Toys and Games and Kids

Been a while. Sorry about that. Also sorry that I apologize so often. It'll get better. Maybe? Anyway...

Update on the previous post...

plane: Haven't flown in a bit.

paintball: Timing was wrong on that one; wife went from unable to play due to being pregnant to being unable to play because we're chasing down two kids non-stop. Not sure how I didn't see that one coming. Oh well, the paint will wait.

Bought a motorcycle. Totally counts as a toy since it is of no practical value. I just joy-ride. Also, time permitting, I want to get into the hobby of maintaining it, fixing it, modifying it. We'll see. For now, I gotta bring it to the shop 'cause still chasing two kids.

Went to a fan convention for "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic". That was awesome. (And cool and radical. In joke.) Managed to score a one of a kind, hand made, Pinky Pie plushie. The character of Pinkie Pie means a lot to me; she taught me to just be yourself - even if that self loves toys. I also have a nice collection of little MLP figurines.

On to the actual topic of this post...

I was playing Pocket Planes today (no surprise as I play it most hours of most days) and recalling a review which opined this is barely a game and it occurred to me really it is more of a toy. The difference between the two seems to me this: toy = thing you interact with for fun and game = toy which has a win and/or lose condition. You don't usually find yourself unexpectedly sad or frustrated with building blocks, but you do with a Rubic's cube and yet both involve manipulating geometric shapes. Maybe if you were building a really tall tower and it fell over, but then you've set yourself a challenge, entering game territory.

So Pocket Planes: no win or lose condition, just a steadily expanding empire. If you are doing well then it expands rapidly, but even the poorest play will still result in expansion. Really, this is a toy. You poke at it and it makes beeps and boops and it's entertaining.

This got me thinking about the time I've been spending introducing my oldest kid to the world of gaming. The wife and I are big board-gamers and we're happily looking forward to the day our kid can sit down with us to a game of Agricola or Blue Moon City. To that end, I've been slowly introducing her to various game concepts. I either take a game we own and dumb it down or we find age appropriate games and play those. She's currently 5 yrs old and having difficulty with the whole win/lose thing. She starts crying if she loses. This thing is, I'm not interested in trying to teach her strategy or tactics. I just want her to learn to hold a hand of cards, rol dice and move game pieces, things like that. I realized with my distinction of toy vs game that what I need is to take the game mechanics I'm trying to teach her OUT of the game and stick them into a toy. I want her to PLAY with game mechanics in a safe, non-competitive environment.

I mentioned this to the wife and the first example that came to her mind was auctioning. OK. So I took some cards from Mamma Mia, a pizza building game, and a pile of pennies and said "What we are going to do is bid on these pizza ingredients. The goal is to accumulate one of each ingredient before you run out of money." I had a deck of 15 cards, 3 of each of the 5 ingredients. So there was totally enough cards for each of us. All she needed to do was learn to not over bid. She's too young for multiplication but I knew that as long as she didn't bid more than 3 coins for a card too many times that she'd be fine. The first game we both won but she got upset because I got to 5 cards first. I assured her that it was not a race. The only goal was to get 5 cards and that was something we could both do. The next game we both won. The game after that she over bid and lost. Minor bit of upset but she understood where she went wrong. She got over excited and forgot that she could let a card pass if the bidding got too high and then wait for the next one. The last game she was very careful to not bid more than 3 per card and she won.

I think it was a total success. I think I could make it even more toy and less game by running a pretend auction house where we bid on her stuffies and I'm calling out bids in that fast auctioneer voice. Then it's simply pretend play but with real auction mechanics.

Anyway, this idea of "introducing kids to gaming by taking the game mechanics out of the game and make a toy out of them" is a theme I'll be exploring a bit around here. I will tag those posts with "kids" in case you want to follow just those.

As always, keep playing with toys!