Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!hplabs!parcvax!burton 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 ...