Beating up on Candy Land
The case against Candy Land is a BoingBoing post by Steven Johnson, author of many wonderful books (and fellow roundtable-ee for that Harper’s piece a long while ago).
In it, he points out that many classic kids’ board games are built primarily on randomness, not skill. He even goes after Battleship:
…Yes, at the very end, you might adjust your picks based on your knowledge of which ships you’ve sunk. But for the most part, it’s about as mentally challenging as playing Bingo.
And Battleship might as well be Battleship Potemkin compared to something like Candy Land, which was fiendishly designed to prevent the player from ever having to make a single decision while playing the game. You pick a card from a shuffled deck, and follow the instructions. That’s it.
I realize that games of pure chance have a long history, but that doesn’t make them any less moronic.
A lot of kids’ games aren’t as dumb as they seem — I often cite Chutes and Ladders as a game with a deep lesson in it, though one we learn quickly and then take for granted. (It has a discontinuous map with “hyperjumps” between positions; you could even take it as a training tool for “black swan” events if you want to get lofty about it). 🙂
I think Steven is underselling Battleship a bit; I used it to demonstrate to my kids how well-organized search grids usually destroyed their random selections (I prefer a slanted grid with an interval of 3; I usually spiral it rather than proceed top to bottom). Not to mention that the psychology of estimating your opponent’s skill in ship placement does indeed matter.
But I always hated Candy Land.
19 Responses to “Beating up on Candy Land”
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I’ve also come across a number of Solitare card games that are entirely deterministic. That is to say, the only decision I can make which affects the game is regarding the shuffling. That’s generally okay with Solitare — I use it to give my hands something to do while watching TV or on a boring phone call or the like — but I really don’t see the point of it in a multi player game.
Except, of course, in Candyland it’s a feature. It’s designed for little kids — and thus having a completely arbitrary standard of victory means that the little kids can legitimately win while playing against someone of much greater tactical prowess, and they’re learning about colours and following basic rules along the way. The thrill of victory associated with education — how can that NOT be a good thing?
— by playing it after they turn seven, that’s how.
Candy Land’s recent rules has expanded rules for choice (granted there’s always a ‘best’ choice, but the target audience is, uh, 2-3) where you draw multiple cards and then decide which is the best one. This is aimed at the older end of the spectrum.
With eliminating much of the decision making process, you’re able to isolate things like teaching your child to take turns and other mechanics of the game playing process in isolation. It also covers things like color recognition and matching (many 3 year old have problems with this) and recognizing patterns (single vs double and what the result means on the board).
Yes, you could make the gaming equivalent of War and Peace and cover these things as well but there’s a reason we don’t teach 2nd graders addition by having them work out non-euclidean geometry problems.
Again, the capable audience is 2 (box says 3, but c’mon, they’re just trying to make the slow children not feel bad). This is the same audience that 3 months earlier was still thilled with a ‘game’ of Peek-a-Boo.
I see playing Candy Land with a 2 year old like some of the intro bits for video games. You know, those ‘trainer’ levels where you have to be completely deficient to even remotely fail them.
And… my three year old loves them. We’ve mostly moved on to some treasure hunting game (which is indeed random but involves things like counting and matching numbers, colors and shapes, and has two different levels thereof with larger numbers and different shapes and such) and we play Chutes and Ladders. But I liked being able to slowly introduce game concepts without having to bog her down with decision making. A frustrated child learns nothing.
Lastly, it gave us some time together. If someone has a problem doing inane-to-adult things with kids, they simply shouldn’t have them or should bit the bullet and get used to it.
Candy Land is boring. To us. Many kids adore it. Let them have their cake and sit down and share a bite with them.
I had to explain this to my 4 year old recently. He has an issue with losing, but that’s another topic. Anyway, he had a hard time understanding that Candyland and Chutes and Ladders take no skill so he can’t control whether he wins or loses.
I notice that he just naturally tends to get frustrated with those types of games and prefers skill games instead. Games like crazy eights, go fish, tic tac toe, even chess (I didn’t push it, he asked what it was, learned the rules and now he’s in a chess phase).
I’d love to see a post on what games you think are good for children (pre-school up) based on stimulation and fun (I know, subjective).
This is why it’s frustrating when friends come over and i suggest playing a board game. By “board game”, i’m talking about a modern, usually German import (Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, Puerto Rico, etc) with much more intrinsic strategy and decision-making (and FUN, in my opinion).
Meanwhile, my guests are thinking “Monopoly”, which is about as unfun as it gets. i didn’t realize it until i played a digital version of Monopoly, but the game is equally as mindless as Chutes and Ladders or Candyland. There is NO decision making in Monopoly. It’s all dice-rolling, and once the computer takes care of that for you, you might as well go microwave yourself a hotdog while the game plays itself.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2006/20060907.jpg
Say what you will about Dane Cooke, but he’s got Monopoly’s number:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=bWJx0x53sNQ
Popular board games emphasize luck over skill for the same reason popular MMOs favor time over skill. For any given skill, most people lack it.
Battleship teaches alertness and slight of hand.
I gotta say that as a kid, I loved the pretty colors on the Candy Land board.
I babysat some kids recently and thought I was going to go batty pretending to be interested in playing. I switched us to some card games pronto.
I agree with Todd, but would also toss out that Steven Johnson comes very close to but doesn’t quite make a connection between CandyLand and the pure random games of adults (gambling being the easiest to envision). CandyLand may not be strategic, it may be purely random / deterministic, but it can still be both entertaining and compelling particularly considering the intended age group.
If it helps, just look at it as Sorry! with training wheels. 🙂
As much as I vowed not to bring candyland into the home, someone gave it to my kids and we’ve never been able to get rid of it. Fortunately we’ve got lots of other games for the kids. Ravensburger is a life saver.
It would be an interesting research project to see what factors cause so many American games to be based on going around a board (parcheesi) either to reach the end (race) or just circle the board.
Candy Land might be simple but there has been several Mathematical analyses of it. So even adults may have fun with it. 😛
It would be an interesting research project to see what factors cause so many American games to be based on going around a board (parcheesi) either to reach the end (race) or just circle the board.
Familiar game mechanics? Low barrier of entry? For the casual board gamer, is it any different that an FPS player knowing WASD is going to likely be the movement keys? The last thing a group of people who get together once a month want to do is spend half the evening reading a rule book.
Speaks the replayability of the social board game. For the hardcore gamers, there’s always Axis and Allies and its ilk. For the people more concerned about local church gossip and the homemade chip dip, Monopoly fits the bill quite nicely.
And speaking of ‘hyperjumps’, what of the special cards in Candy Land? Don’t those to allow a discontinuous map, jumping back and forth? (Let’s ignore for a moment the fact my daughter delights at getting a Candy Cane even though it will mean losing the game… she’s got a Candy Cane!!!)
I rather enjoy Monopoly myself. The strategic level is the art of the deal; making trades to other people that seem beneficial to them in the short term but which win you the game in the long run. The fun lies in applying persuasion, coercion, and psychology to your friends and family in a ruthless effort to bankrupt them. While randomness can determine a winner, in my experience the player who can most effectively manipulate the greed and logical flaws of the other players usually walks away with all the goodies.
It works up to the point where the other players make a pact never to trade with you no matter how sweet the deal. At that point you just retire to your luxury suite on the Boardwalk and let the sound of the surf ease your lonely soul.
This guy hasn’t been to a bingo hall …
Those old folks don’t play single cards … many play 10, 15 or more strips with multiple cards per strip. Certainly not a game of strategy, but it’s definitely a test of visual memory and perhaps co-ordination.
As mentioned, Candy Land does suffer from a complete lack of meaningful decisions. However I think it’s worth pointing out some other things that it seems to get right:
Suspense and Pacing – watching the game unfold over time can be interesting.
Variability – the game is a bit different every time its played.
Trappings – the board is colorful and evocative. The plastic gingerbread people are neat little tokens. It has a fun theme that its target audience likes.
To hardcore game players like us, these don’t save the game from its lack of meaningful decisions. On the other hand they do explain why the experience might be enjoyable to somebody else. And I’m sure we can all think of games that did have meaningful decisions, but are otherwise crap because the pacing sucks or it’s too predictable (“I don’t want to play Quake because Bob always wins.”).
As for the slag on Battleship… I wonder if Mr. Johnson is one of those people who believes that Rock, Paper, Scissors is also based on pure chance…
This is how my dad taught me to play Monopoly as well. We went to the point of having written contracts. He ended the game when we broke a deal, though. 🙂 I have not been able to get my family to play it that way yet.
I’m working on an essay on Monopoly at the moment, in what little free time I have now that I’ve started a new job. I think that although skilled players can make monopoly more skill based, it can at the end game, for less skilled players, become equivalent to snakes and ladders.
But the biggest problem, and the main barrier to ‘advanced’ playing is the infamous nature of monopoly to cause arguments. The main reason most people I know don’t play it is twofold – firstly because it is a long game by default (although I recently re-read the rules, and found myself surprised to find an official quickplay variant), and secondly and more importantly, the game does seem to cause a lot more upset than many other commonly known board games. If you actually look at the rules, the reason for this is clear – probability alone, not skill, determines who you have to pay rent to, and that ‘landlord’ has all the power. Not only that, but the money by which you trade is also directly used for scoring (unlike what is seen in some germanic games). With a few rule changes, though, monopoly can be turned around quite significantly.
This seems to be another example of a hardcore gamer over-emphasising the importance of challenge and failing to recognise other aspects of play that can be fun (if not to them, then to others).
Snakes (or chutes) and Ladders has a well crafted dramatic structure. You are inching your way towards the goal, racing against your opponents. The chutes or ladders allow for major changes of fortune, so that you can get a sudden boost, or a catastrophic setback. I’m sure if you added monetary value to your position on the board you could make the game into a gambling game that was attractive to adults.
There is also the pleasure of simple ritual, both as a mindless activity and as a context for social interaction. Shockingly, many people do not actually care much about winning or losing and just enjoy playing with friends.
Isn’t candyland a game of flow, not fun? Of course, when you are sufficiently advanced it can’t absorb your full attention, so fails the flow test. But for the target audience, if they are directing their full attention to the process of playing, is it not then flow?
Playing a snakes & ladders equivalent with my daughter revealed the interesting fact that she did not take as given that the first to hit the goal “won”. Rather, when one person gets to the goal, they wait for the others to “catch up”.
[…] Koster wrote a post defending Battleship and other kid’s games in response to a BoingBoing post outlining the case Against Candy Land and other games for young […]