Hating on Candyland: Why most games for kids are awful

http://kidsdungeonadventure.com/hating-on-candyland-why-most-games-for-kids-are-awful/

by bengarvey • 15 years ago

54 60 15 years ago

jerf3• 15 years ago

The purpose of Candyland is to play a game, without playing a game. 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... 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 more than just "following directions", it's the whole set of skills necessary to play a game.

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. 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. Children are actually pretty good at figuring out that they are being "let" win.

If you replace Candyland with something that has any choices at all, you've replaced something other than Candyland.

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. 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.

bengarvey6• 15 years ago

When I have opened up this debate among friends, your counter point is the one brought up the most. I think they can learn taking turns and accepting outcomes while making decisions, even if at the start those decisions are random. Even if I concede that Candyland has a place in the progression, kids jump past it so fast I wonder if it is even worth including.

Thanks for reading and responding, though.

jerf3• 15 years ago

How do you plan on addressing the problem of the result of the game being a forgone conclusion if you include meaningful choices, pretty much by definition of "meaningful"? That's the core of my point, not really the learning or discipline bits, and there's a certain mathematical inevitability about it; choices -> adults winning against young children. Or having to throw the game, and kids aren't dumb, they notice that.

Vivtek• 15 years ago

Well, obviously you have a good relationship with your 3yo if she enjoys playing an adversarial game with you, but not all kids are the same.

My son is 12 and still enjoyed Candyland and Chutes and Ladders as late as last year (while also starting to like Clue and Monopoly). The risk-free social aspect of a non-game game like Candyland is really important for some kids; it's really more of a role-playing situation for the whole social dynamic of playing a game in a small group than anything else.

My daughter, now, with her you're right - she tired of Candyland pretty quick. As everything with kids: it depends on the kid.

hugh32• 15 years ago

Your comment reminds me of when I used to play Trivial Pursuit with my family (all much older) when I was eight or so. Of course I hardly knew anything at the time, but quickly cottoned on to the fact that "Hitler" seemed to be the answer more often than anything else, so I'd just answer "Hitler" to anything I didn't know.

jberryman• 15 years ago

Trivial Pursuit is candyland for grownups.

bengarvey6• 15 years ago

Definitely my favorite comment on the article.

raganwald2• 15 years ago

Meaningful is not strictly equivalent to influencing the outcome. Imagine a typical "racing" game where players advance along a track. The track could incorporate forks such that mathematically, all choices are equivalent. But the entertainment value of the forks may differ. Some children may want to cut through the "garden," others through the "playground."

dfranke• 15 years ago

If they're all perfectly equivalent then even very young kids will catch on to that quickly. Here's an improvement: make the choices equal in EV but different in variance. That adds a little bit of strategy: take the predictable choices when you're ahead and the risky ones when you're behind. Nonetheless, a child with no concept of this strategy can sometimes win against an adult who plays optimally.

N.B.: I was home-schooled through preschool. My mother designed a bunch of board games that she used to teach me basic math. Then I got to kindergarten and got introduced to Chutes & Ladders. I saw through it immediately and got into arguments with my classmates about what a stupid game it was.

Almaviva• 15 years ago

> 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.

Interesting post, but your Connect 4 game sounds extremely, extremely poor:)

michael_dorfman• 15 years ago

Exactly. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Candyland is the best game ever for children of a certain age. I went to great lengths to import a copy here to Norway, and my 4 and 5-year-olds absolutely love it.

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. (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.

In fact, prior to the arrival of Candyland, my five-year-old (then four) would make us play board games without any rules. She'd roll the dice, and move the pieces around randomly, and have us do the same. That was the part that was fun.

Lately, she's gotten into card games, and her favorite at the moment is a game of her own invention, called "Stop and Go". You divide the cards equally among the players, and each player has a stack, face down. When it is your turn, you turn over the top card. If it is red, you stop. If it is black, you turn over another card, and keep going until you hit a red card. The first person to go through their whole stack wins. No strategy, no decisions-- from a game theory standpoint, it's the same as a lottery drawing-- but that's the beauty of it.

EDIT: for clarity.

hammock2• 15 years ago

I am reminded of the childhood favorite card game, "War," also a game of pure chance.

daeken2• 15 years ago

This is off the topic of the actual post, but the concept of Kids Dungeon Adventure is just awesome. I'm getting this to play with a friend of mine and her 5 year old daughter -- we play games whenever I'm in town, but I've never felt they tapped into her (mindblowingly amazing) creativity and imagination. Great job, Ben; we need more of this!

bengarvey6• 15 years ago

Thanks and I hope you like it! Send me the pics of your dungeon and I'll post them up on the blog.

daeken2• 15 years ago

Absolutely will do. Gonna head out there in a couple weeks and give it a try. Can't wait to try it -- brings me back to the days of sitting around with friends in elementary school and creating our own little RPGs.

impendia• 15 years ago

Ah, but you can make decisions in these games.

Years ago I was teaching English in Japan to a 6-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 3-year-old. We were playing some utterly moronic game where the kids took turns drawing cards, having me read the letter of the alphabet they drew, and then moving their pawn as appropriate.

It was really more for the younger kids, so the 6-year-old made a decision: he attempted to cheat! He simply moved his pawn forward ten squares or so when he guessed we weren't looking.

Regrettably for him, we were indeed all looking at the board. He offered to move his pawn back the ten spaces, but no, it was back to the beginning for him.

burgerbrain3• 15 years ago

I've got to say, I find even Monopoly to be a terrible game. My strategy for the game can be summed up as: "buy the property if I can, otherwise pay rent if I have to".

I almost never stray from that strategy, and even when I do, it's not like those exceptions make the game any more interesting.

andrewflnr• 15 years ago

I know what you mean. It doesn't get interesting until you start making deals and trades with the other players, especially when everyone agrees to relax the rules a little. The plotting starts to get messy as you try to figure out who is getting screwed worse in a given deal, or when you have to work out three-way trades.

burgerbrain3• 15 years ago

I find a much better game if you're into "deals" is Risk. You know you've had fun when the cleanup involves finding all the pieces that were put on ballistic paths in the final forfeit gesture of the game... good times.

perokreco• 15 years ago

You can have pretty interesting Monopoly games. Mine usually end up with interplayer corporations, loans for building and investing, bailouts, mergers and similar.

trafficlight• 15 years ago

At this point you aren't really playing Monopoly anymore. You've developed your own game using the Monopoly pieces.

danteembermage• 15 years ago

To prove your point, you can buy or trade for one of each color property. Then announce "I refuse to grant any monopolies ever, it is highly unlikely this game will end in finite time" These kind of things are not possible in a modern, well-designed game.

cdesmar• 15 years ago

You are not playing optimally. Monopoly is far from perfect, but there is some more depth than that.

Here's two questions: - How many houses is optimal for most sets? - Would you rather have both utilities or two railroads?

burgerbrain3• 15 years ago

That's the point though; you don't have to play optimally, doing so doesn't really make the game any more interesting.

kragen2• 15 years ago

Whenever some player doesn't buy a property and it goes up for auction, the players' bids are interestingly strategic. The optimal strategy at that point is not to "buy the property if you can", at least in a game of more than two players — two players using that strategy will bankrupt each other quickly, paying $3000 for Vermont Avenue and the like, and someone else will win. (It's probably not the optimal strategy in a two-player game either, but that's not as obvious.)

If the other players will bid less than the sticker price, then it's a better strategy to decline the sticker price and pick the property up in the ensuing auction. Under some circumstances (e.g. all the other players are broke) you can pick it up for a song in this case.

For those who are fuzzy on the rules: http://richard_wilding.tripod.com/monorules.htm

jcnnghm• 15 years ago

Are you sure you aren't thinking about the children's variant of Monopoly?

Monopoly proper is all about trading, which is in turn all about risk management, probabilities, and leveraging your holdings. If your strategy for Monopoly can be summed up as "buy the property if I can, otherwise pay rent if I have to", you aren't actually playing the game.

raganwald2• 15 years ago

Oh?

Mine, at least until people cotton onto it, is to be a "Slum Landlord." I buy and trade for the cheapest sets I can find, and then I put four houses on each property. Remember, they're slums, so you don't expect hotels. If I can corner the market on houses[1], no matter what the other players do, they can't bankrupt me with rents because they can't improve their properties.

This doesn't work in a game where people ignore the housing shortage rule, of course. But If you toss that rule out, I don't think you're playing Monopoly any more.

[1]: There are 32 houses, so if you own 21 houses, it is impossible for anyone else to upgrade a three property group to hotels. If you own 25 houses, no other player can upgrade any group. It's fairly easy for two players to control the property market and kill the other players off.

LordBodak3• 15 years ago

The limitation on housing is the key to the game's structure. Most people don't seem to play it this way (letting players build hotels if they have the money, regardless of the number of actual plastic houses remaining), and it screws the game up. Not to mention house rules like "free parking" artificially adding money to the game.

bostonvaulter2• 15 years ago

Whenever I play people almost never want to trade with me, especially for a set.

oskarkv• 15 years ago

When I read your comment I started tinking about Settlers of Catan. I think SoC is more interesting than Monopoly, but there is still way too much luck involved for my taste. I have been trying to come up with a way to take the luck out of SoC, but haven't come up with a good way yet. Of course, one might need to stray quite a bit from the original design. Any ideas?

Fargren• 15 years ago

Full disclosure: I abhor Monopoly.

The "fun" part of Monopoly is trading with other players. It's actually a pretty acceptable game as far as diplomacy goes. The worst problem with the game is that it very quickly devolves into a situation where two players have a decent chance to win, everyone else is royally screwed, and the game still has about an hour to go. Also, it's terribly reliant on luck: while it is possible to actually be good at Monopoly(i.e. there are strategies and skills that will seriously increase your chances of winning), a few bad rolls and/or a player adamant about not selling X property or trading Y player (this happens a lot IME) can leave you completely out of the game.

cabalamat• 15 years ago

> it very quickly devolves into a situation where two players have a decent chance to win, everyone else is royally screwed, and the game still has about an hour to go.

In that situation you can play the two big players off against each other. Offer a deal with Big Player 1 that benefits you (e.g. allowing you to get a group) and tell him that if he refuses, you'll sell all your assets to Big Player 2 for $1.

Splines• 15 years ago

A suggestion to you and anyone else who doesn't like Monopoly - given the chance, try the video game versions of it. The game progresses much faster, the standard rules are enforced, and you'll start seeing the strategy of the game peeking through behind the monotony of dice roles and rent payments.

It's all about getting monopolies, and preventing other players from doing so. Luck is still part of the game, but certain parts of the game (go to jail, advance to nearest unsold property/boardwalk) give weight to certain parts of the board.

In our household, we like to play with the speed die, which adds an additional strategy that I like: It forces players to advance to the nearest unsold property, or if all are sold, it advances the players to the nearest unmortgaged property.

geraldalewis• 15 years ago

In `A Theory of Fun`, Raph Koster writes about games being learning and teaching tools. When my brother and I would play 'soldiers' growing up, we were safely simulating, and learning from, what it would be like to be a warrior (evolutionarily, a useful identity). I always like the idea that Candyland was a game game -- it's a game to teach kids how to play games.

It's a really spectacular book; I learned a lot from it despite not being a game designer: http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/1932...

TillE• 15 years ago

Raph Koster is one of a few remarkably unique minds in game design. He "gets" virtual worlds like almost nobody else does; dig around on raphkoster.com for some of his writing on the subject.

Ultima Online in 1997 was so far ahead of its time, nothing quite like it has been made since. Some games have fumbled around with elements of UO, like open PvP or player housing or crafting, but nothing has ever captured its real essence: feeling like a living world with a wide variety of people, not just fantasy hero cutouts.

You could spend months in the world without killing a single monster, just mining and blacksmithing and selling your wares to make money to buy a house. And it was fun! You could wear clothes just for aesthetic reasons, not because they gave you +1 dexterity. They got so many subtle details so right. It makes me sad that "immersion" now basically just means "pretty 3D world".

chuckfouts• 15 years ago

My family has found Gamewright to be one of a handful of companies that have games that both children and adults can enjoy. http://amzn.to/gIh8gU

We still own the "traditional" childhood games mentioned in the article but rarely play them.

sliverstorm2• 15 years ago

What's wrong with 'terrible' games like Candyland existing? Choices are not things that ONLY happen in games. When kids are ready, they'll move up.

When I was a kid, I chose not to play Candyland. I chose to play Battleship and Stratego and Checkers and Chess and (much later) Magic.

cubicle67• 15 years ago

warning: paypal gripe ahead

looks like a great idea (his game) so I decide for $6 it's worth a shot. My only payment choice is cc via PayPal, but PayPal are demanding my home address ("Please note we do not accept PO Boxes. If we are unable to match your address against Australia Post records, we may ask you to verify it by providing documentation."), full name and valid home phone number.

Sorry, but they're not getting them. I'm still interested in the game though.

xiaoma• 15 years ago

Tom Vasel, of Dice Tower, reviewed Candyland. After reviewing 999 other games, his daughters pretty much bullied him into doing a video for Candyland. He panned it and rightfully so, but he also spent some time on what makes it so appealing to children. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tas5aCeNgEU

Other than the hundreds of other kids games that offer better alternatives, he also suggested letting each player draw four cards and choose which one to play. This way, there's still a lot of luck and the kids will still win sometimes, but it's not completely passive.

I have to agree with Tom. It's hard like a game that gives kids no choices. In life people do have choices.

midnightmonster• 15 years ago

Really excited about Dungeon Adventure. Going to have to sort out how to make it run well with multiple children controlling the heroes. Mostly, how not to be biased in dealing out monster attacks to the heroes. Possible monster 'strategy': attack whoever just attacked you. If you weren't attacked, attack whoever dealt the most damage to your monster buddies in the last roll. For when the monsters have initiative, make the order of the heroes walking through the dungeon significant--whoever's in the lead gets attacked first, giving them the opportunity to collectively decide to put the healthiest guy in the front, or let one person keep the protection ring in exchange for always taking the lead, or put the weakest in front to watch him die (or trade him out for a new hero) or whatever.

bengarvey6• 15 years ago

Great! Make sure you send me a pic of the dungeon you guys create. I'm always looking for new ideas.

Hating on Candyland: Why most games for kids are awful

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