Children's Games - For Shame

What do you think of when somebody says children’s book? Maurice Sendak, J. M. Barrie, Lewis Carroll, Roald Dahl, E. B. White, A. A. Milne, C. S. Lewis... the list goes on. There are so many amazing, spectacularly creative, really important children’s books out there. So where are the children’s games? Well?

We've got Bratz: Girls Really Rock. Pony Friends. Dora the Explorer: Dora's Big Birthday Adventure. Fuck Dora the Explorer. Nobody is going to remember Dora the Explorer. Can you imagine a world without The BFG? Think of how many children that have been touched by that single book alone. Who feels an emotional attachment to Dora the Goddamn Explorer?

Is anybody else terrified by this? Am I the only one who thinks that this is absolutely pathetic? Because it is. It's woefully, unacceptably, utterly inadequate. It's inexcusable - and you know who's fault it is? It's our fault. We let this happen. We got lazy, guys. Important children's games don't exist because nobody cares enough to take the risk.

Which, again, is absolutely pathetic. Games are an industry, sure. If nobody's making any money, nothing is going to work at all - but risks are how great things happen. If nobody's taking risks, then nobody's innovating, nothing new happens, and everything stagnates. People just stick with what's a safe, definite sale.

Children aren't a quick buck. At least, they shouldn't be. Children's media need to be more polished than adult media if they want to be any good. Writing for children takes much more effort. You need to have a lot more focus, you need to be a lot clearer, you don't have any room to pad things out with filler. Everything needs to be as concise and simple as possible, all the while trying not to be pretentious, and talking down. It's not easy. It takes a different skill set than writing for an adult audience.

So why isn't anybody trying? Why isn't there a single brilliant children's game? There are games that children can play, certainly. You could have a child play Minecraft just fine, but Minecraft isn't important. At least, not in the same way that, say, Peter Pan is. Minecraft isn't a timeless classic. It's just lego blocks.

Obviously, I over simplify. It's a good game, yes, but you see my point. It's just fun. That's it. There's a spatial reasoning aspect, sure, which is important in cognitive development and all that, but this isn't a story. There's no narrative. Children playing Minecraft aren't bettering themselves. They're just dicking around for funsies. Building tree forts. Making castles. Exploring.

Which by no means are bad things. It's good that children can build tree forts, make castles and explore - but there are so many more important things that children's games could be doing. They could be playing games that teach them about life, love, growing up, anything at all. There could be children's games that are as timelessly perfect as The Moomin books. Instead we've got fucking SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature From the Krusty Krab. That's deplorable. I feel like screaming until my lungs explode. Like setting things on fire until there's nothing left to burn. Does nobody else thing this is so unbelievably awful? So disgustingly dreadful?

Games can be more than just a fun, stupid party game for a kid to waste a few hours on. You know that, I know that, we all know that. We all know how many things games can be. Just like we all know Roger Ebert is a close minded fool. I myself have been writing recently on some of the games I've played, and why they were important to me. Beyond Good & Evil made me care, Majora's Mask made me sad, Planescape: Torment made me think, Grim Fandango made me hope, and each of them made me cry. Not that we need a running total of how much of a blubbering heap of emotion I am.

All of those games were important, but they aren't children's games in any way. I remember playing Grim Fandango when it first came out. I was just a kid, and it was on a display computer in a department store. I messed around with some of the controls, and I didn't like it at all. I was confused, frustrated, and bored. I thought it was terrible, and yet, here we are.

Giving a child something like Planescape is like giving them Bleak House, or Heart of Darkness. It's an important work, definitely. It has a clear, unambiguous place in the history of its medium, yes, but it isn't going to work. Children aren't going to care about the portraits that Dickens painstakingly paints of people in Bleak House. Because it wasn't written for them. Obviously it doesn't make them any less important. They just aren't going to understand or enjoy it at all.

Just stop for a moment and think. We live in a world where the game of the movie of Where the Wild Things are, Motherfucking Where the Wild Things are, was a fucking cash-grab. This was a game based of Maurice Sendak. This should have been teeming with imagination. This should have been infinitely creative, a wonderful adventure inspiring generations of children. What is it, instead? It's a boring platformer. That's it. Just a generic, ordinary platformer. Are we okay with that? Are we okay with living in a world where a game based on a Maurice Sendak book is anything less than breathtaking, let alone underwhelming? I'm sure as hell not.

What is wrong with the world when it's okay that children don't have spectacular games to play? What is wrong with us? Why are things this way? Why can't we have a Tintin of games? Or an Asterix & Obelix? Where is the Jules Verne of video games?

There are very few things that I can do well, but one of them is writing. I can write. I went to university. I have written poems, prose, short stories, longer stories, fiction, non fiction, stupid articles about video games, journalistic interviews, you name it - and lately, I've been trying to write children's stories. You know what I would love to do now? What would be my dream job? Writing a children's game.

Maybe you're an artist. Maybe you're a programmer? Possible a game designer. Maybe you're a mystical shaman versed in the arts I am told are called rendering. Whatever your skill set is, maybe you and I can come together on this one. Consider this an open letter. Maybe you're a big shot in video games. Maybe you work with two guys for a tiny indy company. Maybe you're a neckbeard at your keyboard in your bedroom inbetween shifts at the dish pit, just like me. Whoever you are, and whatever you do, listen.

Stand with me, dear reader, and take my hand. Let's do something important. That actually matters. Let's make something beautiful. Something magical, something wonderful, something classic. Let's make something worth remembering.

Dear reader, let's make memories. Let's change a child's life forever.

Let's make a game.