Where are the 'Construction Set' Games?

mbishop asks: "After reading an the article on games decreasing brain activity, I thought back through childhood to when there were an abundance of 'construction set' games. I owe much of my music education to 'Music Construction Set'. These games were unique in that you could not only save a creation, but you could compile it into a standalone program that someone else could play even if they didn't have the original software. Creation was very easy, no programming necessary, and fun. My guess is that these sorts of games do much to increase the brain activity of the player. What are the 'Construction Set' games of today? Is there still a market for them?"

"I know that most PC games today have editors where a player can create their own levels and share them but users still need the original software. Even worse, consoles, which have the larger market, don't have enough storage (except maybe for the XBox) and aren't open enough to encourage players to create their own games and share them."

C :I think I see mbishop's point. Legos are still alive and well, but I don't see as much evidence on these types of toys in today's TV commercials. It seems those commercials are more interested in pushing the latest licensed crap instead of pushing toys designed to stimulate your child's own imagination. Of course, a simple Google search may yield a result or two, but that still doesn't answer the real question. Computer-based sets, would be a nice alternative, but nothing beats the real thing where children can use their own hands to create something they can show their paernts. Where have all of the Heathkit's, the chemical experiment toys and the other types of "builder" sets gone, and are they due for a revival, soon?

Comments

Mods?

[mellifluous]

In many ways, I think that the mod community is a more grown-up version of kids using these types of games to build their own creations.

Re:Mods?

[_Sprocket_]

In many ways, I think that the mod community is a more grown-up version of kids using these types of games to build their own creations.

But that misses the point. The idea of, say, Halflife or Quake is not to build something but rather run around shooting at bots and other online players. Sure, to the right person its the basis for building a great hack. But it takes dedication and a steep learning curve to begin building. And it takes someone with a slightly different outlook to see Quake and think "build world" instead of "frag llamas".

Go back and re-read the description of Music Construction Set. Look at the other tittles listed in the link (Adventure Contruction Set and Pinball Construction Set). Mod-friendly engines, while very cool, are not the same.

Re:Mods?

[tgibbs]

And it takes someone with a slightly different outlook to see Quake and think "build world" instead of "frag llamas".

Of course it does. It just happens to be the very same outlook that led a few people to look at a rack of games and pick out "Adventure Construction Set" instead of "Final Fantasy."

Game Construction Sets

[JanusFury]

While there aren't any Music Construction Sets around, and I personally wish there were, there is a definite abundance of Game construction sets and there have been for years. A large community of homebrew game developers has sprung up around various programs from companies like ASCII and Clickteam, and there are dozens if not hundreds of freeware game construction sets that people use to make their own arcade games and RPG's. Programs like Acid from Sonic Foundry also fill a niche in the music industry by allowing people to start creating music without formal music instruction or lots of resources.

suprising...

[colster]

...they should be easier to make with the more recent use of middleware in the games industry. I mean, that is what a "construction set" is really - a very high level middleware.

The closest today is the simulator games you get on sourceforge that allow you to program robots.

For this simple reason

[theolein]

I think your chances of actually learning to think with a computer are much better with a Shell command line than with a GUI that does everything for you.

how bout The Incredible Machine...

[dr_canak]

The Incredible Machine, More of The Icredible Machine, and Sid and Al's Crazy Toons (I may be wrong on this exact title) were all about constructing Rube Goldberg machines that were pretty neat, had multiple solutions, and allowed you to mess with gravity, friction, and the like to understand fundamental priniciples of physics while still having a good time sitting at a computer.

Answering your own questions

[SirSlud]

> ... commercials are more interested in pushing the latest licensed crap ...

Which one is more profitable?

A license agnostic computer game where the value is in the interactivity .. high replay value, no need to go back to the store for a few years?

Or the uber-franchisable, horizontal-marketing-up-the-ying-yang licensed toy that does so little, you're practically forced into buying the next toy, which does a tiny bit more (now you can move his head! now you can move his foot! now he talks! buy this .. now he talks more!)

This is so obvious, its probably taught verbatim in business or marketing schools.

Re:Chemical Experiment Toys

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

My guess is the main reason you don't see more chemistry sets and similar 'toys' for children is fear of litigation.

I can remember when I was about 8 or 9, my grandmother bought me the Mr. Wizard's Chemistry Set, which came with real glassware and real chemicals.

Within a couple of years, I had progressed to more advanced chemistry sets that came with glass tubing and instruction on how to heat it up in an alcohol flame and bend your own custom glassware. Can you imagine the amount of disclaimers you would need to include in this day and age to protect yourself (legally) from children burning the house down or seriously injuring themselves?

I used to buy all the chemistry experiment books I could find at garage sales and I can remember seeing experiments involving mercury and other experiments that would make a corporate lawyer's hair turn white if you tried to distribute them today!

I think the legal issues combined with the 'if it doesn't use batteries or hook up to the TV, it's a sucky toy' feelings that are so prevalent today have killed off the toys that we all enjoyed when we were children.

Oh, and for what it's worth, because of my interest in chemistry, I grew up (well, I grew older!) and I got a job as a research scientist for a major medical diagnostics company, and I've been there for over 13 years now.

plus, the fall of household BASIC

[kisrael]

Another thing that has been lost is that computers no longer boot into BASIC...ok, stop laughing, I'm a little bit serious here. Home computers booting into BASIC, plus hobbyist magazines (some oriented at kids) I think were a great boon to budding programmers/designers in the early 1980s. While the Web has a huge host of new opportunites, it doesn't provide the ramp up the learning curve that BASIC did...it's relatively tough to make a decent graphical game with javascript/DHTML, and other languages are even more obscure for the total newbie.

Art?

[motha_chucker]

Although not a game, for many painting or another form of art can be just as fun as a game but, more importantly, it can stimulate the mind very well. I believe it meets the criteria, you can save it, no programming required, it can be very hands on, it stimulates the mind, you don't need the original software to view it should you use a computer.

some stuff you can try

[lingqi]

1) lego mind-storm (no-brainer)
2) electronic experiment kit (radio-shack)
3) in Fry's electronics -- i found a fuel-cell experiment model car kit, pretty cool stuff.
4) any RC car will have you tinkering for hours
5) build your own kite / balsa airplane together

i mean... sadly enough -- people look for toys nowadays to keep the child busy, and the "nicer" parents try to find toys that keep the child busy while "stimulates their mind". i am sorry, but the best way to stimulate their mind is to *SPEND TIME WITH YOUR KID*! if you are willing to give some effort to spending time with them, then anything around you can become a mind-stimulating adventure; gardens are eco-systems full of knowledge to be discovered. a swing at the playground has many physics wonders. salt chrystalizing on the beach is a marvel of chemistry.

with all due respect -- trying to find toys to keep kids busy vs. finding mindless TV shows to babysit your offspring rates about the same level in my book -- toys that are stimulating or otherwise.

Re:Unfortunately....

[SirSlud]

> What ever happened to natural selection? You know, the kid who swallows too many marbles doesn't grow up to have kids of his own?

It's still in full effect. For instance, with an attitude like that (with the condition that you make it public to your partner or partner-to-be), you'll probably find it hard to find a decent compassionate female to procreate with. (Although not impossible, so a reply of "I do have a woman" will be met with indifference.)

Do you actually have any concept of how many more kids would die if swallowing a marble was a surefire death sentence? You probably have a close friend or two who ingested something at an early age that *could* have killed them at some point. (Would you be up to the task of finishing them off yourself, seeing as they clearly are not deserving of their lives?)

Fortunately, there's probably alot more natural selection in the sense that guys who publicly think like you do dont often find themselves heading up a family than kids dying off and thus 'cleansing' (your word, I'm sure) the gene pool.

Icidentally, if your frist sentence had even a shred of truth to it (not that products havnt been taken off the market, but any toy store still sells easy-to-swallow-tough-to-breathe toys), Lego would have been off the market long ago. Ironically, the true folks that supplied or made available these small bitty pieces to little kids, ie, the parents, usually get to try again with the gene-grafting fun of parenthood if they so choose.

As a parting shot, if you do have a kid, try and come up with a more life affirming lullabye for him/her than "Caveat Emptor" or "Dont be a stupid kid while I'm not tending over you", please? Or would (are) your kids be so smart as to never do anything that endangers themselves?

Re:Chemical Experiment Toys

[errxn]

The flipside to that is that with all the information floating around on the 'net these days, the really smart kids won't even *need* a kit to be able to do the experiments. They can just get the chemicals and do it themselves (albeit, probably way more dangerously than with a kit).

It reminds me of the story that was posted here a while back of the kid that tried to build the breeder reactor in his mom's toolshed.

Perhaps this suggests a trend

[PerlPo8]

I think in general, computer games have become both more intense and realistic, and much less entertaining.

Like Hollywood, the industry has found a formula and an accompanying demographic that translates into optimum profit when marketed correctly, and they will "sing that note" until it stops making them money.

BTW, I remember a great little game for the 6502-based PC's (C-64, Atari 800, etc.) called "Racing Car Destruction Set"--what a blast!

Comes down to market changes

[Dr_LHA]

Back in the golden age of Construction set games - the 80s (I remember fondly The Quill, The Graphic Adventure Creator, HURG and The Shoot-em-up Construction Set) computer users were a different breed. Most people who bought computers first started doing funny things like "Learning BASIC" and programming the computer. That's how computers worked - and why you bought them, they were a hobbyist activity. So it's not surprising that the sort of computer owner who dabbles in BASIC (but is not a hardcore programmer) would like these sorts of creative games.

These days computers are pretty much an appliance like a fridge or TV to most people. Email arrives, they look at porn by clicking an icon, they accept whatever Mr Gates feeds them. It's not surprising that the creative aspect of gaming has all but been lost.

Recent exceptions to this rule I can remember is "RPG Maker" for the Playstation - and I think there's a sequel coming for the PS2. Neverwinter Nights also has a nice campaign builder utility.

Progamming Logo

[zoftie]

Programming logo or basic was offered in most schools I have attended on euro-asian continent, nevermind speed of the machines. Programming can be like lego or other, if simple enough blocks are used. Main thing is to teach students a self reward system, for programming. Get stuff done,
fast enough that it will bring gratification for cool things, like moving turtle across the screen.

Anyway that trend, lack of those games etc, can be seen on different areas, schooling, daily entertainment. Everything is being wired closer to reaction level, advertisement, movies. Not to logical level...
just my 2c.

The best part of building things...

[Jigoku]

...is breaking them. Young kids won't find as much enjoyment with computerized construction toys as they will their real-life counterparts for a few reasons, but the primary reason is the inability to break them. I remember the sick joy I got from breaking my Lego creations and smashing my Lincoln Log houses like I was Godzilla.

Maybe I'm just sick. Who knows...but man loves to destroy. It gives us a sense of control. Until we can tap all that sick perverted pleasure with a computer program, even I won't be making anything in the imaginary world of 1's and 0's. I like to see plastic fly, woodchips soar, and smell the spoils of my personal, private wars.

Give me a magnifying glass, some army men, Lego's, and some beer and I'll have a jolly good time!

Re:Chemical Experiment Toys

[Turing Machine]

My guess is the main reason you don't see more chemistry sets and similar 'toys' for children is fear of litigation. /I.

I think you're exactly right. A couple of years back I was looking for a chemistry set for my nieces and nephews, so that they could experience the hours of fun that I had as a kid.

The only "chemistry set" I could find wasn't even worthy of the name. The outside of the box proudly proclaimed "No glass! No open flames! No toxic chemicals!". I pointed this out to my wife with the comment "No fun!".

Re:Everything Becomes Quake

[Kintanon]

Well, you have to remember that well thought out, well designed modules take WAY more time than any of the others. So they are going to be the last thing to surface. Also, many people with well done worlds that could be put into NWN also have real world gaming going on and may be dividing their time among several other activities. I for one have a well developed game world that might end up as a NWN module, but only if I can be assured that enough of my real world players will get NWN that I can run campaigns with my friends online.

So good modules will come, but it may take quite a while.

Kintanon

Need a return of Adventure Construction Set

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad to see someone mention Adventure Construction Set. I think I had all of those Construction Set games for the C64, RDS, MusicCS, Gamemaker, PinballCS, yes and even Shoot'Em Up CS...
But the best by far was ACS because it was not locked into a genre, nor a vague set of design tools. It was perfectly approachable by kids or someone who was not ready or willing to start writing code.
While today's modding features and map editors are great and thankfully becoming a standard, few have matched the range and variety that came from some games like Civ2 or Total Annihilation (both of which I still play!) Yet Neverwinter looks promising. However even these are simply skin changes when compared to something like ACS at its time.
None of the new creation games like Sims and Black&White let you start with a clean slate. It's fun to play within building rules and then try and break them, but we need something that gives kids (both young and grown-up) a way to express their own original ideas.
Imagine a modern RTS construction set where you have to think up your own units and worlds. Or an RPG construction set where you not only write the story but it could be in any place, time, whatever. And then be able to give it to other users of the construction set.
It could be marketable as long as the construction set is flexible enough and easy enough to allow anyone a chance to make something completely original or a different take on the familiar. Stop saying kids today are stupid, give them a chance.

Adaptive Traits!=Fittest

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hate seeing Social Darwinist theory in this day and age. Social Darwinism is a horrible misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, based on the innacurate rendering of the theory as "survival of the fittest." In fact, evolutionary theory should be characterized as "The survival of that which is most likely to survive." To give you an example, lets say you have two different people in a tribe who have a beneficial mutation which protects them from a disease. Person one's mutation increases the likelyhood of brain cancer, but doesn't affect his appearance. Person two's mutation leaves him physically deformed in such a way that he is highly unappealing to the opposite sex, but he is otherwise physically fit and lives into extreme old age. The second person is more fit, but the first is more likely to reproduce. Therefore, in the evolutionary sense, person one is the "fittest."

Of course, one reason why this is true is that a person never has just one trait, but a collection of traits.

What's more, a change in environment can make a formerly adaptive trait purely detrimental. (Fair skinned people get skin cancer in sunny climes, dark skinned people get rickets in cold climes, sickle cell anemia has no adaptive benefit in an area where malaria doesn't florish.)

My favorite evolution story is the one about the Samurai Crabs. In this case, the adaptive trait (having shells that look like human faces) supposedly developed entirely because of a local superstition about such crabs. It had nothing to do with "fitness" in the sense laymen use it when referring to evolutionary theory. However, it was an adaptive trait (unless the theory is wrong and the crabs really are reincarnated samurai) because it allowed the face crabs to survive and reproduce.

Loop-based music programs

[talnkyo]

Although not explicitly a game, programs such as Reason that have synthesizers and samplers of various sorts organized as rackmount synthesizers are as entertaining as any game, and are indeed used to make real music too. propellerheads.se. Just looking at the screenshots should be enough to get you hooked. For example, you can flip the synthesizers around and rewire them and every single knob is tweakable.

Also, Mac/MSP (only available for Mac) is a music program that has been likened to legos, for one puts together various tone generators and input devices to create complex digital synthesizers. For an analogous game, try Widget Workshop from Maxis.

For games, don't forget SimCity 4 and the rest of the Sim games, which are still being churned out at a good clip.

Construction set games and the hacker culture

[stwrtpj]

Reading this article on /. and seeing people's replies to it makes me feel just a little less old than I had been feeling. Either that or there are enough other old farts out there that I'm in good company (and you don't need to be all that old to be an old fart where computer tech is concerned).

A possible reason why you don't see the construction set games anymore that I don't think anyone has touched on yet is the growth of the hacker culture. Back when the construction set games were around, the hacker culture was confined largely to colleges and labs. Didn't Zork start on a mainframe in Fortran somewhere? The construction set games brought a kind of pseudo-hacker culture to non-hackers. Without having to know a lot of code, they could build their own games and run them.

But nowadays, many of these pseudo-hackers became real hackers. Now people build games from scratch. Witness the explosion in recent years in freeware/OSS game projects. Not many people focus on construction set games because they're busy building their own original games.

As for me, I think I get more joy out of the construction of the game mechanics rather than the actual coding of the game core. For that reason [begin shameless plug] I've been working on my own Perl modules to do game construction (I've only just started -- if any Perl programmers out there are interested, look for module Games::Object on search.cpan.org. I hope to have Games::TileMap released soon as well). I doubt I'll be leading any revolution with my efforts, but at least I'll get to put out a few games that I've been thinking about over the years.