I love watching my toddler play games, not just because she has so much fun but because she learns so much as she does it.
Because the games—the skills, the goals, the rules—are so simple, I can see that the pleasure she takes from playing derives at least in part from the achievement of new skills or proficiency. Oh, the pretending part—the stories, the imagination, the simulation of things she sees her parents do—are a big part of the fun, of course. She loves imagining that she’s on vacation or that she’s a cat.
But when she begins to master a new skill or grasps a new concept, she can’t contain her joy. She dances. She shrieks. She sings. She insists on getting everyone who will stand still long enough to watch her play her game.
Why does she approach these developmental activities in the form of games? Despite being an avid gamer, I haven’t tried to force the concept of game upon her. Instead, it seems to be a natural approach. She imposes a game approach on almost every learning opportunity. Even the (to her) arbitrary rules we make are “game-able.” If we insist that she keep her food on her plate, she’ll test the limits of the rule.
“Can I put it here?” she asks, placing her broccoli on the table.
“No.”
“Here?” The broccoli is on the washcloth we keep at the ready at all meals.
“No.”
“In my cup?”
“No.”
“Can I throw it on the floor?”
“No, just keep your food on your plate.”
She shoves the broccoli into her mouth and asks “Here?” Her eyes twinkle, because she’s found a “cheat” to the game. She’s not putting her broccoli in any forbidden place, but she’s also not complying with the order to put it on the plate.
She has won.
I’ve written before about games being the absolute best educational tools we have at our disposal. Watching S— play, I stand by that assertion. She learns more rapidly when playing than at any other time, partly because the game makes learning fun, but just as much because the learning, properly framed, makes the game fun.
I see this in my own pleasure in games. I like to learn the MMOs I play. Once I’ve learned how to play my character, I lose interest in repeatedly doing so in order to achieve an arbitrary goal (like equipment), although I may enjoy improving my play in PVP. When I’ve learned all I can, I will probaby try a different class . . . or a different game altogether. The only reason I’d stay is for social aspects or exploration and immersion.
That so many people are motivated to collect rare virtual pets in an MMO seems a bit odd to me, I have to admit. I enjoy collecting as much as anyone, and I recognize that any goal in an MMO is an arbitrary one. But the pleasure for me comes not from getting something (especially something not real), but from learning how.
Thus, although I’d like to figure out how to make potty training a game, I don’t want to do so with prizes. I’m averse to giving rewards (like stickers) for successful potty use, even though I hear that it can be helpful. I know rewards of any sort, even arbitrary ones, can be powerful motivators.
My aversion stems in part from a philosophical conviction that the best motivator to learn a skill is recognizing that the skill is its own reward. Also, I want the rules of the game to be self-contained. I don’t want to be an arbitrary prize-awarded and authority; I’d rather play the game with her, somehow. In the best games, achieving the conditions of victory as defined by the game is the reward, because getting there is what’s fun. Trophies and medals are all well and good, and prize money is even better. But I greatly fear becoming the arbiter of my daughter’s potty success.
I’d like her to play the game to win the game.
—
I don’t have any plans for a fifth “Toddler gaming” post, although I have no doubt that I’ll be writing again and again about S— and the games she plays in the coming weeks, months, and years. That said, if anyone has any topics related to Toddler gaming they don’t think I’ve covered, or any thoughts on the topics I have covered, I’d very much like to hear them. Post a comment and let me know what you think!
September 12th, 2007
Alec Bings
In her games, my daughter loves rules.
One of the fundamental components of any game is rules. Without rules, you may have a fun activity, but you don’t have a proper game. That’s why we RPG geeks have (and gloat over) elaborate tomes of arcane rules addressing even the most improbable situations. Sitting around and telling a shared story may be fun, but most of us find it more fun with rules.
My brother and I used to make a game of shared storytelling on long car trips. Eschewing die rolling and combat tables, we nonetheless invented guidelines for whose turn in was to spin yarns about the brave Mercemer Brothers (the heroes of many of our tales, adolescent boys who foiled almost all the villains’ plots through the judicious use of M80s, which we somehow envisioned as the pinnacle of personal explosive devices). Of course, the storytelling could be surrendered voluntarily, but it had to be given up if one player exceeded five minutes or repeated an event without sufficient variation.
And understanding and exploiting rules grants a degree of pleasure itself, of course.
As I’ve already discussed, my two-year-old prefers games of “pretend,” as I suspect most two-year-olds do. These proto–roleplaying games may involve walking in circles around the first floor and calling it “going on vacation” or making sure that her toys are looking in a particular direction or “talking” to one another.
But already they’re starting to have rules.
Oh, I don’t pretend to understand her rules, but she’s got ‘em.
For instance, in a recent game of “follow me around the house,” S— gave me one of her plastic dinosaurs. “You have to hold it like this,” she said, grasping the one she reserved for herself by the tail and holding it as a sort of saurian pistol. I complied, and we completed two circuits of the house.
“Now hold it like this,” she said, switching her grip to its head. She started to lead me around again but caught me letting my arm hang at my side. “No, you have to hold it right!” I complied, and the game continued.
As an example of a non-roleplaying game, I recently found S— and her friend sitting on opposite arms of the sofa in the den, taking turns calling out the names of objects they could see.
“Wall!”
“Pillow!”
“Kitchen!”
“Farm set!”
“Arm!”
“Farm set!”The girls laughed and laughed, but their laughter increased when one of them shouted something out of turn or had to pause to think of something. They began giggling hardest when they started making up words completely. And if you saw them, you’d know that it’s the same sort of laughter that erupts from any player in a good-natured pick-up game when a challenge is missed.As I said, I don’t exactly know why she makes these rules. Is she simply asserting authority? Somehow, that doesn’t feel right. Instead, it feels as if she wants to really make a
game of an activity. Adding arbitrary challenges (holding the toy correctly) and mandating turn-taking adds fun to the fun.
Talking about emergent behavior in response to rules systems is always interesting, but at the moment I’m finding it even more interesting to watch the emergence of rules systems themselves.
September 11th, 2007
Alec Bings
A wave of toys washes across the floors of several rooms in our house when, at high toy-tide, our daughter diligently unpacks the chests and shelves filled with her favorite things. At first glance, these waves may seem chaotic, but look closer. S— has arranged her “people” (mostly Fischer-Price Little People, with a couple of Weebles and her beloved Purple Man DDR figure mixed in) in a graceful fractal arcing from one corner of the coffee table to another. Each is facing the same way, and they’re all “watching” a pile of toy birds “sleeping” on the sofa in a pile that alternates bird and blanket, a sort of impromptu toy napoleon.
On the other side of the room, I pick up a discarded toy cow—or maybe it’s not discarded. “No!” wails my toddler, “It’s talking to the otter!” I look down. Sure enough, the cow was positioned face-to-face with a toy otter. I was unwise to interrupt their conversation.
When S— goes to sleep, the toy-tide recedes. Plastic teacups go back on shelves in the toy kitchen, stuffed animals assemble in the toy chest, and the sofa transforms once again into a place to sit rather than a stage.
Among all these toys, though, there aren’t any that qualify as “games.” Oh, she plays games of pretend with them, and as I posted in the first part of this series, I hope this will lead to a lifetime love of roleplaying games. But she doesn’t have any games proper.
For the most part, manufacturers don’t make too many games for toddlers. Crazed parents will hand over thousands of hard-earned dollars for toys stamped “educational” on their packaging, but the littlest kids just don’t play games. Only after about a year of life to do they even have enough perception, language, and motor skills to start imitating what they see their parents and friends do for fun.
But on one rainy day on my recent vacation, I got to see four kids aged two to four (my daughter on the young end) playing actual, commercial games. These games are actually targeted at older kids, and in fact not one was played strictly according to the Rules. But then, what game ever is?
The three games they played were:
The fishing game—purchased by the parents of one kid because the nearby pond permitted fishing, so they thought they’d bring the fun indoors—proved thoroghly entertaining. On, only one kid (the youngest) had anything approaching the motor skills to actually catch a fish by the official method, but all of them (even the skilled one) had a grand time carefully inserting the hook into the mouths of fish as they passed. Or simply grabbing a fish of an appealing color. In the end, though, they treated the game more as a toy which had a skill element than a real game.
The homemade fishing game that I brought over—which my wife made from wooden dowels, rare earth magnets, string, paper, and paperclips—proved much more popular. Sure, we had only two rods, and the “fish” were pictures and bits of greeting cards. But the fun of fishing for a picture of my daughter or a reindeer with a magnet dangling from a string was something the girls were better able to do, was more relaxing, and was much more rewarding (”I got a horse!” “I got S—!”)
They treated the Peanut Butter & Jelly card game as a toy instead of a game, too. Instead of trying to build a particular sandwich, the kids just shouted out when one dad would call, “Who wants peanut butter?” or “Who wants bacon?” The littlest kid wanted them all, of course, but in the end the girls assembled some remarkable sandwiches. My daughter decided to treat her sandwich (meticulously free of meat products, coincidentally; maybe she’s picked up on our family’s vegetarianism without understanding it) as a toy and pretended to eat it for several minutes after the other girls put theirs away.
Zingo! came the closest to being played as a game. Basically “bingo with pictures,” the game drops two sturdy tiles with images that may match the squares on each kids cards. The girls each took one card for themselves and one for their dolls, and they happily laid matching tiles on pictures as they showed up. The precocious youngest girl quickly memorized both sides of her cards (the green side apparently leads to less “competition,” but both sides have images), and we laughed as she flipped each card over whenever a chip with a picture she remembered on the other side came up, dumping any that she’d placed on the front.
None of the girls played to win. None of them felt the slightest bit of competitiveness (which,
really, is a fine thing; toddler competitiveness can get ugly fast and is expressed mostly through
whining). But they did sort of play to fill their cards.
The youngest recommended age for these three games is four, and the girls definitely weren’t ready to play them as proper games. But as a gamer myself, and a doting father, I had a grand time watching them experiment with the beginnings of gaming.
After the last sandwich card and Zingo! tile was put away, they reverted to their favorite kind of game: roleplaying games. The oldest decided she was a teacher, and the other three—and their dolls—happily assembled as pupils and did what she told them. Or did something else. No one really minded, as everyone was having fun.
September 7th, 2007
Alec Bings
Sabertooth Games is offering two free random demo decks of their UFS (Universal Fighting System) collectible card game, along with a copy of the complete rules. All you have to do is fill out the form here before supplies are gone.
I’m not the target demographic of this game. I have never been very interested in the fighting video game genre, and the last thing I need is another CCG to interest me. That said, this seems like a great chance to try something I wouldn’t otherwise even consider, so I’ve signed up.
Any devotees of the game out there? If so, put up a comment letting me know what to expect!
September 7th, 2007
Alec Bings
Recently, my daughter played what I called her very first game. Since that time, she’s become something of a hardcore gamer, at least as much as a two-year-old is likely to be.
No, she’s not like this kid (featured in a story that smacks of bad parenting and a healthy serving of hot, steaming bullshit), but she does love to play games.
There are the obvious “pretend” games. This past weekend, for instance, she decided to pretend that we were going on vacation again. She packed bags (paper ones) full of her favorite toys, handed one to me and one to my brother-in-law, and led us in an endless march around the downstairs. She also enjoys making pretend food in her kitchen (which must be left where she puts it on the dinner table next to the real food or we are subjected to serious complaints) and pretending that things are not as they seem.
“This is a truck,” she declares, holding up a toy rabbit. And when corrected: “I want to pretend it’s a truck!”
This is all good practice for roleplaying games, of course, as is her budding collection of various dice. She found my dice collection very interesting long before it was safe to let her play with the little polyhedrons.
I remember one morning about a year ago when I came downstairs after a late-night game session with her. Back then, we took great pains to make sure that nothing that could fit in her mouth that wasn’t food got in her hands. Apparently though, in my exhaustion, I’d left 1d6 on the living room floor. I discovered the wayward cube in my daughter’s mouth, the lopsided grin on her face giving away the fact that she’d popped in something that wasn’t supposed to be there.
She has her own dice bag now (a satin bag that a small bottle of Godiva liquer came in, donated by my wife), and it’s full of several dice I don’t need. Even though I haven’t played D&D for years, I still have a notion that a set of dice requires, at a minimum, 1d4, 4d6, 1d8, 2d10, 1d12, and 1d20, so I made sure my daughter has all of those. They’re mostly dice I never pick up, but I did include several of the very first geek dice I had, clear crystal dice with numerals that I filled in with crayon sometime in the early ’80s.
While on vacation, we played quite a few games with her three friends who were staying in the house next door. There was, of course, some good pretend play, but they also had some purchased games that I’ll write about soon.
September 6th, 2007
Alec Bings
During my two-week vacation last year (2006), I spent many an evening playing World of Warcraft (for which I’d just reactivated my account) on dial-up while my one-year-old daughter slept in a room separated only by a curtain. My delight in exploring the genuinely different workings of each class (I leveled “one of everything” to ten) and pleasure in playing with real-life friends kept me interested and engaged (and up late).
This year, though I had my laptop with me, I didn’t run WoW even once. I spent a great deal of time online via dial-up (mostly for work), but not one moment of it related to MMORPGs. I didn’t even bother to make my once-every-four-days mooncloth or once-daily arcanite.
And I didn’t miss it for even a second.
This doesn’t entirely surprise me. Although I very much enjoyed hitting 70 and the whole process of leveling, I had begun to realize that the time:reward ratio was getting worse and worse. I’d eagerly anticipated some serious PVP time, but after a few attempts I began to realize that my crappy gear was a liability. And the prospect of having to do badly for long enough that I’d earn competitive gear made the whole thrill of PVP start to feel like a treadmill rather than a challenge.
Now, I know that MMOs are designed as treadmills. The most rewarding treadmill is leveling to the level cap, as almost every level grants you new abilities or power improvements to play with. WoW’s reputation grinds are less pleasurable. You have to stay on a rep grind’s treadmill for a long time to get the best rewards. But some of the rewards are good enough that a serious player might justify the time investment.
(Ironically, I know most people see leveling as an obstacle to be overcome to enjoy the game. In truth, though, I think the vast majority of players actually enjoy leveling most. They may not be the most vocal on the various discussion boards, but most players, once they hit the cap, will either start leveling another character or will find another game.)
For myself, though, I’m just not motivated by the idea of having the rarest pattern, mount, or suit of armor. I like ones that give me an edge in gameplay, of course, but once you’ve got 98% of the “edge” you can hope for, investing the same amount of time all over again for the final 2% just doesn’t interest me.
So I’ve begun experimenting with other MMOs. I’m in the beta for Tabula Rasa, and I’ve downloaded demos for Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and even Sword of the New World. I’ll have separate posts about all those, of course, and I may actually sign up for any one of them. The prospect of leveling up in LotRO or DDO has tempting elements, although taking a real, extended vacation from MMOs so I can really indulge in board games, other computer games, card games, and even non-game relaxation has great appeal as well.
Quitting an MMO used to seem like a terrible prospect. Having invested time into a character (or several), it’s hard to let them go. But now, because you can always quit an MMO and count on your characters being there if you decide to come back, I’ll be canceling my WoW account soon. I’m almost certain I’ll be back when the expansion comes out, to enjoy the leveling process. And before then, I’ll take the time to enjoy any other MMOs that catch my interest. (Pirates of the Burning Seas seems the most exiting to me, but it could turn out to be terrible.)
But having take a break from WoW, I’ve learned a lot about what I want from my leisure time. I want fun. It doesn’t have to be easy fun, but it better be genuine fun. If not, I’ll be moving on to something else.
For those of you out there who have quit, how did it feel? And what are you doing now?
September 4th, 2007
Alec Bings
Three other families from my home area vacationed in the same spot we did earlier this month. One couple came with us to the game store, and they and another couple settled down with us the night before their departure for a little gaming fun.
The group settled on the recent acquisition Zombies!!!
Overall, I liked the game pretty well. I enjoy almost any board game that supports a shifting setting (in this case thanks to tiles, the playing of which is part of each player’s turn). I also admire the mechanics that support the creeping dread of slow-moving zombies while the more agile and stronger player characters can nonetheless only hope to survive by outrunning the endless stream of undead.
I say “endless,” but we quickly ran out of zombie figures and had to fake them with other counters. For a six-player gam, the basic box just doesn’t have enough pieces.
Unfortunately, I found some aspects of the game actively interfered with the fun:
- With six players at least, you had to wait a long time before you could do anything. This in itself isn’t a big deal, but if you were in a disadvantageous position—far from the helipad, perhaps, or simply far from the action—this could turn into a fifteen- or twenty-minute wait while you struggled to get back into position to do anything.
- Because of the long delay and lack of progress when you couldn’t move, it rarely seemed worthwhile to go pick up items (they show up on cards you draw, but you have to move to certain locations to actually “get” them) unless you happened to be right by the target location already.
- Having a skateboard (which increases your speed) is extraordinarily desireable.
- It’s possible to do such mean things to other players that you can absolutely destroy any hope they have of winning. I understand that, as endgame approaches, desperate measures are called for, but certain cards (such as the one that lets you move a player back to the starting point) effectively kill that player, forcing them into the cycle of sitting and waiting for a chance to do anything at all.
- Dying goes from being a very minor inconvenience near the beginning to a difficult challenge in the middle and a cause to completely give up in the end.
- The rules are ambiguous enough on a couple of key points that another edit after a playtest was in order.
Ultimately, I’m enthusiastic about the game, but I do strongly feel it needs some tweaks to make it truly fun. I’ll be poking around the web for rules variants before we tackle it again.
A note about how the game played for the less gamey participants: The owner of the game (let’s call him Tom) isn’t the best rules reader and assumed the game would be quick to play. Instead, it turned into three or four hours of undead creeping. The less geeky couple (Mark and Karen) seemed to have a good time. Mark’s a pretty hardcore WoW player, but he seemed a bit put off by the realization of fantastic themes on a game board.
Karen avoids WoW (and I’ve heard grumbles from her that sound decidedly like she’s starting to resent Mark’s playing), but she likes genre fiction well enough. And she’s so socially adept that she didn’t give off any obvious hint that she was bored. I got a vibe, though, that made me think she’d have been happier with another game or activity.
In other words, Zombies!!! is a reasonably fun game, with the potential for even greater fun. But it’s not one to try to bring new fans to our hobby!
August 30th, 2007
Alec Bings
No, I don’t know why Heroes Kingdom spells its name that way. That didn’t stop us from enjoying the store as a fun spot to visit on our vacation in Vermont. We stayed about half an hour away from St. Albans, and friends staying in a nearby cabin decided to visit the town one evening. They spotted the store, but because it was closed couldn’t investigate.
So we all went together a couple of days later.
Truth to tell, I haven’t spent much time in game stores, despite my passion for the hobby. Online prices always beat brick-and-mortar prices, and online information is good enough that it hasn’t seemed worth the time to me. But now, even though I won’t be back to St. Albans for a year, thanks to this store I have resolved to make time. We would up spending a total of about two hours there.
The RPG section leaves a lot to be desired. It sits on two smallish shelves and features about 95% D20 books. The board game section is small, too, but it had some good offerings. Descent
tempted me, but I resisted for now. My friend grabbed Zombies!!! 
I picked up both the board game–inspired Settlers of Catan Card Game
and Deluxe Illuminati (which has nothing to do with board games).
The store focuses on collectible games. Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures
and DC HeroClix figures
(and many other collectible figure games) lined the shelves. Magic The Gathering
and other collectible card games were also well represented. My other friend managed to snag some booster packs of WizKid’s Pirates at Ocean’s Edge
, her passion and something she’s had trouble finding lately.
Other shelves were laden with action figures (which mean nothing to me) and Warhammer
materials.
Best of all, though, my two-year-old had a grand time. The back room, normally used for gaming, had a stash of pieces of various board games, including some oriented toward kids. She played with an odd collection of a bus, a dragon, and some other bits and pieces while we grownups looked around.
My daughter has already developed something of a dice fetish, so she and I spent some time looking at the broad display of colorful polyhedrons. After we left, I kept wishing I’d gone ahead and bought some of the unusual barrel dice they had for sale. As luck would have it, we justified a return trip a couple of days later, and I did snag a set. Since I mostly play GURPS, I don’t have a great justification for the purchase, but they’re fun, interesting, and different.
And they’re tempting me to go out and buy Serenity Role Playing Game (Serenity)
, partly because I love the setting, partly because I’d like to try the game, and partly because it will give me an excuse to bring out these funky fellows.
August 29th, 2007
Alec Bings
| I don’t just like games; I’m a foodie as well. On Fridays, I publish a drink or cocktail recipe that I enjoy as an accompaniment to some sort of game. These aren’t necessarily drinks I’ve invented, but they are superior potations that gamers who tipple are liable to enjoy. |
My brother-in-law introduced me to scotch, and to this most strongly flavored variety, all at once. Pronounced something like “la-froyg,” this single-malt Scotch whisky is decidedly an acquired taste. I happened to acquire it on my first sip, but most people have an adversarial relationship with it for a while.
If you come around and learn to like it, though, you’ll probably put it near the top of your Scotch list.
My brother-in-law says drinking Laphroaig is “like drinking a campfire . . . in a good way.” It does taste like you’re pouring ash, cinders, flame, and smoke onto your tongue. But it also tastes as if you mixed all that with honey.
Several varieties of Laphroaig are available for sale in the United States, but I’ve only ever gotten bottles of my preferred kind, cask-strength, from my brother-in-law. He picks it up in duty-free airport shops or asks his coworkers to grab a few bottles when they travel.
The booklet that comes with the cask-strength bottles recommends adding water. In my experiments, I’ve added as little as one drop or as much water as the booklet recommends, diluting one part whisky with three parts water.
It’s always good, but I’m getting more and more partial to the more dilute mixes. At the 1:3 ratio, Laphroaig seems to become a Scotchy wine. Because your taste buds don’t get deadened by the strong alcohol and flavors, you can appreciate every nuance. The color rarefies to a paler amber. I can imagine Tolkein’s elves sipping a wine something like this. And perhaps some more exotic race that favors some fanciful acorn wine would find this pleasing.
I can’t see putting ice in this, ever. And using Laphroaig for a scotch-and-soda would be an abomination.
I do not drink alcohol to get drunk or even for its mild depressant effects when I’m stressed out. I grew up in a family that taught me mental exercises to deal with negative emotions, and those exercises almost never fail me. I do find the process of making a perfect martini very meditative (in fact, I enjoy the process of making one almost more than of drinking it), and I won’t pretend that I don’t sometimes enjoy the effects of strong drink.
But such effects aren’t the reason I drink, and if I ever find myself depending on a chemical such as ethyl alcohol to deal with life troubles, I’ll know I have a problem.
But when I played the “Robbing the Cradle” level of Thief III: Deadly Shadows in a darkened room with a top-notch set of headphones, I had to take a break for a couple of fingers of Laphroaig cask-strength. I credit that one computer game experience with showing me just how immersive a good game can be and, for the first time ever, teaching me to love the horror genre.
I was terrified. I actually trembled as I explored the abandoned insane asylum. And almost all the fear came from the sound itself. The terror of not knowing what was going on, wondering who or what made that noise, wondering why the place was so vast, so empty. And finally uncovering the source of all the madness, even as I became so trapped in it that I just couldn’t escape.
Thief III may have been the worst of the three magnificent Thief games (probably because they bowed to the Xbox restrictions), but it was still a damn good game. And “Robbing the Cradle” is a big part of the reason why.
Even now, sitting here in a brightly lit office, remembering the experience makes me wish I could uncork a bottle of Laphroaig in a warm room with a merry fire and good friends. We’d laugh. We’d sing. And then, as the fire died down, maybe one of us would tell the tale of the Cradle again . . .
August 24th, 2007
Alec Bings
I wanted to put up a link to send readers to T Bone’s nifty definition of roleplaying games. As he observes, many people offer definitions. T Bone’s is new and different: the third way to enjoy a story.
I like the definition because it’s story oriented—which mirrors my own gaming orientation and strikes at what I think is the differentiator for roleplaying games. Also, it’s pithy and cleverly worded.
Of course, it’s not a perfect definition. You can’t have a perfect definition of something that keeps redefining itself, morphing and changing, and blurring its own boundaries. But T Bone’s definition makes an excellent and usable contribution to the conversation.
T Bone is talking specifically about tabletop RPGs, not CRPGs. No CRPG has come close to caputring what T Bone defines, making the definition even more useful. Innovators wishing to bring new dimensions to computer games should consider how they can bring the shared storytelling experience to their games. The stabs that have been taken so far don’t come close to capturing those vivid, memorable moments that have emerged around kitchen tables.
(And no, I don’t think D&D 4th edition’s computer gametable will get the job done, although it and its many competitors are a step.)
August 21st, 2007
Alec Bings
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