Liz and Kevin (permalinks blogspotted, scroll to Sept. 22), pointing to Tim Burke, hit the nail on the head (and Kevin confesses his complicity) when they indict the deplorable condition of software for kids. All three of our children have taken to computers as ducks to water, but have been almost entirely uninterested by games. Nate was scared silly by Reader Rabbit; Si played some, but not persistently; Pippa went through a phase of spending lots of time (and printer ink) on KidPix, and played a couple of educational games. The boys liked Carmen Sandiego for a little while, but the options are so limited that the game becomes a highly predictable exercise in repetition.
Mostly, they wanted to play the games for ordinary people — games that were not designed to be condescending. All three love Ambrosia Software and Freeverse games; the boys still play NetHack (Nate prefers playing in the ASCII mode to the newer, gussied-up-with-graphics mode). There’s no reason those games can’t be educational. Sim City certainly has been. But as Greg Costikyan observed earlier this year, the blockbuster mentality rules computer gaming as it does the film and music industries — with the concomitant constriction of their commercial imaginations.
Part of the reason our kids didn’t relish the games that were ostensibly designed for them involves the fact that we homeschool the kids — but it would be too easy to write them off as exceptions on that count, especially when Liz and Timothy and Kevin and especially Greg see the problem, too. Maybe part of the answer to the game design industry’s constipation, a part that reflects our experience as homeschool parents, involves treating children and grown-ups as people with the capacity to think and act and choose as adults.
Posted by AKMA at September 24, 2003 10:34 AM | TrackBack"games that were designed to be condescending"
From the context, I think you mean "games that were NOT designed to be condescending."
Posted by: Pascale Soleil at September 24, 2003 11:39 AMOops! Yes. I was so proud of the locution that I missed the negation. From now on, it’ll stand corrected, and our comments won’t make sense.
Thanks!
Posted by: AKMA at September 24, 2003 12:03 PMOur kids go to public schools, but are aided and abetted by parents who encourage them to think. This combination also results in the same sort of game ennui that your household suffers. We have a few CD's that they've enjoyed-- and a host of cases that largely sit on the shelves, gathering dust.
Broderbund's Living Books have generally been an entertaining exception, as well as the Carmen Sandiego series you noted.
Posted by: Jane Ellen at September 24, 2003 05:37 PMAKAM, do try the ones I linked to, especially for Pip.
Posted by: Kevin Marks at September 24, 2003 08:34 PMReading this article, I'm reminded of a lot of the great puzzle games and programming projects I received from a subscription to *something* my parents got for me at age 7, upon receiving my Apple //e. There was one in particular I still remember vividly, that had mathematical puzzles set up in an alien laboratory, where you had to figure out complicated fractional amounts of mysterious non-terrestrial chemicals.
I also remember a game based on the book Farenheit 451, which had lots of lit references (obviously). It also was really really hard. I kept getting caught by the hounds.
Not only that, but Apple BASIC was simple enough for me to wrap my brain around so that I wrote my own "Choose your own adventure" text game (surely the crown jewel in all my programming efforts).
Sophisticated in appearance they were not, but they sure provided me with many hours of entertainment in a backwater of Oklahoma.
Posted by: ARJ at September 24, 2003 08:55 PM