These games can be places where children push back at the powers-that-be and take ownership of these digital public spheres in unexpected ways. We’re excited about games in this list as they are not only digital spaces where these things meet, but that children use them in ways they weren’t intended. “Games serve as the sites of complex negotiations of power between children, parents, developers, politicians, and other actors with a stake in determining what, how, and where children’s play unfolds.”
It comes down to something at the heart of our database: seeing games more than mere sources of fun and diversion. Sara describes this as an embrace of the complexity of children’s online playgrounds, virtual worlds, and connected games. It’s about understanding digital play in a holistic sense so it can be all it needs to be in the life of a child. This is more than decrying big business muscling in on childhood. The politics of children’s play aren’t something we often talk about. Her book, Digital Playgrounds explores the key developments, trends, debates, and controversies that have shaped children’s commercial digital play spaces over the past two decades. We worked with Sara Grimes on this list of games that offer new and emergent ways to provide play possibilities to children. How do we empower children to play, break the rules and self-determination in light of other pressures and owners of these digital spaces? However, they are also contested spaces often created with profit as well as play in mind. Video games are a great way for children to play. However games use these possessions to tell stories, it's always worth slowing down, noticing the objects we are rushing past and reading the literal and metaphorical notes about the world in which we are playing.
In Before I Forget, possessions offer a gateway to our own fraying memories. In Hindsight we are asked to decide which objects to keep and which to let go of. In Overboard, for example, we need to use medication, ear rings and clothing to tell a story that the other characters in the world believe (one where we didn't murder our husband).įinally, games use possessions sentimentally to connect us to the past of characters. Other games use possessions as an important part of how we interact with the world. In this we find the story of a world in panic, but also of the people's lives before everything went wrong. In The Last of Us we find people's notes and possessions abandoned. In Unpacking we spend hours placing and arranging someone's things, and as we do we get to know them (and their hopes, loves, losses and travels) deeply.
Some games let us get to know characters solely through their possessions. In, we are given a prized camera and bird book from our grandparents to tell the story of their bond and trust. Games like The Sims or Animal Crossing enable us to use possessions to create spaces that reflect the character we are playing. The objects of our lives tell a story about who we are and what is happening to us. Favourite toys, carefully written letters, hurried notes, pictures on the walls, dilapidated architecture, menus, vehicles, ticket stubs. Games often use their character's possessions to tell us about them, as much as what they say or look like. Because we can explore the spaces where games happen, they can also tell stories by the things we find. This can be similar to books and films, offering snapshots, flashbacks and poignant scenes that form a life. Games tell stories about people and places.
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