Play

Play is an interesting and an important part of childhood and of the development of the mind. It is also a combination of previous ideas and themes of childhood which we have discussed such as adventure and imagination. Play is also a means to help facilitate the development of various skills. For example, the board game 'Battle Ship' teaches deductive reasoning, strategy, and reading people. These are skills which can be helpful in everyday application and for the future. This was one of the games I played last week and I felt slightly like I was making a business deal. We were both fishing for something by asking questions and seeing the response. It was interesting for me to observe my strategy of play. At first, I tried to set up my ships so that they would be hard to guess their location. I ended up setting them up fairly evenly spaced, which later is not necessarily the best idea since this is what people typically do. This reasoning, of this being a common strategy, contributed to my finding Marritt's last ship. Her ships were fairly evenly spaced and by looking at the board I could deduce the location of her next ship because I knew it would be vertical since I had uncovered 3 horizontal ships and only 1 vertical ship. So, to make it even she would have done a vertical ship. From here I figured she would also space the vertical ship away from the other vertical ship. I also figured that she would leave at least 1 open row in-between any other ships. By taking these into account my first guess for her ship last was - bingo - right. In battle ship people try to have random placements of their ships but their random isn't truly random because it is evenly spaced. This game was really interesting for me to play since it really reminded me of some of the valuable reasoning skills which games can teach you.

The next board game I played was 'Twister'. I've always liked this game because it was generally easy for me to do well since flexibility and balance are things I commonly practice as a dancer. However, the game was a new experience this time because it had been re-imagined a bit. In this version, the board could tell you to take feet and hands off the board and the spinner could also choose a move for you if the spin board landed on a certain symbol. This made the game much harder and one would need to be more of a gymnast since standing on one's hands or hand with one's feet in the air was now an option in the game. I felt like this re-mix of the game really made it more intriguing because it made is much more physically challenging. Also, it was interesting in our discussion afterwards on how Twister has been seen as obscene. I do think this comment is relevant to this game because it definitely can get awkward when you get tied up in knots with other people. However, this awkwardness would probably only be apparent to older kids. So, Twister is an example of how a game could change tones over time.




The tool box video game was very interesting because it allows the play of action figures in the virtual world. It is an extension of the action figure since one places the action figure on the consol. Also, I liked the freedom of finding an objective in the game. I think this gave the game more value since the play is constructed by the player not by the game maker. I think this type of play, the player creating the game, is a more creative and engaging play process. The most engaging games are the ones in which you create the adventure yourself. This contrasts with the first video game we played which had a specific objective. This video game to me was pointless and boring because I felt like it didn't engage the mind or the player's creativity enough, but was busy work.

Overall, the construction and execution of play is a typical part of child's media. I also think that the construction of play by the children themselves allows more creativity to be developed. The constructed games may teach very specific skills, like battle ship does, but by developing the game the player is exploring more into what they want to develop.