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[kidsgames] a Mom's eye view





Hi Everybody,

I want to let you know a few things.  I only understand
about 5% of what is on this list (and that is ok by me.)
I am very interested in kids games, education and licensing
issues.
****************
Windows=easy

Why do my kids play windows games?  We hate windows and
strongly dislike most of the games.  However, my 3 year old
can click on something and start a game.  My 6 year old can
put in her own cd and run a game even if it is not installed
on the machine.

The linux games are much much harder.  My husband (Jeff
Waddell) spends hours trying to download and set-up these
games for us.  It is a royal pain.  Many times we don't have
the right library or we need to upgrade.  Some have even
crashed our system.  We only have a slow old copper phone
line and all of this takes forever.  Not only that, but we
only have one phone line so our friends are getting busy
signals all the time.  

All of this and my husband is an expert.  You will not make
it to the main stream this way.  I don't know how it can be
easier.  I would like to be able to go to a web site and
play a game (without downloading anything) at least long
enough to see if it is of interest to our family.

*****************************

feedback
I often see questions on this list like "What do you want?"
or "What will make a good game?" or "Where can we start?".
These questions are very difficult.  I can't tell what you
do.  Are you building a database?  coding a game?
developing a game?  graphics?  levels? ages?
blah blah blah

Is it possible to ask more specific questions?

I think it is very hard to get feedback.  Perhaps it would
help to go places where families are and let them try the
games.
 Clare and I would love to have people who are interested in
working on our Rolpher the Gopher Grocery game.  It is just an idea
now.  If you might be able to help, let me know and I will
send you more details.
********************************

education

The Basics

What are the basics?  I think we have many different
definitions, as different as we are as individuals.  There
seems to be a search going on for a core of knowledge that
everybody needs to know.  The books by E.D. Hirsch Jr. have
done as good a job as I can imagine toward this goal.
However, they are under a regular copyright.  I would expect
most of it to be in the public domain, but this area of law
is so undefined as to be useless to us in composing games.

I think this core will be hard, if not impossible to find in
advance.  If you are building a dictionary (library), just
make it work for your games and make it easy to add to.  

****The basics are in our collective knowledge and the best
way to find them is to have as many people helping out as
possible.**********

I hope all this rambling is in some way helpful to you.
Thanks for working on Kidsgames!

Live your dreams,
Celia



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