Hi Board, I'm Dad

So I had a great call from my buddy Dan the other week. We're old co-workers from back in the WB days and he's good at keeping in touch. He's also one of my favorite designers. Long story short, he turned me on to this new console thing called Board. It is a really slick screen that can read in all sorts of stuff from proprietary game pieces. You can check it out here: https://board.fun/ They explain it well.

I was familiar with the device but had no idea it was so easy to develop on. The SDK and docs are pretty simple and the tools you get to emulate the pieces are very solid.

I mean, there it is. It's a game... a prototype of course, but still pretty cool!

We're now prototyping on Board and it is hella fun. Basically you fix the space ship while the executive crew continues to get the poor ship into more trouble. In a few short days I've got:

• the pieces being recognized

• Profile assignment

• a (very) simple spaceship layout

• Locking doors and the means to toggle them by plopping your piece in the security room and pressing some buttons

• An invader who roams about the ship waiting for code to exist to enable its capture

• Hull and Shield modeling

• Damage from asteroids and attacking space lasers

• Fire!

• Rooms going offline when they are damaged enough (with no way to fix them just yet)

• Roles for each of the four colored pieces

It has me thinking a lot about how little kids interact with a device like this. It is no small bonus that I get to play the existing (real) games on this with my 4 and 5 year olds. It is really easy to overcomplicate the design and presentation of a game and using Board with the kiddos is teaching me a ton about just how complicated is enough to keep attention. It is crazy when you have multiple people not only playing in the same space but also simultaneously using the same interface... in real time.

There is a game called Chop Chop, which is near and dear to my heart. It is a restaurant kitchen sim. My kids love it too, like, a ton. When we play together, I just man the pass (the place with the tickets that Gordon Ramsay generally yells from on TV). I call out what is ordered and what needs to get done and my two kids get right down to business chopping, frying, baking, mixing, and assembling. Praise be, the kiddos also CLEAN up after themselves in this virtual kitchen. We play in creative mode, and no, I do not berate them. We are not on a roleplay server here folks.

Someone else's family playing Chop Chop. The controls are very simple. The chaos is real.

There is a palpable magic that happens when the tickets start flying. Wathcing these tiny little children remember that something is on the stove, then forget that it is on the stove, then trade out one tool for another is pretty wild. It definitely reminds my of the decade or so that I worked in kitchens. It is really chaotic... sometimes. Then, out of the blue, a collective flow state passes through the whole team and things just start working as if on their own.

The fun is not in the complexity of the individual actions. Stirring a pot involves holding the spoon piece on the pot and whisking it around once. The actual motions are very forgiving. The Board itself is very good and understanding what the players are doing with the tools. The different stations are far enough apart where you can all get in there and do what needs to get done AS LONG AS YOU WORK TOGETHER. The fun really comes from the fact that the simple interactions become a hot mess when there are multiple brains and appendages using the different bits at the same time. A four y/o can palm that sponge in their off hand and forget it exists entirely. A 49 y/o can decide to call out all the tickets and try to get their little crew to stack up tasks to make things more efficient. Just about anyone can work themselves into wearing blinders for all but one task. At one point my 5 y/o had a cleaver in each hand and was just maniacally chopping anything that reached a cutting board, completely oblivious to any goal other than literal "Chop Chop".

Physical presence, manipulation of different real-world objects (not just a touch screen), and a shared play area all come together to create a sublime experience. My kids and I play digital and physical games all the time. The combination is more than the sum of its parts here. There's lots to discover and my brain is pretty wracked while developing our little prototype.

Every UI I have developed so far as has been wildly too complex in its first pass, then after a revision has been inappropriately... too complex. I'm not just talking about whether a 4 y/o would "get it". It's more about how much fun it is (or in this case isn't) to interact with something as a group utilizing real-world game pieces.

Me explainging my UI designs to a 4 year old child.

It's very much D&D thinking that needs to be done here. What I'm getting at is that often designers think in terms of and from the vantage point of "the player". With Board, I find that track of thinking to be detrimental on its own. The vantage point I need to return to always is from the perspective of "the GROUP of players". A D&D campaign that only serves the party's wizard is not going to really last long or be that much fun. So too, here, every decision I make needs to be impactful with the collective and in different measures the individuals. Fun stuff to mull over.

Finally, one of the best things about little kids is when play something and become disengaged they say, "I'm bored". What a blessing this is in terms of direct feedback. I wish adult testers nipped things in the bud so succintly. It is also an important cue for me to drop the classic, "Hi Bored, I'm Dad". That one never gets old to me.

Anyhoo, thanks for reading and thanks for the tip Dan!