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The Return of Toys
valdean writes "With videogames becoming so ubiquitous, it sometimes seems like kids have less and less time for toys these days. Toy makers, however, are pushing back with high tech toys designed to be more compelling than a game of Supreme Commander. The New York Times reports that remote controlled vehicles in particular seem to be up for some friendly competition. As one designer suggests, 'navigating well-designed vehicles in the physical world... is vastly more compelling than steering a virtual vehicle in a computer-generated universe.' Will toys ever be able to compete with videogames again?"
My mom gave me a brick and told me to go play outdoors
-Eod
"I think, right now, that there is a push back from our industry to get kids off the couch where they're playing video games," Mr. Khasminsky said in a telephone interview from his office in Toronto.
so he works for nintendo on the wii?
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
No nothing can stop... The Animal!
As they mentioned, RC vehicles are wayyyy more popular now that they're affordable. The one thing that ticks my nephew off is the batteries don't last long enough and no one will buy him more sets so he can spend hours driving instead of minutes. :)
But the more complex toys like a robot that does some sort of dance moves and stuff don't interest him much. He likes things that go so that he can follow them around the yard, not just things that move around in his local space like a regular toy.
You can't very well ram the grandparent's legs in the kitchen if you have to be in the room, otherwise you don't get away with the "accident." ;)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I for one welcome our new plastic, assembly required, batteries not included overlords!
The all-mighty lego!
34486853790
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Its in Hobby stores and on the net in places. Its this small helicopter that charges on a basepad that doubles as the controller and is filled with double AA batteries. You can fly it all around the room and its pretty durable(fly it into the wall a few times). For $40 its really cheap for such an awesome toy. I'd buy one if I didn't lose the link.
God spoke to me.
The thing about computer games is that they allow you to go places you can't normally go. Toys are simply a object you manipulate in one way or annother. Why play with a single toy soldier when I can create an army of gun toting robots in SupCom? Same sort of thing with some logic circuit design I do in my spare time, I can design it on the computer, and there's no way I can destroy a part, do I need more parts, just duplicate one. It's cheap, fun, and allows me to learn. With computer games it's the same way. Toys break, games don't (at least not in the same way that toys do).
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
Now, while we're getting all nostalgic, let's break out the lawn darts!
Toys will be more popular than computer games when they're less boring than computer games. If you look at some of the crap kids are expected to find amusing, I'm not surprised they'd rather play games. How many times have you tried to play a game with your children and got to rule 6 which is "when all the players have been around the board twice in a counterclockwise...zzzzz". Jesus christ - that's supposed to be fun? Calling a shit game "Frustrating" is ironic, but surely board games are supposed to be fun, not frustrating. I can't believe anyone actually finds that game fun.
Did anyone else see that "Spy Video Car" and immediately think of zooming through women's dressing rooms? Looking at these neat toys make me feel 14 again.
Toy makers, however, are pushing back
Now now, children, play nicely or I swear I will pull this car over and we will NOT go to McDonald's.
my son's favorite present this christmas was also the least expensive. it was a set of plastic discs that had hook-n-loop stuff on it that you could strap to your hand. it came with a tennis ball that you throw - and then catch by letting it stick to one of the discs. he's 4 and he'll do that for longer than he'll spend on just about any other single activity. we have a great time playing catch at the park. his sisters enjoy it too - so i picked up another set. i think a set with two discs and a ball was right around 3 bucks at wal-mart.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Remote control 4wd or tank device with a camera in it and a lcd in the remote ,B&W is good enough. Kids that are bored of RC cars will play with a car that has a camera on it for days on end.
Oh and faster is not better, slower with power and the camera is better.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The problem is that toy makers suck a making toys... If you walk the isles of Toys R Us all you can find is overpriced garbage action figures in stupid looking costumes... This trend started when I was a kid. I remember one Christmas I got a "Bumble Bee Batman"... What the hell is a Bumble Bee Batman doing in Toys R Us?!
No kid wants that... They want BATMAN... not Super Aqudic Spiderman with stupid plastic shooting webs...
Video games give us what we want (KIDS TOO!)... If I want to be a commando... I can be... If I want to be a monkey... I can be...
Kids aren't as dumb as a lot of adults treat them. They just know grabage when they see it.
I used to play a lot with GI Joe's. Now, I am killing iraqi terrorists. It's cool.
This is a great idea. Now if only they made toys for adults like that...
In my experience - with a six-year-old and four-year-old - low tech rules. The ubiquitos (sp?) lego seems to be the toy of choice again and again.
:P
This past christmas, the two of them got a robot dragon, remote controlled cars, video games and a host of other electronic stuff. After all is said and done, they're playing the most with generic lego bricks and building airplanes, space ships, tanks, rockets, bridges, tall towers and whatever else they can come up with.
The electronic toys - those that still work - have fallen by the wayside.
Of course, the six year old does love firing up NESTicle and playing Super Mario Bros. too.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
I have a friend that strongly believes in the value of toys. He has two boys and, rather than buy cheap, plastic stuff, he builds toys. These toys are miniature working bulldozers and front-end loaders with actual hydraulics and small diesel engines. Another friend built a small rideable, electric railroad. He figured that the little HO models just don't bring to life the magic of the railroad for a kid. Toys are awesome! The day we give them up for video games is a sad one. Video games do not encourage wholesome play. Granted, they are fun (when I have a bad day, I love a good game of Grand Theft Auto to relax by but this ain't wholesome fun), but should be kept to a minimum. Toys have an innocence about them that should be embraced.
Will toys ever be able to compete with videogames again? Last I heared, the soccer ball, frisbee, and such are still in production. While the need for certain toys have been replaced with digital games for those that can afford them, others are inherently different from video-based entertainment and will not go away. However, it all depends on what you mean by "compete". Just talking about profit? Or maybe as a measure of what the next generation spends their time on. Then consider that competing for the attention of mediocre minds may be different than for the bright children.
I grew up with video games, and so have my kids. I collect arcade machines and console, and we wholeheartedly love them. But a video game is never a match for a good toy, and the best multiplayer games we've played have never been as enjoyable as a good round of monopoly. There's no real person-to-person interaction playing Mario Party or Halo 2.
It *is* vastly more fun to play with RC cars than video game cars. I was looking at the RC aisle at Target not too long ago, milling around waiting for my wife, and got really jealous of my kids. When I was a young, cars like these were the realm of Tamiya, and required a fair amount of investment and work and model making. We'd spend hundreds crafting and honing our cars, and treat them like they were made out of gold and eggshells. Now you can get a 14V crazy honker car that does backflips for 29.99. Zip zaps are a blast, etc. A sub 50 dollar "RC car" in my youth was one of those dumb things that always went forward, and had one button that made it back up and turn right. Serious RC enthusiasts may scoff at such silly toys, but for just pure fun factor, these kids have it made.
They're two different markets.. Video games can never replace real world toys, and I feel sad for anybody who lets them.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
As one designer suggests, 'navigating well-designed vehicles in the physical world... is vastly more compelling than steering a virtual vehicle in a computer-generated universe
Um, you can play with tons of different vehicles or tracks and terrain on video games, and it is near trival to play without cleaning or to even clean up. Do you know how much cleaning is required to drive that remote controlled car over the dirty clothes? Nope, that's just too much work. How much work is required setting up obstacle cources and then finishing it afterwords? I want holographic toys and quick. When the kids are done with them or its bed time, I want all the holograms to turn off and their room to be automatically cleaned.
Video games offer simulated friends. Whether they're voiceless automated opponents, voiced automated allies or people on the other side of Live or Battle.net, video games provide personal interaction that television and Legos don't.
How can Legos, Lincoln Logs and action figures win? They don't come WITH friends, you still have to invite someone to play. Barring that, it's solitary play because the parents are likely busy with their own lives.
Non video games can't win until they come with parents and playmates that make them more interesting and compelling than their electronic counterparts. This doesn't mean the 10 hours a week you're not too tired from work, this means 150% of the time the kid wants to play -- if availablility is a scarce resource, the kid may hesitate to ask for it.
I want my kids to learn how to play without the computer, and they are doing a good job so far, but one day the instant digital companion is just going to win.
Not all that fun. A lot of building up and racing to construct massive army/defenses, which has to be done in certain patterns to be entirely effective. Not engaging your opponent until 20 minutes into the game, and then just minor skirmishes.
Later in the game, when the big battles start occuring, to be able to manage it all you have to zoom out so far that all the graphics go to waste as you look at a global map and icons moving around on it.
I didnt like it after my first playthrough, but forced myself to go back and try a second time. It was more enjoyable once I shifted my mindset away from traditional RTS style play, but not enough that I've wanted to go back a third time.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
In other news:
For the 1,000 consecutive year the ball has won best toy of the year again.
-Physically demanding, resulting in a sense of pride and accomplishment (not waving a remote around)
-Strength- and agility-building excercise
-Completely open-ended gameplay, limited only by the imagination of the player
-Near-infinite variety of environments, limited only by a very complicated set of growth algorithms
With all the games and TV shows and electronic toys available to them, I still see my neighbor's kids in a tree on a regular basis.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Hint: more rubber bands mean more strength behind the shot! If you can't put a bruise on your brother's arm from across the basement, your artillery is under-powered.
As much as games evolve (both upwards and outwards), I have yet to see anything that approaches the fun and openness of building with Legos. I guess the various Sim games might come close, but those still stifle you with specific options and outcomes.
With Legos, however, there's no such limitation excepting when you run out of pieces. (I don't consider the various Lego building programs to be "games".)
(And yes, I know it is supposed to be "Lego Blocks". I frankly don't care.)
I played with my sister's Barbies. It didn't affect me at all. I became an actor.
Check me out in my latest movie, "Broke Mast Galleon"
Avast ye matey, get ready to swap my poop deck, there be gold in dat booty!
Kids really DO like it out there. If we let them. (I'm looking at YOU, frightened mom that lives down the street)
Stop buying enormous frigging houses with no yard. Demand a smaller house on a larger plot, located on Cul de Sac, and then tell your kids to go outside and play. Tell them to go next door and ask if the neighbor kid can play, and ground them if they go inside the neighbor's house without asking. Make sure you're home to keep an eye on them while they play outside. The issue isn't the toys or the kids. As usual, it's the parents who can't be bothered to parent.
No matter how good the games are, most kids (given the opportunity) would rather play baseball, basketball, or soccer. It's too bad that because of fear of kidnappings, etc. kids are not allowed to just "Go out and play in the yard" like when I was a kid. At least not until they are older. But by then I think a lot are 'hooked' on video games and would rather stay indoors.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
If toy sales are anemic, why don't they try making something traditionally American, like firearms or cap guns, or toy guns, or something 'gun' related? That's big business - Nerf and Supersoaker are hugely popular (or, at least, they were when I was a kid just 10 years ago).
:P
I mean, c'mon: boys are more likely to play video games, particularly the ones with videos and weapons. Sure, they might like a remote-controlled helicopter, and they'll likely play with it for hours. But it gets stale: there's little replay value, batteries are expensive (for kids), and it's not really an 'open platform' in terms of creativity and play. Now, if you were to give the same boy a (say) military-styled toy gun, maybe a low-velocity airsoft, nerf, or heck even a 'lasertag' gun costing roughly the same amount as either a
As for those who are going to bitch about giving kids 'toy weapons' and training them for war: bullshit. It is natural for boys (in particular) to play war games all on their own, even if you restrict them from seeing things like guns on TV or in movies. If you prohibit them from having guns, they'll use a pencil or a coat hanger for a gun (I've seen it). I've seen 4-year-olds who were prohibited by their parents from playing with such thigns by their 'progressive' moms come over and be nearly euphoric at the possibility of hunting dinosaurs and monsters, playing cowboys and indians, and various other such things. It was not something that was encouraged - it was their preference.
When I was a kid, I had an NES. My brother and I would play hours and hours of video games; our mom didn't want us to have violent ones, with Rampage being disallowed because it was 'graphical and violent'. However, that didn't prevent us from saving up for games on our own and hding them from her (GI Joe, Contra, Jackal) or borrowing from friends. For whatever reason she let us have toy guns, though - and even though we had those prohibited games which we could play only while not being scrutinized, we still generally preferred to be outdoors throwing 'bombs' or 'hand grenades' at each other (snowballs), shooting each other and our neighbors with supersoakers, or just playing pretend with cap guns. We had RC cars and stuff too, but they didn't get nearly as much use due to their limited creative applications.
From what I gather, such activities are fairly unique for my generation, even though I'm by no means 'old'... I guess most parents from my parents generation were much more restrictive.
Besides, it's not like Mattel hasn't made rifles in the past (ok, not really, but it's still funny).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I hope when I have kids, we can substitute board games for video games. There's just a lot of cool stuff out there right now, especially due to the German renaissance in board gaming.
I'm going to have to lock the PS4/5 in the closet upstairs or something.
Toys will be popular if toymakers focus on the advantages of physical toys: BEING PHYSICAL. I always loved playing make-believe adventure with action figures (either alone or with a friend). I liked coming up with a fun (to act out, anyway) story (it helped me flesh out my budding storytelling ability). I also liked playing 'imaginary games' (i.e. childhood LARP) in my backyard with friends. Those games were the most fun I have ever had!
It is harder to get this same kind of experience with computers because you have both a higher expectation (since you have to visualize the entire environment) and it is harder to fulfill those expectations. With physical toys, all your materials are ready (all your objects are initialized) and you can use your imagination to fill in the rest. Computers are logical entities; hence, they don't have much room for imagination, and we are not at the point where a DWII (Do What I Imagine) interface is feasible.
Also, any toy that facilitates interaction with other children (toy swords, baseball gloves, etc.) is more fun than sitting at a computer all the time. (Remember, most eight-year-olds are bundles of energy and HATE staying still).
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
I look at some of the toys that kids have today, and I wonder where they were when I was a kid...they are simple developments that have their roots from decades ago...
Things like remote control tanks, cars, boats, etc...I love them...
With more technology being poured into the design and development of toys, we should see some amazing things come up in the next few years...
The millimeter turbine, what a little imagination would do with that... flying toys, hovering toys, etc...
The Hobby trains...why not mag-lev trains? There are tons of toys that have yet to be developed...
All it would take is a little time and money to make a fortune on the sale of high tech toys to get kids out from in front of the TV...
The biggest limiting factor is the COST...you would have to produce toys that cost LESS than the TV, Game Console, Computer System...etc...or no onw would buy them.
--E--
I still collect action figures but every time I'm at Target or Toys r Us, somebody has bought up all the good action figures and sure enough they're on ebay at big markups. On my way to work I've seen people loitering around the parking lot at Toys 'r' Us waiting for them to open, bastards.
Bricks are cool. Lego never went away....
I recently took my kid to a place called "the treehouse" in Ogden, UT. She discovered a toy called "Kapla" It's brilliant- nothing but a wheelbarrow filled with sticks measuring 1" x 4" x 1/4" each. About 2000 of them. She made a tower over 3 feet tall, then had a blast knocking it down by throwing things at it. Tactile toys have their own appeal.
In fact, I make a living by selling kids a set of plans that can turn a brick, a stick, and some string into a machine that hurls eggs. It's called a trebuchet. There is a market for old school stuff. Just look at http://www.catapultkits.com./ Then there's the toy guns, pogo sticks and skateboards - http://www.ballistictoys.com/ - that help a kid get an intuitive feel for ballistic motion, the foundations of physics.
Here's the appeal- Kids learn real physics, not simulated physics as in a computer game. With the catapult kits, they get to do simple math to predict how far it will throw, then (and this is the part that gets them hooked) they go outside, into the field to test their work. When they see the connection between the math and the real world machine, one that hurls an egg about 200 feet, then they get excited. They see how to apply math to do something fun, outside, away from the CPU and CRT, LCD, etc.
Real toys are an important part of a kid's total education. Even if it's a piece of string, a stick and a brick.
My daughter (7) spends many hours on Supertux and Flash games on the web but has plenty of time for other stuff. She loves card games, board games (Monopoly, Cluedo), playing on her bike or scooter and we got a Scalextric set for Christmas.
Toys don't need to be hi-tech to compete - just challenging and fun.
In Soviet Russia toys welcome YOU.
(once you install the batteries)
Don't forget the CF card mods.
Quack, quack.
I've recently gotten into Air Hogs Aero Ace. All the RC forums are full of fans and mods of this $30 biplane flier. It's small enough to fly in a yard, extremely crash proof, and available at Target/Toys-r-us/online. I've tried several other Air Hogs RC products, including a $60 heli, and still think the biplane is the easiest to fly and most enjoyable. Trouble is, I'm ready to graduate to the 'real' RC planes now.
of hallucinogenic drugs. But can certainly take you on a mental journey, but I'd give hallucinogens the upper hand for vividness and believability.
Quack, quack.
when I was a kid, getting a $20 dollar videogame was like getting a whole box of toys, what with all the characters and features in games.
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Yeah, I've usually got (or can get) the latest, greatest video game platform(s). And yeah, there's fun to be had there. But there are aspects of the games we enjoyed as kids, that STILL can't be simulated on video games.
I'm not just talking about "free form play" here, although there will always be that. I'm talking about the basic physics of well, destroying things. No pre-set destruct area can compete with the slow destruction of a Lego or Girder and Panel metropolis by means of endless dart gun barrages. No race-car damage modeling will ever be quite as interesting as what happens to a Tonka Truck set rolling down a very long concrete drive-way. No "rag-doll" engine can compete with the viceral thrill of taking a Lysol Blow torch to a GI Joe Doll. Even games which cater to the frustrated Juvenille deliquent in us, such as the Soldier of Fortune series, still can't hold a candle the mind-boggling gore of opening up with a cheap airsoft machine gun on a crowd of raw eggs with faces drawn on. Even when video games go "too far", they still fall short of what kid's real-life imagination can do (PS2 + Hot coffee mod VS hand lotion + privacy).
So the question is not whether toys can ever compete with video games, but whether video games will ever be able to compete with toys.
My guess is that yes, but only if the politicians keep their damn noses out of it. A lot of the really fun toys I played with when I was kid are banned now, because some unsupervised, stupid kid hurt themselves with them. Usually be trying to eat them. It was huge mistake to ban those toys because a)there are only stupid-children toys left now and b)it makes it harder to identify stupid adults by looking for things like "fire-cracker face", "lego-lung" or other evidence of childhood brushes with natural selection. And now we have dolts like Joe Liberman who seek to suck the life out of video games too (read their actual words before assuming they're only trying to "think of the children"). At some point in the not-too-distant future, consumer grade video game machines will be technically capable of showing what it would really looking like if you crashed your Grand Turismo car, your WOW guild caught fire, or shot a Doom 3 alien in the face with a shot gun. But without some common sense voting, those games will either not exist or only be available to adults aged 90 and up.
Which is fine by me, because that's roughly the age I'll be when Duke Nukem forever gets released. But this a post about toys, so it's not about adults like me. It's about the children.
Won't someone *please* think of the children?
I was a gamer myself, back in the way-back of long ago. I had a C64 and loads of games. And I was an arcade nut. I'd mow lawns and collect returnable bottles just for a chance to play. Owned an Atari 2600. I later bought an Amiga and had boxes of games for that too. I was nuts for video games, and I couldn't get enough.
Then I graduated college and got a job.
Now, I write software for a living. And the very last thing I want to do when I get home is sit in front of a computer. ANY computer. My PS2 has an inch of dust on it. I bought maybe 3 games for it before I gave up. No XBox 360 for me. No PS3. No thank you.
What I sit around and crave these days is to be outdoors.
I walk in parks. If it's snowing, I go skiing. I joined the SCA and go camping for my vacations. My wife and I own bicycles and go biking whenever we can. I home brew, work with metal, and build tents. If no computer is involved, I'm usually pretty happy. I'm enjoying stripping the paint off the woodwork in a room of my house even.
My friends come over every so often and bug me about video games. "Have you played such-and-such yet?" Nope. I haven't. And I don't really have any interest in doing so either. It's too damn boring! I'm currently struggling through Elder Scrolls Oblivion at my brother's request. Soon as you figure out the combat system it's seriously boring.
And plus, I'm a programmer now. I can watch the characters move around on the screen and I pretty much can guess at the algorithm making them move. Takes the fun out of it when you can.
Nope. Can't play games anymore. Just about anything is better than staring at the screen after my 8 hours are up.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Now you get all serious on me. Dr. Bob's seems to regularly have discussions come up regarding alternative treatments for depression (the focus of the group). Ketamine treatment was the most recent I'd read (but that was a while ago).
Quack, quack.
by 'poor', I mean we had food and such, but we didn't have a lot of money for extraneous things like toys. From the standpoint of Middle Class America, I was poor, from the standpoint of, say, Mexico, I was pretty well off. Still, if you're a kid that only occasionally gets a new toy, the point still stands.
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I'll second that. If it'll work using 802.11, so I just configure my wifi to talk to it - it'll definitely have my interest. Then make it so the video refreshes fast enough and have it respond well to my flight-sim joystick and I would have plenty of fun with this. Chasing birds or buzzing people in the park would become a new pasttime. Then add an .avi record feature, and it'll make for some entertaining internet video as well.
I don't care how popular videogames are these days, nothing will ever be as socially and culturally ubiquitous and omnipresent as the Lego brick.
Video games have nothing on Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, Legos, Lionel Train sets, Erector sets, Chemistry sets, and Capsela sets. I'm not old, but I still remember all of those with *MUCH* more fondness than finite "cookie-cutter" video games.
Nowadays, toys have becoe just ways for manufacturing conglomerates to make more money - They don't care how little fun it is as long as it generates $$$$$. None of those toys were expensive (except Lionel sets - those still run into the hundreds and thousands for the super-duper-ulta-real engines and cars. I used my dad's engines.), and you could do or build anything you wanted to - until my Mom took them away when I was 16.
When I have kids (God forbid they turn out like I did), I'd gladly buy them any of those before I bought them a video game or a computer game.
A video game only lasts for a few dozen hours, and isn't all that much interactive and mentally stimulating as the 'old-fashioned' toys I played with as a kid.
Oh wait.....I still do.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I'm a high school teacher in Sweden, and some of the other teachers and I were just talking about this yesterday. Many of our students (mostly male) spend many hours playing video games. They all tend to have little imagination. Ask them to write a story, a poem, and even a movie review, and they'll just stare at a white Word document for the entire lesson (doesn't help if they go low-tech and use pencil and paper either). One teacher was remembering his electric train set and another his Matchbox car collection as ways for kids to use their imaginations. Instead of letting them atrophy (and atrophy they will if they are not stimulated). For me it was sports, plastic dinosaurs, cars, baseball cards, books and games. My own kids (almost 6 and 3, the 3 month old doesn't play so much yet) have many more toys and books than I did.
Nothing beats a big box of Lego(s). I bet you anything there is more creativity that can come out of that than any video game.
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
Junior pervs rejoice!
Same here, but, I was away from gaming 10 years pretty much due to the exact same reasons now that I have hit the mid 30s and have not found someone I am back to gaming.
(You would call me the typical slashdot joke, but some guys simply are not made for marriage in womens eyes although I am not the typical stereotype)
Anyway, it might depend on your family state, but I managed to make a distinction between work and home and enjoy gaming again, not days of gaming like back then when I was younger, but the occasional fun game is enjoyable. A game on a long train ride, or just to sit down and play for a few minutes.
...cool and interesting stuff.
With all the tech we have today, we should be able to integrate that into some really great toys. IMHO, some solid research on how kids develop and what they are looking to explore, should yield some new toys that use tech to enable that.
Blogging because I can...
Haven't you people ever heard of rechargeable batteries, they are extremely inexpensive and can provide years upon years of battery power for kids toys, and all your electronics. I have been using rechargeable batteries for about 4-5 years now and i have not managed to kill a set yet. AA and AAA are the most common sizes availible but they have C and D adaptors so if you need battery power for devices that use C and D batteries all you have to do is stick an AA battery in a C/D adaptor and viola, your ready to go. No more buying expensive disposable batteries!
Everyone here is whining about how toys suck up battery power yet no one thinks about going out to buy rechargeable batteries. They even have alkaline/nimh hybrid batteries if you are extremely picky and need something that does not lose its charge when not in use, the sanyo eneloop batteries are supposed to be very good from what i hear.
I do think toys are going the wayside unless its something extremely high tech, this christmas the toy departments were full but try to find a certain video game system or game in stock and forget it, most video game departments were literatly fully empty with only a few lone games in stock. Yet the toy dept's were full. Thankfully we have online shopping now though, so all of this can eaisly be avoided.
Traditional toys tend to work well for younger kids, those under 6 mostly. I have found if you give them coloring books and crayons they are very happy. If you don't give them something simple like that then they will just toss it aside for a different toy and you wasted your money on something. I find that most kids in general toss their toys aside after just a few min of play unless its something extremely compelling; for a video game or a computer game, or tv show. Kids have no imagination nowdays, you can blame this on the poor parenting skills of the majority of parents, and the fact thats its a lot easier to stick the kid in the corner with the gameboy/ other video game system for hours than to go outside and gasp... actually play with the kid. I read an article somewhere that says they have to teach kids how to have an imagination because no kids have that skill anymore, since the computer and videogames do all the imagining for them.
You've never had to drive a lada have you?
Worldcraft, or UnrealED...building stuff is still a lot of fun!
Check this out. At least in Europe, Manga Legos do exist. Personally, I think these newer Lego sets have too many specialiced blocks which can be used for only one specific thing. That is kind of annoying. I prefer the older, more general sets.
.... you are the least indicated to comment regarding this topic.
Interesting experience but completely unrealted to the experience of 99.9999% of the rest of the populous.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yeah, I'll still play a game every so often. Usually what I play these days is MTG: Plainswalkers quick duel, or Mame32 Robotron 2084. A simple 5-10 minute diversion and then I'm back to doing whatever. I think a lot of it has to do with the games they make these days. I just don't find all the rendered scenery and 3D stuff engrossing. Or maybe it says something about my dwindling attention span. =)
As for the home life, well, my wife is probably as much or more of a geek than I am. She's a fan of Sid Meier - she's currently playing Colonization. She's a table top gamer too, and has the rules to Rolemaster memorized.
Geek chicks are out there. They're not as rare as you might think. Don't give up hope (if you're interested in finding one that is). I found one and married her, and I'm a pretty unlikely choice for marriage too.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I have to say from reading all these comments that I've felt quite the same way, as some commenters, that the video games (and digital life) is a bit unfulfilling as the "real world" counterpart.
:)
I recently went home to my parents house, and sifted through a box of things I left when I moved to California (I only could take 4 suitcases on the plane). I found my old Final Fantasy III cartridge with 100+ hours of play time, Lv. 99 characters with every possible relic, and I found a few odds-and-ends I'd built and a few Lego spacecrafts that took me maybe 3-5 hours to build. I have to say... I felt far more nostalgic with the Lego models than my FF cartridge.
When I got home to California, I was playing Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on Virtual Console, while my wife was making wire-sculpted jewelry. I felt a little jealous because she had something she could hold (and is planning to sell), and I had bits and bytes on a console that will eventually break, end up on eBay, or in a box in the attic. My perfect game, didn't really matter much outside of myself, and "knowing" I'd won. I get that playing in the dirt, burning some energy, discovering a unique rock, catching a frog, or getting lost with green-army men, has a lasting significance and fulfillment that getting the 8th red-coin or the high score on Mario Party i++; doesn't compare. I thought about it more and realized what a feeling of accomplishment I feel when I finish a dead-tree book on military or religious history, in comparison to the 40-50 Wikipedia articles on the same topics I read every day. Shooting my Glock 23 at paper targets is a lot more fun than shooting *anything* on Call of Duty 3, or any FPS i've ever played. Watching a film (even better, attending a screening and discussion) is more fulfilling than YouTube.
Maybe I'm becoming a Neo-Luddite, but I have to say, as I get older, I find the digital-lifestyle less and less fulfilling to the point where I don't even want to go to work (as a programmer.)
I want to thank you all, who've helped convince me-- I just submitted my application for the police academy!
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.