Blogger: Etta Wilson
Location: Books & Such Nashville Office
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A basic fact about games has come clear–most all of them involve more than one person. Other than working puzzles, Solitaire, and certain types of word games, you very rarely play alone. It’s fascinating looking at www.funagaingames.com, the web site recommended by Bookie Rachel. It divides games into ten categories, and that’s when it hit me. You need another human to really play! The interaction with another person adds the surprise element, no matter that you are both following certain rules of the game.
Contrary to that, the Mindware catalog (“brainy toys for kids of all ages”) presents only eight pages of games, including Mancala and Blokus. The majority of the catalog shows products for a single child’s use. They are for developing intelligence and problem-solving ability, not for pure fun.
If we think about the “Word Game” category and some kind of play that will stir up us writers and readers, Scrabble comes quickly to mind. A college-age kid tells me that Apples to Apples is a favorite on his campus, partly because it can be modified to select the winning combination of adjective and noun depending on the players’ taste–or lack thereof! For some time I’ve been listening to Will Shorts’ weekly word puzzles, broadcast early on Sundays here in Nashville. What I’m grappling with here is the level of education, experience and innate problem-solving required in games and what that play experience does for us players. Maybe there are some answers in Games Magazine, which I plan to read, but I’d like your feedback.
It seems to me, most humans these days don’t do much for just pure fun. And that is a very sad thing.
Too many computers, too much information, too much pressure from all sides really.
That being said, levels of education varies greatly these days, especially when compared to that of our grandparents and great-grandparents. There was a time when McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers built such a fantastic foundation in America’s youth that much of the country was ably run by those who’d just gone through the 5th or 6th grade.
(I “are” a college graduate, and occasionally require a dictionary when leafing through the upper level readers.)
Would era have a bearing on your question?
Games children used to play, especially outdoors, prepared them for many things in life. These days so many things are done for us that I wonder how we will cope when the power or a satellite goes down for any length of time.
(I must be wandering around in a turkey coma…
Hope you and all readers had a great Thanksgiving. We’re still enjoying creative leftovers.) 🙂
I think education/learning does bear on some games, like any involving spelling, quotations, math or logic. Others rely heavily on strategy – being able to think multiple steps ahead. Some involve mechanical skills, like being able to draw or have good fine motor control. But regardless of the requirements, playing the game gives you practice, the opportunity to stretch yourself and the knowledge to do better at that game next time!
Karen, I took a post-Thanksgiving trip to Target and was astounded by the variety and amount of selection in games. We may be spending a lot of time at computers, but we apparently have time to play games with others. I do think our vocabularies and perhaps our brains have changed since the days of McGuffey’s Readers.