Seminar hot & cool play Report 2014

FOR PROFESSIONALS

HOT & COOL PLAY SEMINAR REPORT 2014NEW & COOL STUFF

FROM SCREENS TO APPS

Toca Boca, Game Oven and Technology Will Save Us shared their thoughts and secrets on how they apply “play” in their games and apps. ‘These apps are The Beatles, The Wizard of Oz of the web that children will remember’, said Children’s Technology Review founding editor Warren Buckleitner.

“It seems like every time I come to Cinekid, Apple launches something new”, said Buckleitner, referring to the iPad Air 2 that was launched the day before. More had changed since the seminar’s 2013 edition. “Now we have the store wars. The iPad mini yesterday dropped to 250 US dollars. 100 dollars more than the Amazon Fire HD. It’s great to see these two giants going at each other. Somebody should give Apple some decent competition. The iPad however is still way ahead”, said Buckleitner.

Another thing. Four years ago Mindcraft was just an idea. A hobby. And now it’s worth 2.5 billion US dollars. Why is it so hot? Was it because you can make your own world and explore someone’s else’s world. Or because it’s not watered down and it doesn’t try to rip people off? Or both? Also, it allows you to interact with real people and it’s edgy, it has creepers that can kill you in the dark.

The overall quality of apps is greater than last year, said Buckleitner. There is a maturation in the market. The iTunes model has proven itself healthy for innovation, although there’s also more mediocre stuff. 675.000 apps will run on the new iPad. 20% of those are for children. And it’s going global. Affordable devices allow more people to use the technology. The bottom line, said Buckleitner, is that we’re moving from screens to apps. And these apps you see here today are The Beatles, The Wizard of Oz of the web, that children will remember.’

Toca Boca‘We are not the play experts’

With over 80 million paid downloads Toca Boca is one of the most successful developers of children’s apps. Play designer Willow Mellbratt explained how the company’s sees play.

“When we’re talking about play it seems to make sense to start with the kids. And what do we see? That a child’s daily schedule is directed by adults. It’s told

- When to wake up - What to eat for breakfast - What to wear - When to be home - When to have dinner - When to do homework - Wand, when there’s time, when to play

“But usually from a kids perspective, play can happen at any time. Play no boundaries. This how we try to look at play. Looking at children playing doctor inspired Toca Doctor. And Toca Town. And Toca Hair Salon. We are not the play experts, the kids are the experts. So we try to bring them into the process as much as possible when designing the apps. We have workshops

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Cinekid for ProfessionalsHot & Cool Play Seminar Report 2014

and allow them to test everything. The guiding principle is to see how a digital experience can improve the play.”

“When we watch them we don’t ask any questions. We just let them play with toys or with prototypes. We talk about toys, not games. And a good toy does not have any instructions. Kids can just pick up and play. It allow the kids to make up stories themselves. We generally look at three types of play:

1. Toca Town. One of Toca Boca’s latest apps. There’s no storyline. Kids just take characters and choose from a selection of scenes. When designing you have to leave out as much as possible. Leave as much as possible to the children.

2. Creative types of play, where you sort of design an outcome: Toca Hair Salon.3. Exploratory type of play, where you test and see what’s going on: Toca Lab, where you

can mess around with elements in the periodic table. And turn them into new elements.”

“A big point I want to make relates to the company’s values: when we’re making the products we never forget it can influence the child in a variety of ways. That’s a big responsibility. So we stop and think a lot about what we’re putting in there.”

Game OvenThe Spirit of Old Games

Fingle was ones of their first apps: exploring the intimate touch of each others fingers with two-player puzzles. That caught widespread attention and then ‘it kind off blew up’, said game designer and co-founder Adriaan de Jongh. “We continue to do weird stuff.’

“The main element in all of our games up until now”, said De Jongh, “is that they’re social. For example: for our latest game we wanted people to dance together. Everything is about interaction.”

“Today I wanted to go back to our roots and play a game together. The first game is a warm up game. I need all of you to help: please close your eyes. We are going to count to 20 out loud and in chronological order. One person says one number. Of two people say the same number, we start again.”

“For another game I need a group of people on stage. Everybody has to stand together with his or her eyes closed. The goal of the game is to find the pruwy. Ask the person next to you softly whether he or she is the pruwy. If she asks the same question back he or she is not the pruwy and you take their hand. If you hear nothing he or she is the pruwy and you take this person’s hand. This goes on until everybody is part of the long chain and the pruwy is found.”De Jongh used this to illustrate his point: these old games are an inspiration for the games Game Oven develops.

Technology Will Save Us

“One day we found a laptop in our trash can in Hackney in London where we live. We were upset. This started a conversation about having so much technology and people not really



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understanding it. So we wanted a business that could begin to demystify technology and use it creatively.”

“Two other developments coincided with this. The international maker movement, that emphasizes learning-through-doing in a social environment and an informal, networked, peer-led, and shared learning, motivated by fun and self-fulfilment. Secondly, it recently became mandatory in the UK to teach programming in the curriculum. That’s great and not a minute too soon for us. But the problem is: the teachers are not equipped.”

“So among other things we developed a collection of Do It Yourself kits, teaching young people about things like electricity and conductivity. Basically, you play, you make the prototypes. Children can invent their own devices. So we use the computer as a tool for creating things in the physical world. Now we also sell education boxes: packs of 12 to 16 kits with all the resources to use them in the classroom.”

“Still, it’s not about the skills, but about the process of coming to the skills. It’s about teaching children problem solving, critical thinking and debugging.”



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Seminar hot & cool play Report 2014