Bullet Points @ timlongo.com

One of the categories of posts I have been wanting to publish for some time revolves around observing my daughter’s behaviors while we play video games together. We generally get about one 30 minute session a week so the progress will be slow, but each session proves fruitful in some way. “The mind of a 4 year old..” and all those cliches apply. There is nothing more pure than that it seems. So I’m finding that in order to boil things down to their most basic form all I have to do is play with her and somehow it all makes sense. Here are some of my profound observations so far:

All Games: General observations from all of the games we have played so far.

• She generally defaults to wanting to help characters she meets and if the game doesn’t support it she makes something up.
  
• If there is ever any way to produce slapstick comedy, she wants to do it.
  
• Comedy wins over all else.
  
• She would much rather talk to an animal than a human. (No aliens or monsters have been introduced quite yet.)
  
• She would much rather explore than travel on any sort of linear path and even questions linear paths in the first place.
  

Animal Crossing: This was the first game we played. We started when she was 3 or so and still play from time to time.

• She gets the most joy out of new animals visiting the town. It is the first thing she wants to check when we start playing.
  
• She remembers every single animal in the town as well as their catch phrase.
  
• She has no interest in one of the key features of the game…collecting.
  
• She LOVES making designs to wear at Mable’s and Sable’s shop.
  
• Every single session she tries to intentionally fall off cliffs and every single time I tell her it won’t work. She laughs.
  
• She really wants to go swimming.
  

Okami: I wanted to show this game to her mainly for the art direction and style. She could care less about art direction.

• We only played in town, so no combat, and she mainly just wanted to bark at people.
  
• A bark button was genius as far as she was concerned. She really wanted the people to react to her barking in their face.
  
• A digging button was gold.
  
• Charging a wall and bashing your head into it was the biggest hit by far. Hilarious!
  
• She loved jumping into the water and swimming.
  
• She was VERY upset when the wolf would “drown” after swimming for too long.
  
• She was in even more upset that she was the one who was responsible.
  

Elebits: The first exploration of weird little creatures and physics in realistic spaces.

• She really could care less about the Elebits and had no interest in catching them.
  
• Slapstick and destruction was the biggest hit here over all.
  
• We basically played the kitchen every time because she loved to demolish the place. Especially shattering plates on the floor.
  
• Picking things up with the physics beam and waving them around was allowing her to do things we would never let her do at home. It seemed like a sort of release. No rules was appealing I guess. Duh.
  
• She had a really hard time aiming the controller.
  
• Yeah, she isn’t buying that these little creature make electricity. She had no interest in the storybook feel of the set-up.
  

Katamari Damacy: I assumed this one would be a big hit due to its absurdity.

• Turns out I was totally wrong. She had very little interest in it.
  
• It may have been so abstract that she couldn’t relate to what was going on.
  
• Rolling around picking up objects just wasn’t enough for her.
  
• Need more playtime to see if later levels cause different reactions.
  
• She couldn’t care less about the characters themselves.
  

Next post in “The Lens” category will hit our most recent endeavor…Viva Pinata! (Filled with fun!)