![]() Connect4 against a 4 year old is fun a few times, but then gets old. The whole reason I created Dungeon Adventure was because I didn't like the "no choice" games and the adversarial choice games couldn't engage both of us. Calling it a "game" is a stretch, but that doesn't make it worthless. Candyland demonstrates a structured form of interaction, and a concept of game rules (moving your token according to defined rules rather than just marching it across the board as you please). So do toys that light up or make noise when you interact with them. They do something interesting and allow interaction. That said, I do think "games" like Candyland have a place they're just really uninteresting as games. In other words, you've implemented a single-player game for the kid(s). ![]() But in a game where the GM simply implements the game mechanics, they just act as an infinitely flexible interpreter of desired actions and generator of sensible results. In an adversarial situation you'd call that "throwing the game". That's not "throwing the game", that's redefining the idea of the game.Ĭonsider that the job of a GM isn't to beat the players by any means possible, but to make a fun game with the right level of challenge. You don't have to structure it like an RPG, but any game with meaningful choices that remains balanced will have a similar structure: the adult implementing a game for the kid. The original article suggests a simplified role-playing game, where the adult effectively just implements the game mechanics and acts as a GM. No strategy, no decisions- from a game theory standpoint, it's the same as a lottery drawing- but that's the beauty of it.ĭon't play as adversaries, then. The first person to go through their whole stack wins. If it is black, you turn over another card, and keep going until you hit a red card. When it is your turn, you turn over the top card. You divide the cards equally among the players, and each player has a stack, face down. Lately, she's gotten into card games, and her favorite at the moment is a game of her own invention, called "Stop and Go". She'd roll the dice, and move the pieces around randomly, and have us do the same. In fact, prior to the arrival of Candyland, my five-year-old (then four) would make us play board games without any rules. (My two older daughters both jumped straight to chess when they got to that stage.) But right now, game playing is about the social aspects. The time will come, soon enough, when they want a game that requires them to make decisions, and plot strategy- and when that day comes, there are plenty of such games to choose from. I went to great lengths to import a copy here to Norway, and my 4 and 5-year-olds absolutely love it. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Candyland is the best game ever for children of a certain age. And I'd say most of the flaws are on the higher end and solved with things like Settlers of Catan and such, not the children's part of the progression.Įxactly. That said, I'm not saying the progression is optimal as it stands, but if you don't understand the reasons for the enduring popularity of the "standard game loadout", which hasn't seem to have hardly changed in 50 years, you're not going to improve on it properly. ![]() If you replace Candyland with something that has any choices at all, you've replaced something other than Candyland. Children are actually pretty good at figuring out that they are being "let" win. The mentioned Connect 4, for instance, is relatively simple and can be effectively "solved" by an 8 or 9 year old, for instance, so a 8yo and an adult are still not separated by such a large gulf that the game is a joke. This is why family games have a gradient to them, gradually trading chances for decisions, and gradually expanding the state space, until the game player is ready to join the adults fully with something like Scrabble in the early teens or so. It's more than just "following directions", it's the whole set of skills necessary to play a game. and at the level we are talking about, if there is a meaningful choice at all, then the child, or perhaps rather toddler, will simply lose. It's for toddlers to learn to take turns, to accept negative or positive outcomes without stomping off in a huff, and to play a game with a level playing field between the adults and children. The purpose of Candyland is to play a game, without playing a game. ![]()
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