

Matthew: Boys like to show off, show mastery.  Look at it in comparison to other scenarios, like teaching them tennis.

Laralyn: Levelling up is a great reward that everyone can attain as they make their own personal progress. (GREAT POINT!)

Jesse: It's rare when parents can work together and have a shared victory.  When you can create that moment, it's really special. (ANOTHER GREAT THOUGHT!)

Matthew: When the game requires someone to lose, you're going to punish somebody.  You get tired of running the race if you're going to keep losing.

11:25am : Reward systems?

Jesse: Webkinz cash - Kids couldn't win the Webkinz cash, so parents would say "Go clean your room, I'll play the game and earn Webkinz cash for you."  You must ask, how does this game fit into a family?  ToonTown, actually mailed trading cards to families in the mail.  Parents keep the subscription on monthly bill, so to keep them paying, you must let them know that their kids are engaged and they're using it.  Every month, when they get something in the mail, the parent gets to witness the excitement they might not see if kid was only playing computer game on his own.

Margaret: Star Doll - Moms and kids use it together, moms are the moderators on the site.

Laralyn: Reward things you wouldn't think of rewarding (logins, registration) See gaia (sp?) Reward people for socializing.

Matthew: Reward based on attendance, if you log in every day of the week, you get currency.  (Cited Korean game example, but not by name.)

11:31am : How do you design for kids and parents together?

Laralyn: Free Realms- reward activities equally, and they are all optional.  Let people do what they want to do naturally.  Things parents could do to help kids, and things kids could do on their own.  Creating a space for parents and kids to play together is not enough.  Chat is not possible with COPPA compliance.

11:34am : How does age of child affect parent/kid play?

Jesse: Big factor, child is always growing and changing.  Age 7, age of wisdom and reason, kid can think for himself.  Influenced by other kids at school.  Edu software is great until this age because kids are no longer doing just what parents want them to do / play with.  They want what friends say is cool.  Brain growth and development is important.  Age 10 is an untapped parent/kid game market because kids at this age like to explore things in depth, and parents want to help them explore that.  (GREAT TIP!)

Margaret: Future Lab study shows younger kids like puzzle games and adventure, then boys age into shooters, etc.  Girls stay with puzzles.  Anecdote of Dora on PS2 easier for 3 year old than PC games.

Laralyn: Usability studies are important.  Kids under 10 use arrow keys in games not mouse.  Right hand on arrow keys, when click is necessary, they reach left hand over to hit button on mouse.  Using just a few keys in your game is ideal.

Matthew: Boys at 12 get hyper sensitive about things getting too kiddy.  Though they may secretly like it, such as Powerpuff Girls.  They would never admit to liking it, but they would watch it.

Laralyn: Skewed difficulty for Lilo and Stitch game for boys 10-13, but they said it was too easy.  They want to die a lot, because they think that is an indicator of challenge.  They aspire to first person shooter games for adults.

Jesse: Kids lie to researchers about their habits.  (IT'S TRUE! I'VE SEEN IT TOO!)  They will report play habits that are not accurate. "I play this.  I don't play that."  Often, they are not reporting accurately.

Margaret: Art style is important.  Things that you think look like teenagers, teens will not like.  They want avatars that look like 20-somethings.  (SAD, BUT ALSO TRUE!)

11:44am : How to encourage development in this demo?

Jesse: It's rare, so it's great not to have competition!  Everyone else, stay away!  (HAHA!)

Matthew: I disagree!  We need the Pixar and Miyazaki of games!

Laralyn: Figure out communication.  Dad may be overseas, parents may be divorced.  Enable play together when you are not in the same location.  Think of troubled kids, disabled kids and their parents.  (GREAT POINT!)  Add rewards to free form game play, like online "hanging out".  They play separate games and then come together and hang out, check out rewards and gear, etc.  Watch what parents and kids do together when they hang out in real life.  They talk together more than any action.

Jesse: So many forces in life pull kids and parents apart.  Less cross gender toys -> siblings play together less.  Parents work longer hours. 

Margaret: Industry does not encourage this demo because it is risky.  How about games that let parents and kids play when parent is traveling on business!

11:52am : Open Questions - my logging gets lazy from this point out.  Here are snippets I thought were interesting.

Matthew: Kids don't want virtual friends, they want to interact with their real life friends online.

All: Kid communication is very challenging to track in online systems, and COPPA makes it difficult to allow kids to talk.

Laralyn: Club Penguin makes you sign up with a parent's email address.  Free Realms figured kids would lie about their age to get more features.  What they've observed is that kids under 13 are honest about it and playing their character even with the limitations.  So you must design to let those kids feel fulfilled in the game.

Matthew: Kids are taught not to give any personal information, even gender.

12:03pm : That's a wrap!  Thanks for a great session!  Lesson learned from live blogging: Don't change your post title halfway through, it will break the link you posted on Twitter.  ;)

This past Saturday, I attended the second annual Boston GameLoop, a small game industry unconference hosted by Darius Kazemi and Scott Macmillan. Instead of a normal conference where speakers plan their presentations months in advance, the schedule was decided the morning of the conference. There was a large wipe board with a grid of available meeting rooms and times. People simply wrote in session ideas that interested them, and then attended what they felt like attending. Some sessions featured a speaker, but many of them were roundtable discussions that everyone in the room participated in. For me, the best part was meeting gaming industry people from all over the northeastern United States, and seeing some familiar faces from New York.
The discussion in many of the sessions centered on MMORPGs, which I found both frustrating and interesting at the same time. I don’t play any MMORPGs, so some of the language goes over my head. On the other hand, MMORPGs are a big part of the gaming industry, and those of us that make casual and kids’ games have some similar issues, like appeal and balance.

Here are my notes from the Kids’ Games Roundtable, a session where about 10 gaming industry people sat in a room and discussed children and videogames.

• Children’s games are largely sold to parents, though in some cases children do ask for a certain title. Because parents make the purchase decision, children’s games are usually marketed to increase a skill parents could observe, such as math or reading skills.
• Johnny Richardson recently developed an XBox/PC game called Buddie’s Busy Day. The game focuses on issues like self-identity and respect, partially because kids get enough basic math and literacy learning in school. In testing the game with kids in the target age range, Johnny discovered that kids became upset as soon as they detected that the game was being too overt about the educational message.
• There was general agreement and discussion among several attendees that the best educational games are those that weave the entire game experience around the curriculum. For example, The Oregon Trail effectively communicates the complicated experience that settlers had finding and managing resources, and making decisions about whether it was worth risking survival to cross a dangerous river. Another person cited a game about homeless shelter management and how some players get upset that they don’t have enough resources to serve all of the ‘people’ in the game that need shelter. Such games can create more effective learning experiences than students would have reading a book.
• Some games incorporate math equations or other factual problems in an otherwise non-educational video game format. Someone at the session likened this to chocolate covered broccoli and said that children still see this as broccoli. The point was also raised that such games often don’t help a student learn the material. Either the player already knows how to solve the problem, or he doesn’t.
• Lemmings was a great educational game. Why isn’t it available on any current gaming platforms?  UPDATE: Hold the phones!  Lemmings is available on PSP.

Notes from Content on a Shoestring session:

• To save money on music, you can layer music in multitracks, and then alter different layers slightly so you’re not boring the players with the same music all of the time.
• Practices that are good for big business companies may not always be the best practice for you.  For example, just because some companies like to spend lots of money on fancy graphics to attract players, that may not be the best course of action for you.
• Foreign language college students looking to gain experience in translation can be great sources to get your game translated to a different language. You can do a machine translation first and ask the student to check it for accuracy to save time.
• Eleanor Robinson of 7-128 Software makes games that are accessible to people with disabilities. Her company strives to make reusable components that can be used by several different titles. For example, they developed a dictionary that could be used by many games. They develop a character for one game and then reuse that character in future games. She also mentioned a mystery series that featured several different mansions, and each mansion had a unique cat with his own set of sound effects.

Notes from Achieving Flow State session:

Evan Nikolich of Demiurge Studios led a talk on Flow State. I should state that not all of my notes are from what Evan said. Some are comments made by session attendees. Also, the room diverged some to the topic of keeping the player hooked, which is a similar idea in some ways, but is not the same thing. Flow is the area between the feelings of boredom and anxiety. Game designers generally strive to create an environment where players achieve flow because then they are really “in” your game. The idea of flow was first proposed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and we spent the first moments of the session deciding how to pronounce his name. Wikipedia says it is “chick-sent-me-high-ee.”
Evan had this list of flow state characteristics on the board:

1. Clear Goals
2. Concentrating & Focusing
3. Loss of Feeling (in other words, loss of awareness of other things going on)
4. Distorted Sense of Time
5. Direct & Immediate Feedback
6. Balance between Ability & Challenge
7. Sense of Personal Control (as opposed to the game being in control)
8. Activity is Intrinsically Rewarding
9. Player Becomes Absorbed

• Unlocking things quickly in a game can be motivation to continue.
• Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment is when a game can automatically adjust to a player’s skill level.
• A ‘Game Over’ screen with improvement stats can be motivation to continue.
• Personal goals of individual players can vary, and may not be what you had intended.
• Flow state is not synonymous with performing well. If a player is doing really well in your game, they may be growing bored.

Notes from Game Balance Methods & Practices:

• Look at how player is going to use the things you put in the game.
• After release, you can’t change things players have gotten used to. They get upset.
• Pay attention to feedback, whatever it is. (For kids games released to PC or console, there is a wealth of parent feedback in Amazon.com reviews.)
• Study metrics of the game, and make sure no one weapon or strategy is too powerful.
• Remember that playing a game is about developing strategies and feeling powerful.