Some little games, like Line Rider are simple and instantly addictive.
Quite a few of my students have tried to build something like Maze Frenzy in the past, but this one is great. Just click on the dot and move the mouse. I wasted at least four minutes of my time playing it. Not bad.
There’s also a more difficult version if you’re already the maze master.
[tags]games, maze[/tags]
Image: ClickToy Interactive Inc.
Old skool interaction designers will remember Grandma and Me
Much of that approach has been lost in many current videogames, yet the truth is, many two year-olds play around on the computer and most of the stuff available is either a bit too gruesome or a bit too ‘edutainment’ focussed.
Clicktoy by long-time games developer, Ken Kavanagh, is a completely unstructured play environment. The first game, Meadow, is, well, a meadow. You can navigate around the space and press keys to make things happen. That’s it.
Kavanagh says that he was trying to think of something that his two year-old could use and enjoy and spent some time staring at the keyboard. Eventually he boiled it down to the idea that there are 101 buttons and thought, “What can I make happen if you make every button do something different?”.
It’s a good approach to interaction design - look at what you have and think about what you can do with it, rather than dream up something grand and make a half-baked version of the dream. The open-ended play helps make the most of this approach.
“Children’s toys, like Fisher-Price toys, are super simple, they’re sandbox toys, open-ended play, no structure or goal, you just simply play with it,” says Kavanagh. “I wasn’t seeing that in software.”
The meadow, replete with bunny rabbits, deer, bumble bees, rainbows and flowers, was as innocent and as wholesome an environment as he could think of and also reflected his son’s existing soft toy collection.
Press a key and the bunnies hug each other, press another and an acorn falls from a tree and comically bounces of the deer’s head who looks around in surprise.
The lack of any story, which normally drives children’s games is also an interesting aspect, as anyone who has made up a story or watched a child make up a story can attest to.
“Since the game provides no narration I think it’s actually a wonderful opportunity to provide it as a parent. We can make up a story about the bunnies visiting their friends.”
It’ll be interesting to see whether this kind of thing gains ground. There’s no doubt that it’s unlikely that very young children are going to ignore the computer. Letting them play seems like a good idea to me. Taking them to a real meadow to see the living ‘characters’ is probably a good idea too. Like Disney without the associated McDonald’s merchandising.
(Via CBC News)
[tags]games, clicktoy, children, broderbund, living books[/tags]
Once again proving that the simple interactives are often the most engaging and playful, this Jackson Pollockpiece by Miltos Manetas and Stamen has apparently been around since 2003, but I hadn’t seen it. It’s a simple click and move the mouse around affair, but the feeling of the paint splodging around is surprisingly pleasant.
You can also download the source-code from Stamen too.
[tags]stamen, pollock[/tags]
From the old, beloved Atari 2600 joystick to the Wiimote, how did we get from there to here?
The “Sock Master’s” family tree of controllers has the goods. There are some classics and some real stinkers like the The Nintendo Virtual Boy Controller. What were they thinking?
[tags]controllers, games, videogames, hardware[/tags]
There’s a well-balanced piece from Patrick Wintourin the Guardian today about parents being shown how to protect their children online.
It reports of a government initiative based on a review by Dr Tanya Byron (she works as a consultant in child and adolescent mental health and also presented quite a few programmes for the BBC on the subject).
I’ve only skim-read the main points of the report (which is available for download in full), but it makes interesting reading. The most important aspect is that she goes quite thoroughly through the pros and cons of the use of technologies - from social networks and general internet use to online videogames. It also draws upon a lot of evidence from children themselves.
It’s nice to see Byron is not pedalling the old ‘it rots young minds and they’re all being groomed by pedophiles’ line, by rather she looks at the complexities of the interactions between parents, children, society and technology:
“Ironically parents’ concerns about risk and safety of their children in the streets and outside has driven a generation of children indoors, where it could be argued they are being exposed to a whole new set of risks.”
It’s good to see some of the onus being put back on parents too. The use of these technologies is not inherently better or worse than what children used in previous generations and I’ve lost count of the amount of conversations I’ve had about videogames.
Arguably the use of these technologies are mostly beneficial, especially in the future that children will be growing into. The real problem is that many parents have no idea about how the internet functions, about social spaces online or the culture of videogames and that really needs to change.
It’s good to see this kind of research and well worth a read - it’s well-written too. (There are also quite a few annexed documents about the methodology and brain development research that background the report).
Photo: uncleboatshoes on Flickr
[tags]Tanya Byron, child development, videogames, parenting[/tags]
Metric is so passé. Just how much is a hill of beans? I’m not sure, but I know the problems of three little people don’t amount to one.
On the other hand, this very amusing “Domestic Science” measuring jug from Harry White Design will at least measure 100 penne pasta, ten billion grains of icing sugar or half a human brain.
I like things like this that make everyday tasks a bit more playful and pleasurable. Maybe car speedometers should have a scale from zero to “enough CO2 to melt the ice-caps”.
You can buy the jug on Amazon from Fred
[tags]playful, everyday[/tags].
Everyvideogame.com is an archive of “all the Nintendo games you grew up with - online and free”. I was more of a Atari, ZX Specturm and Sega man myself, but this a pretty good archive. Prepare to waste an hour or so.
[tags]games, emulator, nintendo, archive[/tags]
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