Newbie

I’m back on the “Food Force” trail today.

I’ve graduated to my second mission, which consists of putting together “energy pacs” for the hungry people of “Sheylan.” The idea is that you move the sliders for each food item (rice, oil, beans, sugar and salt) up and down until you hit the right combination to provide maximum nutritional benefit at the minimum expense. This one is much harder than my first mission and as you can see below, my “energy pac” and my effort were both judged to be “INSUFFICIENT” -

OK, so now I don’t like this game very much.

So what’s the deal?

Basically, it got a little harder and that turned me off.

I like challenges in other parts of my life, but I generally want to run away from challenges in these games. Why? I can only imagine that it’s because I don’t have a reserve of successful experience in this area. I have nothing to build on here. And of course, this creates a Catch-22, since the only way I can get the experience I need is by playing these games and being lousy at them….

This is a recurring theme and I’d like it to go away.

I taught my daughter Nellie how to play “Zoombinis.”

“Zoombinis” is a terrific math/logic game that was designed by Scot Osterweil, who’s also the lead designer for LG2G. One of the cool things about “Zoombinis” is that it always finds the right level of game play for each and every player. Still, the “Zoombinis” CD says that the game is for “AGES 8 AND UP.” And Nellie’s only 6….

Nellie is truly amazing at this game. I did just write that I taught her how to play, but I didn’t really. She pretty much taught herself. I just gave her the tiniest bit of guidance. And now she can do almost all of the “Zoombinis” puzzles without any help at all. And that makes me a very proud father.

The puzzle that has been the toughest for Nellie is this one -

It’s called the “Bubble Wonder Abyss.” You have to send the Zoombinis (those little blue people) across the abyss to the cliff on the other side. To do this, you must pay very close attention to the game because there’s only one path that will work for each Zoombini (based on that Zoombini’s individual characteristics – nose, eyes, hair and feet). If you send a Zoombini on the wrong path, it not only doesn’t make it to the other side, it goes poooooffftttttt… and it’s gone forever.

“Bubble Wonder Abyss” is hard. And Nellie usually needs help with it. But today she figured it out on her own. Somehow, whatever she had learned in her previous efforts just clicked in, and she totally and permanently understood how to work that puzzle. And the neat thing was that she didn’t make a big deal out of it. She just got it. And then she was ready to move on. I felt so lucky to be able to watch her. I really learned something about the way she thinks. And that’s the kind of thing that almost always fills your heart with love….

I still have absolutely no idea how to feed my little “Sims” fellow….

So I’ve decided to feed the world instead.

I’ve begun playing “Food Force,” which is a game made by the United Nations World Food Programme. “Food Force” is meant to educate people about global hunger and the ways we can all help to alleviate it. This is just unbelievably cool (and I suspect Bono must be involved with it somehow…). I actually feel like a better person when I play “Food Force.”

And the good news is that it seems kind of easy. The game is divided up into missions. My first mission is to fly a helicopter over the impoverished mythical nation of “Sheylan” and to gather information about the number of hungry people who live there. The genius of “Food Force” is that it actually plays like a real game while it increases awareness about the world’s single most important issue. This is what it looks like when I fly my helicopter….

So far, I am a super-genius at “Food Force.”

And that leads me to wonder a bit. Am I good at this game because I care about its content? Or am I good at it because it just happens to be a relatively easy game to play? I decide to spend more time with “Food Force.”

Playing “The Sims 2” feels a little like being in a foreign country. They all speak in this weird gibberish Esperanto language. My little guy is still starving and he’s making very strange sounds – EEEARRRHHHKKKKLLL – or something like that. As you can see, he holds his stomach a lot and points to his mouth, somehow convinced that these gestures will help him in some way….

It’s all become more than a little upsetting.

Up until now, I’ve been trying to just figure out this game without looking at the manual. As I understand it, that’s how “the kids” do it. Manual, schmanual. And I’m trying to do it like them. I may have to give in, though. I don’t know how much longer I can stand to watch my doppelganger cry in anguish – EEEARRRHHHKKKKLLL!!!

I realize that the whole manual thing has become an issue. I’m like the guy who will drive around for three hours because he won’t stop and ask for directions.

Learning new stuff isn’t easy.

OK, I’ve decided to make the leap to “The Sims 2.” If you don’t know this game, it is hugely complicated and I guess the guy who invented it is some kind of genius. Fine, I’ll give it a shot.

Basically, this game is about a virtual community. As the game-player, you’re supposed to help the folks in this community to achieve their life goals, reach happiness, all that good stuff. It’s cool, because it’s not a “winning” kind of game. It’s very open-ended and can be played out in a million different ways.

Seems like this might be a good game for me.

It’s not.

This game is really, really hard. I’m pretty good at making graphics and have managed to create a little “sim”-ulation of myself. The problem is that I’m so bad at the game that I think he might be starving to death. (Life goals? Forget that. I can’t even figure out how to feed myself!) To the right, you can see my “sims”-self begging for sustenance….

It looks like he wants to eat a drumstick and a mango with a popsicle stick stuck in it. I feel sorry for the poor guy and wish that I could help him.

In this game, you get to play God. I’m not a very good God yet.

I had an amazing experience today. I had played a lot of “Crazy Machines” today – was really getting into it and doing well. Here’s one of the experiments I figured out…

This one mostly involved moving the pipes and pulleys around until the light bulbs went on (lovely metaphor, that!). Well, I did it. I was happy. And I even got some points.

That wasn’t the amazing part, though. The amazing part was later that night when I was working on the sink in our bathroom – typical minor plumbing fix. At first, though, I couldn’t figure out the problem. Then all of the sudden it was like I saw the pipes in a new way (really and truly!), and I was able to see how to solve the problem. The amazing part was that I felt like my game-playing earlier in the day had actually helped me trouble-shoot my plumbing issues. It was just coincidental that both activities involved pipes (virtual and otherwise…). It was a neat thing to notice. Maybe these games can help us old folks think a little more clearly and maybe even better. Cool.

Playing “Crazy Machines” today. I’m getting better at it. I can make the tennis balls and boxes get where they’re supposed to go most of the time. It’s liberating when I can let myself be wrong and then figure stuff out from there. But it’s also not so easy to do.

The whole experience reminds me of last year when my family and I went ice skating at our local rink. I’d skated some as a kid, but it had been years and years. People always say that it just comes back, you know, like riding a bike. Well, it didn’t just come back for me. I fell on my behind about a million times. My glasses flew off. It was embarrassing.

As adults, we’re supposed to know how to do things. It’s hard to mess up in public. My kids, of course, did just fine. I think they wondered what was wrong with me, and we haven’t been skating together since then. When I think about this, I get more determined to learn how to play these games. I also think that I should go skating again with my family.

Again, I tackle “Crazy Machines,” hoping that I’ve gained some wisdom since my last effort at the game.

It turns out that I have. Basically, I realize that the only way to get anything right in this game is to get it wrong first. I have to keep moving the pulleys, gears, etc. around until I find the right solution. I guess that temperamentally I’m not very much of an experimenter really. I usually test things out in my head until I think I’ve got them right. I don’t like other people to see my mistakes. And I don’t like to see my mistakes either. This approach is not going to work with gaming. I’m going to have to do some adapting.

It feels really cool when I solve some of the experiments. Sometimes I solve them, but don’t know how I did it. I’ll take the points but I know that I just got lucky. Still, I feel like I’m making some progress.