A Kind of Collaborative Learning and Playing?

One of the things I really liked about today was the collaborative feel of it. Everyone seemed willing to show everyone else how to do things without a sense of making them feeling silly or stupid. This goes for kids and adults alike. Before the kids got there, I played (or attempted to play) Katamari Damacy with Adrian. For the first 10 minutes, I thought my player was his and that I was doing really well (yeah, that's embarrassing). He could have completely made fun of me, but instead he was patient and gave me hints. It made the game much better for both of us, especially since I didn't keep getting stuck to him. If he had been mean or rude or condescending, I probably would have wanted to stop playing and probably wouldn't have had much motivation for learning to play any of the others. Even though I continued to lose to him, I ended up having a great time.

Interestingly, I saw a similar thing happen in the play style of two of the boys as I watched them play Madden NFL 2005. As they were setting it up, I asked if either had played before. One had it and the other had it on another system (he was unsure about the arrangement of all the buttons on this controller). Once they got the team selections out of the way and the game started, the boy who didn't know the controller so well had problems kicking the ball off in-bounds and making tackles. He got some very patient and non-competitive advice from the other boy. He even looked up the on-screen directions for the controller configurations to see which button to use for the stiff-arm once he had mastered passing. Once these basic skills had been established and the boys were more evenly matched the competition began to get more earnest.

I saw different variations on this same kind of help and collaboration throughout the lab today (especially on Donkey Conga and DDR). I don't know how much of it had to do with most everyone being new and polite and how much of it had to do with game play etiquette, but it made for a comfortable environment from my perspective.