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From: burton@parcvax.Xerox.COM (Philip M. Burton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: PC software for children
Message-ID: <780@parcvax.Xerox.COM>
Date: Tue, 8-Dec-87 04:01:26 EST
Article-I.D.: parcvax.780
Posted: Tue Dec  8 04:01:26 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 13-Dec-87 10:33:58 EST
References: <437@xios.XIOS.UUCP> <9750@shemp.UCLA.EDU>
Reply-To: burton@parcvax.xerox.com.UUCP (Philip M. Burton)
Distribution: na
Organization: Xerox PARC
Lines: 83

My kids are 8 and almost 5.  They have been using my PC for years, to play
games and just to doodle around with the keyboard and screen.

Among commercial software, both kids like King's Quest I.  (It probably
helps that there is a "cheat sheet", complete with map, available on
many BBS's.

Kidwriter is popular with my son( almost 5).  It allows him to set up a
screen with pictures and then write a story.  However, it suffers from a
very inflexible user interface and inconsistent use of single letters to
indicate options.  The author probably did not do enough testing with
children, as opposed to adults.  Kidwriter is by Spinnaker.

Another Spinnaker product that I can't really recommend is Facemaker.  It
is self-booting, which means that I can't load in a resident routine that
would convert screen graphics to proper output on my Epson printer.  My son
would like to be able to create faces, and then print them out and color 
them.  Also not in its favor is an "animation" mode which is hard even
for adults to follow.

Gertrude's Secrets is a very nicely designed and executed game.  My
daughter, over 8, enjoys an occasional game, even though she is really 
too advanced for the game.  It was obviously designed with children in
mind, judging from my kids' reactions.  My son takes great pleasure in
changing the shape of markers in the "shape edit" room.  He plays with
this game for hours at a time.  (Great on a rainy weekend!)

A game which disappointed my daughter, and I found hard to install on
my hard disk was "Oz" or "Wizard of Oz". (I don't remember.)  The publisher
had a classy-sounding name, Wyndham Hill, but the game was really out of
the dark ages of software, when anything that ran on a PC was saleable.

Although not strictly for kids, my daughter is beginning to discover
paint programs, and I'll soon have to get one.

In buying software for kids, I think it has been very helpful to have
return privileges, since it is hard to tell from a store demo if kids will
like the game.  Additionally, I have an EGA card, and not all kids'
software will run under an EGA.  Egghead Software
has a money-back, no-questions asked policy, which I have had to use.
My local store, in Menlo Park, California, has been very gracious about
returns.

Public domain/shareware software for kids is a vast area, mostly not
worth the trouble.  Lots of p/d stuff is puerile, violent, or just plain
boring to kids.  Much of it is also poorly designed, using only the 
CGA and with built-in timing loops.  (Runs too fast on my AT).

Having said that, I found that my kids like some of the Pac-man versions.
It's important to have an option to vary the game speed.  An outstanding
game, which I will even post to comp.binaries.ibm.pc (if the moderator
reads this, and sends me mail) is WPK.

WPK, or word processing for kids, allows kids to write stories using a
very simple, but effective word processor.  My son, especially, likes to
display text using a "quad high" font.  Stories can be written, saved,
printed, and revised.  An outstanding program.

One important consideration in "recreational" software is the difficulty
of winning or succeeding.  To adults, it's OK to say that it takes lots of
trial and error to succeed.  Children need more immediate gratification,
and I think that many games fail by making it almost impossible to "win".
This comment applies to both commercial and p/d programs.  (Gertrude's
Secrets clearly does let kids "win".)

Aside from the quality of kids' software, a very real problem is the
continuing presence of copy protection and self-booting disks.  Since
hard disks are cheap these days, it's reasonable to expect users to install
games on a hard disk.  It is a bad idea to have kids handling floppies,
since they must be supervised closely, or you risk damage to drive and
floppy.

Fortunately for me, a friend has a COPYII option board, so I can make duplicates
of the copy-protected disk, but this is a poor substitute for no copy 
protection.




-- 
Philip Burton       burton.osbunorth@parcvax.xerox.COM  
Xerox Corp.         {backbone}!hplabs!parcvax!burton.osbunorth
408 737 4635                     ... usual disclaimers apply ...