Day 3 observation

Based on my time in the Games Lab today, I agree with Stephanie's observation that the kids seem to be feeling more comfortable. I also thought that certain kids appear to being gravitating toward certain games or types of games. I think the rule that they have to try two new games is a good one to encourage them to move outside what they know. Without wanting to generalize too much, two of the girls are pretty obsessed with DDR and the boys tended to play a lot of the sports games, though Chason, Clare, and Alicia might be an exceptions to this. Chason in particular tries everything and seems interested in what the adults are doing too. As Andrew and Harry were setting up the video closet, he was sitting on a chair in there playing a handheld game, but still being a part of their activities. He also watched (and commented extensively) as I played the Barbie Riding game. He was making fun of it (and I have to confess that I kind of was too- I’ve never owned a Barbie for a reason), but he was also willing to engage in serious critique. The names of you can choose for the horses are pretty lame (Princess, Sparkle) and the fact that you have to choose your outfit before you begin your big adventure is strange. These are to some extent issues of audience, more than issues of game design (though it is hard to untangle the two), being that this game is targeted for ages five and up. Also, because Chason has a real horse (and I don’t know anything about them) he knows things like that you always get on a horse from the left and was critical of the fact that Barbie gets on it from the right. So, while I wasn’t intentionally trying to go through this game with him one-on-one and I’m not necessarily trying to advocate it as a method of research, it was actually really productive. Did we talk about working through and discussing a game projected on screen with the whole group or part of it? If it was a game that all of the kids had played, this could be an interesting discussion, especially if there was disagreement and they were willing to voice it.