July 11, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode of 'Pondering Play and Therapy,' the host converses with Jessica McLaughlin, a senior creative director with 20 years of experience in creating digital content for children. Jessica shares her accidental journey into children's media, her work at Find Your Fun Studios, and her new venture, Play Wise Labs. She discusses the intricacies of designing educational games, the importance of testing with children, the impact of interactive play, and the balance of creating engaging yet safe digital experiences for kids. Jessica also offers insights on helping parents navigate the vast world of kids' digital games.
Website: https://playwise.ca/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Philippa (00:00):
Welcome to this week's episode of Pondering Play and
Therapy, and this week my guestis Jessica McLaughlin, and she
has over 20 years of experiencein designing and developing,
engaging and educational digitalcontent and products for
children, families, and adults.
(00:22):
She has led the content gamedesign and visual design
direction team as a seniorcreative director at Find Your
Fun Studios, which is HASBO.
I think we'll probably be awareof that name and Wizards of the
Coast working on global brandssuch as Pepper Pig and other
(00:47):
HASBO games.
As an interactive director.
She's received multiplenominations and awards for her
work, including the Youth MediaAlliance Award of Excellence,
nominations, kids screennominations, kids Screen HOT 50
and International Serious PlayAwards.
(01:08):
She's also published web basedhomework tools for parents,
teachers, and students featuringexclusive video content,
printable activity sheets andeducational games.
And she's really passionateabout creating fun and
meaningful experiences throughcollaboration, innovation, and
(01:30):
diverse.
Perspectives.
Jessica, welcome to ponderingplay in therapy.
Thank you for your time.
Jessica (01:38):
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Philippa (01:40):
Oh, that's great.
So really it's an.
Unusual career path that you'vegot.
And I suppose, I guess I'm not,hopefully this isn't
disrespectful, but for a womanand a woman of our age as well
do you know what I Yeah,absolutely.
I get it.
Like my son is all into this,but he's in his twenties and he
(02:01):
is going to university and doingeSports.
When you get a bit past that youit's not something you imagine
people to be doing.
So what led you here?
Jessica (02:12):
It was so accidental and a little bit serendipitous I
think.
There was no formal training forthis in my youth when I was
doing post-secondary andstudying in school I took
broadcasting and journalism andendeavored to work in media.
I.
And my first media job happenedto be at a radio station, which
(02:33):
also owned a children'stelevision network in Canada
called YTV, and I just appliedto a job that was at the time,
new and interesting a new spacefor kids to start to connect
online.
In the early two thousands, itwas a, an online community for
(02:54):
kids tween age, early teen age.
And my first job thereaccidentally in children's media
was moderating children in chatrooms, making sure they were
being safe, and, connecting withthem and learning about them,
they were well aware that therewas moderated chat rooms.
And also that job was, just alittle bit of everything in the
(03:18):
online community space.
That was fairly new and excitingin the early two thousands for
kids.
So I also called parents andtalked to them on the phone and
made sure that they knew thattheir child had signed up for
this service.
We had a bunch of user generatedcontent.
Kids would answer questions orsubmit stories.
(03:40):
So it was quite accidental.
I wanted to work in media.
I found a job in tv, but I wasdoing something new and
unexpected.
So from there I really loved.
That idea of making content forkids and connecting with kids
and learning from them andseeing their interesting
(04:01):
behaviors online that werereally unlike what I was doing
online.
So I spent a fair bit of timethere and that role expanded
into writing doing video gamereviews, making games.
Doing contests.
So it was a little bit of alet's try everything and see
what kids are into online typeof job.
(04:25):
And I was there for five or sixyears as well, from that
experience, I ended up workingat a public broadcaster in
Canada called TVO.
And took all of those thingsthat I learned and made a lot of
games for kids preschool kidsright up to high school.
Worked on digital learningproducts.
(04:45):
So a lot of courses that kidstook in high school or junior
high or elementary.
So really just.
Accidental.
But that first job in theindustry was so interesting and
dynamic and exciting, and Iloved interacting with children
and learning from them.
And that it just kept mesearching for those sorts of
(05:08):
opportunities and I just somehowmade a career of it
accidentally.
So now, all this time later whenI.
Meet people who younger, whomake a decision to work in
Children's Medium.
I was like so delighted thatthey're mature enough and they
got it.
I was just, it was an accident,but a happy accident,
Philippa (05:28):
I think for lots of people you just fall in and find
the thing that captures thatimagination for you and captures
that passion.
Absolutely.
And it sounds like that, that,did you, when you say games.
So for people that maybe don'tunderstand what you're talking
about, are you talking about theapps on a phone?
Are you talking about Google Agame or something that helps
(05:51):
them with learning?
What are you talking about?
What does games mean?
It's not snakes and ladders,
Jessica (05:56):
All of those things.
So digital, anything.
In the digital space.
So yeah, initially the gamesthat I would've worked on in the
early days were as expected, thetechnology and the trends change
over time.
Certainly web-based games werepopular for a really long time.
The early on it was, flash gamesand they were just kids were
(06:20):
just going on websites andplaying those games like crazy.
And then, so what's
Philippa (06:24):
A flash?
A flash game?
What's a flash game?
Jessica (06:27):
I think people would remember what a flash game was,
just based on a lot of the a lotof the hubbub that happened when
iPhone came to be.
A lot of web-based content wasunavailable for iPhone because
they didn't adopt Flash as aplatform.
It was just really like anembedded game on a site.
(06:48):
Like at the time, we would makethose games in a piece of
software, embed them on thesite.
So it was just a moment in time.
But that evolved into currentday web-based games, which are
just different, createddifferently, but still they're
still web-based games, but alsoapps.
And then a lot of what I've donein the past is just create
(07:10):
interactive elements forwhatever piece of content that I
might be working on.
So in the case of like digitallearning content for kids, there
might be manipulative itemsthat, you can, like a number
line or counting blocks.
Anything interactive really.
(07:31):
Okay.
Philippa (07:32):
Okay.
And you've done that in yourcommunity as a community care
based project, have you where tosupport your, to support the
community you live in?
Is that right?
Jessica (07:44):
What I did at at a public broadcaster making
content.
It was this public broadcaster Iwork for was in the province of
Ontario in Canada.
So you did have to be mindful ofrepresenting the people of
Ontario or they were your mainuser, right?
So you had to be, so when we'remaking digital learning
(08:05):
products, it had to be thecorrect curriculum for the
people of Ontario.
And then you had to be mindfulof just, it's a very large
province with varying degrees oflike connectivity.
So you had to think about peoplein Northern Ontario, which is
very, can be very remote.
Not the greatest internet.
(08:26):
So you had to be mindful ofcreating content that was also
efficient and able to be playedand downloaded for someone with
bad inter internet connection orsomeone in a city who has a
super fast internet connection.
So being mindful of all of thosepeople in users in that
geography.
Philippa (08:45):
Okay.
And I'm, I imagine that.
From a broadcaster, I guess likefrom our B, B, C, then you would
expect that content to be free.
Yes.
And accessible to anybody.
But you've also worked on games,for HaBO and that, that are
paid.
They're free at the point ofaccess, aren't they?
But then there's anencouragement to to purchase
(09:09):
things in there.
So purchase different items toprogress the game faster or
prettier, or you've alsodeveloped those, have you?
Jessica (09:20):
Yes, absolutely.
So I when I worked at Hasbro,the motivation was more around
getting subscribers to an app.
So yeah, you're right, therewould be a free element to it to
encourage, moving on to asubscription service.
So a limited amount of contentor games or videos would be
(09:44):
available.
For free.
But you would have to subscribeultimately to get the whole
package and any new content.
So it does change not the way,necessarily the way you design
and conceptualize a game, butdefinitely your motivated
(10:05):
differently because you want tocontinue to make games for this
platform.
You want it to be profitable.
Not that you don't want it to besuccessful when you're working
in a public broadcaster andeverything is free, but
certainly the pressure isdifferent.
Because if you don't maintainrevenue, then you can't keep
(10:25):
making games.
Yeah.
So it doesn't change how.
Necessarily how motivated peopleare or how excited people are to
make kids games.
It just amps up the pressure tobe successful.
So I think you might take a fewmore losses in the public realm
(10:47):
because you have room toexperiment, you wanna try things
with, an app that is revenuedriven.
You would probably be, it wouldbe harder to keep something and
learn from something that wasunsuccessful.
You would kill that faster andthen you would move on to the
next thing.
So it changes their perspectivea little when you're starting to
(11:10):
conceptualize thing, but theactual meat and potatoes of
making a game, you're stillthinking about.
What's the kid gonna learn fromit?
How are they going to use it?
You still put all the rightthinking in place.
It just, the ideas might be alittle more scrutinized before
they make it into production andlaunch.
Philippa (11:32):
Okay.
So if you are making games thatare aimed at children, young
people, teens, I'm assuming thatthere's some testing that goes
on that you Absolutely.
You, yeah.
You test the games, for loads ofdifferent things.
Safety, accessibility.
What is that is it thorough?
Rigorous?
(11:52):
Is it is gonna make money?
What are you looking at?
Jessica (11:56):
I think it's very expensive to build things and
then test it.
So early on in definitely thefew years of Covid made this a
lot harder, but early on in theprocess of making a game, it's
really valuable to do somethingcalled.
Paper prototyping and it'sliterally cutting up pieces of
(12:18):
paper, printing off things andsitting with a child and telling
them about the game and what youwanna do, and having them take
physical pieces of paper or diceor any kind of manipulative,
when I was at the publicbroadcaster, we had a whole
treasure chest of toys andgadgets that we would use to
(12:39):
bring into a paper prototypingsession.
Just so that we could see how achild would interact with a
concept.
To give you an example, one gamewe worked on had a slider where
we wanted them to choose howlikely something would be with a
slider.
We weren't sure a kid at thatage,'cause we were targeting a
(13:02):
kindergarten child, so five-ishyears old.
We weren't sure that they woulddo that.
So we printed off a slider andwe laminated it.
We went into a classroom and wewere just like, Hey, if you were
gonna choose the likelihood ofsomething and this end of the
slider is unlikely, and this endof the slider is likely.
(13:24):
What would you do?
We just wanted to see would theyslide it?
Would they tap it?
And that thing is a lot cheaperto do and to observe children in
the classroom or somewhere andprint off some pieces of paper
than to build it and then askthem to tell us if it's right or
wrong.
So whenever possible, to be ableto do that in a more tangible
(13:46):
way and have kids touch and feeland move things around can be so
enlightening in the early stagesof developing a concept.
So a lot of times there's a fewconcepts floating around when
you're in production for alarger initiative.
So you have a few concepts thatyou're bringing into a classroom
for kids and you're justwatching them, and depending on
(14:08):
the age of the kids.
Those children aren'tnecessarily the most articulate.
So you're really, depending onyour observation skills and then
comparing with your colleaguesand saying oh, I saw this child
do this, and I thought that wasreally interesting.
What's your thought about it?
So those early concepts that youhave putting just in the most
(14:30):
analog way in front of kids is agreat first step and often
really important.
And then from there you move onto an early version of the game
with maybe not the most finessedartwork and animation, but the
general functionality is thereand you've taken all that
(14:50):
learning from your paperprototyping and you've put it
into the first version of thegame.
Maybe it's not fully functional,but you think it's, to a point
where the child playing it isnot going to be confused.
Depending on their age.
Again, older kids.
You can share super raw thingswith younger kids, you do wanna
make sure it's pretty or they'llbe confused, so you take
(15:13):
another.
An early version of thedeveloped game menu, again
largely observational dependingon the kid, but people do these
things with online tools wherethey'll upload a game and
somebody will do it remotely.
And that can work depending, butwhen you're designing games for
younger kids, so much of it isin their body language or what
(15:35):
they say or how they react orhow they look at you or their
parent.
So really doing that in personfor younger kids is so critical.
And to see how they hold thedevice or the mouse or the phone
or the tablet and how theymanipulate that because you get
the.
Tiniest things like they mightput their thumb on the screen.
(15:55):
So how do you deal with that?
And so you need to observe that.
It's really important to seethat in person and then take
that away and adjust whatever'snecessary, finesse and polish
the final game.
And then when it's nearcomplete, you wanna again, put
it in front of the children andmake sure there's nothing you
(16:15):
didn't miss.
So it can be very thorough.
I'm not saying that happens inevery place for every game, but
when you are doing this workdoing that taking the time to do
that, those three steps, maybemore depending on the game and
the size of the game, the scopeof the game and the how complex
(16:35):
it is.
But having those three pieces.
Really ensures that by the timeit's launched, you have some
confidence that it's going toperform for kits.
Philippa (16:49):
So that I'm imagining takes quite a period of time.
It's not over a few weeks.
And while you are going throughthis process, are you also
assessing for safety and,'causethere's lots now about online
safety and grooming and allthose sorts of things.
How do you test for that duringthat process?
Jessica (17:10):
In all honesty, most of the content that I've worked on
and the games that I've builthave not, has not been beyond
like my first role in a, in anonline community has not
generally been, nested anywherewhere kids could interact.
So it's been out of outta thescope of the actual game
creation, certainly where thesegames sit in larger websites or
(17:33):
apps, all of that safety kindagets built into those platforms
more than the actual gamegenerally.
But to comment on accessibility.
As well, which is a huge pieceof making games really for
anybody.
That is part of the observationtoo because definitely having
(17:55):
various ages, variousdevelopmental abilities, testing
games, it really helps you frameup and make adjustments that
work for all.
So I think when.
Any, anything that you're makingthat's accessible, most of the
changes you make are not justgood for the person who has the
(18:16):
challenge, they're good foreverybody.
It's a really important part ofthe observation piece too.
And then of course you just havethe standard things in place
that you're always accountingfor, like color contrast or
certainly with.
Children.
I know I mentioned the idea ofsliding something which is not
actually the best interactionfor a small, for a smaller
(18:40):
child, a younger child.
This is a very hard thing to do.
Sliding your finger across.
Dragging things is harder to dowhen you're younger.
And of course if you have anyphysical challenges with that.
So there always has to be analternate way to play the game
and still be successful.
So all those things are floatingaround as you're designing these
things.
Philippa (18:58):
Okay, thank you.
And then when they arecompleted, I guess they are
categorized, just like for the,for this podcast, we have to say
what category it falls under.
And I would imagine that somegames are educational based,
some games are fun based.
Some games, I don't know, maybethere's other categories how.
(19:22):
How do you, are the standardsthat if you are saying this is
an educational game, is there astandard in the industry that
means yes, the parent can beconfident that this is an
educational game or this is afun game or whatever it is?
Jessica (19:40):
I, you know what, not that I'm aware of.
I don't think there's a standardand certainly when you look at
the app store and you type ineducational games, they're all
over the place.
It really, in my experience, hasbeen wherever you, whatever
company you're working for it's,they have decided the standard
for their educational games.
(20:00):
And certainly when I was workingon games like Peppa Pig games,
they're all broadly educational.
Social emotional learning orlike really basic math or
language concepts, but.
Not specifically educational,and I would classify it more as
(20:20):
like edutainment than education.
When I worked for a.
Public broadcaster.
We did both because we weresupporting a lot of the
broadcasts, the television showswith associated games or
activities for those shows.
Those ones were more broadlyeducational edutainment, but
(20:41):
then we also did things thatwere really more specifically.
Classroom based because thatbroadcaster was supported,
primarily funded by the Ministryof Education in Ontario, a lot
of the educational games we didwere specifically curriculum
driven, working with educatorswho were specialists in the
(21:03):
curriculum.
So we were really identifyingcertain learning objectives in
the curriculum in any givengame.
We would layer those.
So we were, we I spent a lot oftime working on a suite of games
that were math and stem.
So really specific like learningobjectives in there.
But we would also.
Overlay the narrative with othercurriculums like the social
(21:27):
studies curriculum, so we couldhave the narrative that would
support another curriculum.
And then the actual learningactivity in the game was more
math or STEM related.
So we tried to.
Layer in as much learning as wecould.
'cause we didn't wanna makehere's a social studies game and
let's learn about the geographyof Canada.
(21:50):
We just wanted to embed thatinto the narrative of the game.
Philippa (21:55):
Those sound like really interesting projects to
work on.
Really?
I imagine you They were, yeah,they were the best.
Yeah.
You learned quite a bit.
So I wouldn't, especially if youwere learning the educational
things as well.
Jessica (22:05):
It certainly helped me like to learn all about this
curriculum all about the Ontariocurriculum right before my
children actually ended up inthe school system.
So sometimes I'm like, oh,that's interesting that you're
learning this here.
Is that, has the curriculumchanged?
I became such a nerd about it.
Philippa (22:23):
Oh that's great.
I suppose one of the things Iwondered was when you are
developing games for children,are you, are developers thinking
about how what the safety iswithin that?
Or are you relying on parents tobe vigilant about that?
(22:43):
Are there, things around we arenot gonna let somebody be on
this app for five and a halfhours when they're four.
We're not going to give themaccess to be able to buy things
or do you know what I mean?
Or are you thinking aboutActually we are gonna build this
up and each parent is gonnamanage and police it themselves.
Jessica (23:06):
Yeah, I mean there's definitely an element of, at any
place I've worked where you arethinking about the amount of
time and that they are spendingon a game or an app, and it is
definitely, or it has beendefinitely used as a success
metric to get more time.
I think the way that is thoughtabout is not necessarily.
(23:34):
I am trying to think about howto frame this.
Definitely when I worked forlike at Hasbro, you definitely
thought more about a higher timespent and it was, thought about
as you wanna keep people on theapp When working for a public
broadcaster, it wasn'tnecessarily used in the same
(23:54):
way.
I think it was used more toindicate.
To think about if we might havefailed on a game or there might
be a failure to the game orsomething we've missed.
To give you an example, a lot ofthe preschool games that we
made, generally, we werethinking about a three to five
(24:15):
minute play experience.
So we weren't thinking aboutcreating play experiences that
were like 20 minutes long.
We were thinking a 5-year-old isgonna reasonably go through a
game experience in three to fiveminutes, and it's gonna be a
nice.
Amount of gameplay.
So if that time spent was eithertoo high or too low, we're like,
why are they going back andrepeating this game?
(24:36):
Is that a good thing or not?
And if it was too low or we werelike, oh, did we fail something
somewhere?
And they're confused and they'rejust dropping off'cause they
don't like it or they don'tunderstand it.
So the conversation around timespent was different in both
places.
Philippa (24:52):
So if you were play, if you were developing, I
suppose I'm just aware that forlots of families that I work
with and lots of conversationsthat, that I have, one of the
biggest battles that I thinkfamilies have nowadays is
getting their children off theirdevices.
And you know what?
(25:14):
However they try it, whetherthey're doing timers, whether
they're doing countdowns,whether they're changing the
games.
Yeah.
It feels like there's thisconstant draw to be on their
tablet.
Yes.
And I suppose I was wonderingfrom a production end, is that
what you are?
(25:34):
Trying to do, I don't mean haveconflict in the parent house.
That's not, yes.
What I mean, but that the aim isto encourage the child to be on
the game for the maximum of timepossible.
Jessica (25:48):
I don't think that's like the main driver by any
means.
I just think the conversationsabout it are different.
I don't think personally, andmaybe that's because I've been
in the position of being able tolead a lot of these teams.
It's never been like personallysomething I've driven as like a
metric that is super importantto have somebody on a game for
(26:10):
an hour or anything.
That was never but it was morethat the way it was perceived
was like more of a.
Higher time spent was a goodthing when you're working for a
private or like a for-profittype of thing.
And then having thatconversation is just diff more
about the child's experiencewhen you're working with a
(26:31):
not-for-profit.
So I don't think it is like ahuge, at least in my experience,
it's not like the main driver orthere's not like some sort of
nefarious, like we must keep thekids on there.
For as long as possible.
But I do think there are a lotof companies having more
meaningful conversations aboutthat and ensuring that there
we're not engaging in addictivepractices.
(26:52):
Certainly that does come intoplay sometimes when you're
creating game concepts and everyonce in a while you create a
concept and you're like, thisfeels a little bit too much like
gambling.
You know what I mean?
Because gambling can be like.
It's a game.
Those are games.
Sometimes you do start down thepath of a con a concept and
(27:13):
you're like, oh, this, it's morethis feels wrong because it
Yeah.
The mechanic might feel a littlebit Yeah.
Like gambling,
Philippa (27:21):
yeah.
So the
Jessica (27:22):
conversation kind of ends there
Philippa (27:24):
because I guess there's, for the games for them
to be.
Entertaining and engaging.
In some ways they've got to behigh reward, haven't they?
Because if kids are working,especially at 5, 6, 7, 8, and
even, if you're working reallyhard and the reward you are
getting from that is, islimited, then you are.
(27:44):
You don't have to stay on thatgame or you're gonna go to the
next one.
So I guess there's a balancebetween having this reward that
keeps the child engaged enoughand not rewarding it too much,
that it becomes highly addictiveor,
Jessica (28:02):
yes, and actually that's a good point because the.
Idea of a lot of the games thatI've worked on haven't had that
extra element of rewards, and Ithink it's, a little bit
inappropriate to have a lot ofbadges and stars and things for
(28:25):
younger children because.
A lot of times it doesn'tactually motivate them.
They don't actually understandthe concept of collect,
depending on their age.
They don't understand theconcept of collecting.
So one of the things that I'veactively done in the content
that I've worked on is try toavoid those like gamified
elements like stars or badges orstickers, because I don't think
(28:50):
it adds any value to the child,and it's just like something
that they work for that.
They don't even need.
There's definitely a lot ofthose practices in a lot of
kids' games that probably, I.
No expert on the actual resultsof putting these things in
(29:11):
games, but, probably motivatessome kids to stay on longer than
they should because they'relike, I need another sticker.
So in, in my work, I've activelytried to avoid adding those
features'cause I don't thinkthey often makes sense.
Philippa (29:25):
Yeah.
And I guess that leads me on to,so you've worked in these
companies and then.
Recently I've left and I've setup your own company and it's
really about giving parentsinformation.
So it's not about reviewing thegames or saying, no, this is a
great game.
This is not a great game.
(29:46):
It's about almost giving parentsa tool bag of information that
they can use to then decide,yes.
Whether the games are, what theywant their children to
participate in play or what theywere looking for.
So tell us a little bit moreabout that, Jessica.
(30:07):
Sure.
Jessica (30:09):
So originally I thought I would take all of my knowledge
around making games for kids fora couple of decades and turn
that into, maybe I would startto review.
Games out there.
But I think what I noticed wasthat there's a lot of people
(30:29):
doing content about safety andit's completely needed and
valuable.
And it's important for parentsto educate themselves on like
the tools and Roblox or YouTubeand be aware of that.
But what I didn't see wasreally.
Anything out there that helpedparents understand what is good
(30:53):
or valuable inside of a game andwhat isn't.
So it evolved into, it's calledPlay Wise.
It's play wise labs on YouTubeInstagram, et cetera, Facebook
and, wanted to just dissectpieces of games or often used
mechanics or marketing tacticsand just give parents small
(31:19):
nuggets of information that willhelp them make decisions.
So I know for me, because I'vespent so much time.
Working on kids games, I can goto the app store, open up a game
and know oh, that's not reallyeducational.
Like I, I can assess thosethings really quickly, but what
are some things that I can pullapart from that knowledge and
(31:40):
give one minute little pieces ofinformation that will help.
To give an example on themarketing front, pretty much
every kid's educational gamethat you look at in the app
store says thousands of games.
That has began become like justa every big app will market
itself that way.
(32:00):
And even when I was working inHasbro, I was like how can we
say that we have thousands ofgames In reality, those games,
mostly the preschool set, evenif there are thousands of games,
your child is gonna downloadthat and play like three of
them, and they're gonna go backand play those same three over
and over.
It's more like this.
This one video we created isdon't let that be your decision
(32:22):
point, because no child is evergonna play thousands of games.
And on top of that, within thosethousands of games, mostly
they've created a bunch ofdifferent games, like a tracing
game or a sorting game, andthey've just re-skinned it or
redesigned it a hundred times.
So those thousand games may be ahundred, but they're all
(32:43):
repurposed.
Several times.
So it's just a little tip don'tbe fooled by that type of
marketing.
Because it shouldn't play intoyour decision factor.
Do does your child like it?
Do they have fun?
Do they go back to it?
Are they engaged?
Asking different questions.
So trying to give those littlenuggets and just the spirit of
(33:04):
little bit of media literacy,different media literacy that
doesn't ex I don't see existingout there for parents.
And we also dissect differentgame types or.
Different approaches to feedbackor like the rewards piece, the
gamification piece, and notsaying like it's right or wrong,
just make the decision that'sright for your family with some
(33:25):
of these nuggets in mind.
Philippa (33:29):
Okay?
And then so that will then helpparents think about.
So this is the type of game I'mafter.
We are looking for something tomaybe help my child on a car
journey and we want somethingthat, but when we get to the end
of the car journey that they'renot then gonna be screaming and
shouting that they want tocontinue the game or we are
(33:50):
looking for them to, hearlanguage or, whatever it is.
So that those.
Kind of nuggets will then helpparents to look at the games
that are available.
'cause there are hundreds,aren't they in the app store?
Oh, or
Jessica (34:04):
more
Philippa (34:04):
Yeah.
Yeah, millions.
It will help them then to decidewhich ones are going to be okay.
Because one of the other thingsthat I noticed is that you get a
game that becomes popular.
And then when you try and findit, there's so many others that
are similar to it.
Like the branding is the same,the name it, and you get, I get
(34:25):
really confused about actually,which 1:00 AM I using?
Which one is the original, whichone is gonna give me the content
that I want?
Jessica (34:35):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's just the natureof the beast right now.
People are glomming ontowhatever's successful and trying
to repeat it, which makes it sohard to sift through the noise.
Because I agree.
Or even just the sponsored adsthat pop up on top of you look
for a game, but you have toscroll down because it's nested
(34:57):
way below because those peoplehave bought.
Your keyword and sponsored.
So it, it does become reallyconfusing and certainly we
haven't done in our, in playwise, we haven't done a ton of
game recommendations yet, butone of our intentions is to also
recommend games and not analyzethem because it is, it's hard to
(35:21):
make kids games.
I know it looks simple, right?
They look simple and easy, butit is hard.
So I personally don't.
Love the idea of criticizingpeople who probably worked super
hard on, on a game.
I'd rather I could Happy torecommend some, but No it's a
complex thing even though it'sseemingly simple.
But yeah.
(35:41):
We would like to do more game,recommend issues.
'cause just for what you said,it's the sea of things that are
out there.
It's really hard to sift throughit.
Philippa (35:50):
And I think just knowing what you said, that some
people will buy the words you'vesearched, so you might be
searching, I don't know, cookeryor wordle or something like
that.
But actually the actual wordlegame is like five lines down,
isn't it?
Yeah.
Because there's these otherthings, and I think that's just
really useful for people to knowthat actually,
Jessica (36:10):
yeah, pay attention to that sponsored banner.
Philippa (36:13):
Absolutely.
So what do you think the valueis in, in these online game
apps, whether it's on the phone,on the tablet, on the computer?
Is there a value for childrenand young people?
Jessica (36:30):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think there is value infinding.
Engaging interactive screentime, I know for my kids, I try
to ensure that I structure theirtime so that they're not just
staring down the barrel atYouTube and droning and, so I
think it's really important tohave.
(36:52):
A variety and a mix of screentime that is, it's screens are
pervasive, right?
You can't, it's, you can't avoidthem.
So if your child is gonna be ona screen at least try to find
something that's interactive,that is positive, that is
enjoying, enjoy, offers themsome enjoyment is something that
(37:12):
they can not just interact withtheir hands, but maybe they even
speak back to the screen.
I think those are my favoritegames when kids start to talk
back.
And answer the questions thathave been asked.
So I think it's just importantto, to look and have a mix of
media for your child and beequipped with the knowledge and
(37:34):
tools to have that mix for yourchild.
'cause it's so hard with allthese different platforms and
safety and for me, if I cancontribute to a world where at
least the game or activity thatI'm working on, it is engaging,
enjoyable, the child learnssomething we do our best to make
(37:56):
sure that it's going to be fun.
Fun is the first thing.
So I think it's, I wannacontribute to that mix of media
that's out there, and I think asa parent it's really hard to
navigate that.
So if I can also help, I.
Help people navigate that's goodtoo.
Philippa (38:12):
Definitely, because it's definitely that a thief of
time, isn't it?
Yes.
That, that you can start on onething and two hours later you're
like, oh my gosh.
I was just having a look.
And you, it's like you go down,down a rabbit hole and I imagine
that's no different for childrenand young people.
And I, I.
I suspect my, my son is just inhis early twenties, so we've
(38:33):
missed, I missed the big, theexplosion.
Whereas I see my nieces who aremuch younger, they, they want
the phones, they want theirapps.
They, even at a younger age, butI imagine there are interactive
games there.
I know that we, used one my sonset up at Christmas where
(38:54):
everybody can have something onthe phone.
And then we answer a questionthat's on the tv.
So yes, there is ways that youcan play together.
Yeah.
As a family using apps isabsolutely.
Jessica (39:06):
I think it, I think that's just it.
I've always, my feeling has beenit.
If there's interaction, ifthere's play, if there's
collaboration happening, itshouldn't be demonized'cause
there's a screen involved withthat.
I know personally speaking as aparent, my kids are, my boys are
nine and 12 and yeah, sometimesthey're just deep in YouTube and
(39:30):
you kinda have to snap them outof it.
But other times they're.
On their computers, which arenext to each other playing
Roblox, and they're just talkingand chatting and saying meet me
here, do this.
And those are the times that Imight let them play a little
longer than I would usuallybecause they're actually engaged
in doing something together.
(39:51):
And I think that's.
Where the magic is of like ahaving screen as part of your
media mix.
But as soon as they're, ifthey're just silently playing
for an hour and their time isup, I'm like, okay, time to go.
But I think that's so important,right?
If there's a piece ofinteractivity or fun or
collaboration or conversationwith it, then.
(40:13):
It shouldn't be demonized.
And at the same time, that makeslike those screen time rules an
extra layer of like complexityfor parents to manage.
Because I don't think it's assimple as saying this aged child
should only get this many hoursa day.
I think you have to feel thatout as a parent and find out
what works for you and yourfamily, right?
Philippa (40:35):
Absolutely.
And I guess, so I remember.
Again, when my son was reallytiny, I went to a conference and
the speaker there said, over 40%of your children are going to
have jobs that haven't even beeninvented yet.
That, that we don't even knowthat are going to be jobs.
(40:55):
And then my son in Covid reallydidn't enjoy what he was doing
at college, and so I just saidto him.
Babe, you just have to do 30hours of something a week.
I don't mind what it is.
You can go to college, you cango to work, you can do a bit of
both.
It doesn't really matter, butyou have to do 30 hours.
So he came to me, makes me laughnow, and he said I found a game.
(41:18):
I found a college course where Ican play computer games for 30
hours.
That's what I want to do.
Wow.
Yeah, like it's a local college.
It's called eSports.
They give you the games.
There's a whole suite.
That's what I wanna do.
So what could I say?
I'd said, as long as you dosomething for 30 hours.
(41:39):
So I was like, yeah, okay, then.
Yeah, that's fine.
And actually he's now, he wentthrough college and did it, and
he is now doing eSports as adegree.
And, who would've thought thatyou could go to college?
And I am oversimplifying it.
It's a lot more work thanplaying computer games.
Of course.
Technically that in the firstyear, that is what they did.
(42:02):
They assessed and looked atcomputer games.
Yeah.
And played them and got accessto them.
So I guess my point is that,that we have to adapt, don't we,
in a world, but we needknowledge to do that because
Yes.
Some it moves so fast,especially when you're my age.
We didn't have mobile phones andall those sorts of things.
(42:24):
Yeah.
And now it's growing up so itdoes move very fast.
So it's about keeping, asparents, as up to date as you
possibly can.
And I'm guessing that's whatPlay Wise Labs wants to do is
keep parents as up to date asthey can about things that are
going on so they can make thosesafe decisions.
Jessica (42:44):
Exactly.
'cause it's so hard and there'sdefinitely a lot of people
making excellent content aboutthe specifics of, the safety
tools that you can use, butfiguring out, like I don't even
know if the game they're playingis worthwhile playing.
Is hard enough.
So that's what we're hoping tocontribute through that.
And yeah, it's just so complexto, it's the layers that are
(43:07):
involved in parenting nowadays.
Or Yeah, I didn't, there was nophones when I grew up.
Even my kids sometimes werelike, what did your parents do
with screen time?
We didn't get a PC till, I waslike, in high school
Philippa (43:21):
I used to put two p in a call box to phone my friend.
Yeah, exactly.
Jessica (43:27):
Exactly.
We just met, there was nophones.
Philippa (43:31):
Yeah.
Jessica (43:32):
Yeah.
That's very funny.
I.
Philippa (43:33):
Absolutely.
And you can't, Ima, even now, Icouldn't imagine whether we
wouldn't be doing this, would wewithout the development.
So it is an amazing thing, whatage would do, are the youngest
games aimed at do do you think?
Jessica (43:50):
2, 2, 2 years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think, really that feelslike too young for me.
But again, I do think it's apersonal parental choice, but
certainly people are designinggames for two to five year olds.
Probably like in that bucketoften.
(44:10):
But.
Again, I'm, and people, kids areplaying them.
It just depends on, it's aparent's personal choice whether
or not they're giving phones andtablets to their kids at two.
But I think a lot of the gamesthat are being designed for
really young children are, oftenreally good and thoughtful and
(44:32):
thinking about that age.
So again, I think it just comesdown to a personal choice of.
The parents' ideas and thoughtsaround screens in their
children's lives, right?
It becomes increasingly hard tokeep it away from your kids.
It feels like a game.
How long can I keep screens awayfrom my kids, right?
Philippa (44:52):
I guess especially 'cause adults are run them all
the time and our children justdo what we model, don't they?
And if we are looking at phonesand screens all the time, then I
guess they want to.
But I suppose my last question'cause I know we are running
outta time, is.
When you are thinking aboutcontent and games for children,
I guess depending on with, youare gonna be thinking about
(45:14):
something different when you'rethinking about a two and
3-year-old than you are an a, aneight and 9-year-old.
Yes.
And I'm guessing you are, youare.
Play wise Lab will help parentsthink about actually what do I
want to be thinking about for my4-year-old compared to what do I
want to be thinking about for my9-year-old?
Jessica (45:35):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think too, it's, it, there'san extra layer of like
complexity defining that contentbecause the app stores aren't
set up to tell you, I think,they'll generally say it's four
plus or something, so it becomeseven harder.
But yeah, definitely though whengames are designed, generally
you are thinking about a prettynarrow age target because
(45:58):
children's change every sixmonths for the time they're
born.
So generally games are designedreally specifically for, in my
experience, for a reallytargeted age and ability.
But it does become hard to findspecific content through like
the way that app store searchesexists.
So definitely when we'refiguring out content for play
(46:23):
wise, we are trying to bespecific to like, if you have a
toddler, and these are the kindsof things you wanna ask yourself
when you're evaluating games.
Philippa (46:33):
Yeah.
So that will then help people orparents, grandparents think
about, okay, so this is gonna bemore suitable for this age range
of children, right?
Like you say, you can't say,every family's gonna be
different, aren't they?
And gonna choose differentthings.
But I suppose having theknowledge to then be able to
make that in a as an informedway as possible as a parent is
(46:56):
just going to give.
Was, I guess a peace of mind andour children the best possible
experience of online games.
Jessica (47:06):
Exactly.
And by the time they hit eight,nine years old, they don't wanna
play kids' games anymore.
No.
They're off to Fortnite andRoblox and Minecraft.
Those are, technically seen askids games, but they're exposed
then to everyone, right?
Yeah.
Because at all ages are playingthose games.
Philippa (47:27):
Okay.
Very last question though,Jessica.
Sure.
How do you think this world isgonna develop?
This is a big question for thelast one, but how do you see it
developing over the next kind offive or 10 years?
Jessica (47:42):
That's a tough one.
It.
Thinking back about how thingshave evolved from the past like
20 plus years.
It's, there's been interestingincremental changes, but there's
been so much it feels the lastcouple years has been this
anticipation that things like VRmight.
Explode.
I think that's prettyinappropriate for children.
(48:04):
I don't think any kid undereight probably should have a be
playing in vr.
I don't think it makes sense.
Philippa (48:11):
Why kid has to take when he first had it, anti
sickness.
Tablet.
Yes.
Yes.
Mean really?
You'd be like, I wanna play withmy headset more minute in an
hour or so.
So we'd come down and taketravel sickness pills.
Jessica (48:26):
I get that because I have the same problem.
Philippa (48:30):
Like
Jessica (48:30):
what?
Yeah, but I think that, I think,I don't think that's going to
hit with children.
I think, I don't think it'sgoing to hit, it doesn't feel
like it's going to hitcommercially.
I think it's had a moment, but Idon't know that it's.
But I do have felt for a longtime, there's always this
potential about like more.
(48:53):
Augmented reality.
When Pokemon Go became a hugething.
I always felt like that hasn'tcompletely hit the kids arena
yet.
I've certainly heard about a fewthings and there's things out
there that are interesting, butI do think that's an interesting
place that, that children'sgaming could go just because of
(49:15):
that interactive piece that Italked about.
Being out in the world or usingyour movement.
I think there's opportunities inthat space that will, I'm hoping
will come to be because I thinkit's a really interesting place
for kids to play because Ialways think about these very
these.
(49:36):
My youngest had these moments inhis childhood that I've always
thought about as something thatwas so powerful.
Like at some point I decidedjust because of myself to
introduce my youngest to Mr.
Rogers neighborhood and he wouldtalk back to the screen and I
love that he would answer thequestions out loud.
(49:57):
So I've always held onto thisidea of I want kids to.
Feel compelled and safe enoughto answer and interact in a way.
And then he also had this verysimilar experience.
He was playing.
He was really into the KhanAcademy kids games and apps, and
there was a bunch of reallygreat.
Videos in there and he would puthis tablet down and start to
(50:18):
dance and do the activities.
So I've always felt like thosetwo things cemented in my mind
is like so powerful.
Like I wanna have kids play,like I wanna design things where
kids play and interact likethat.
So that's why I feel and hopethat sort of augmented reality,
XR air like that moves forwardand explodes a little, because I
(50:39):
think that's such a.
A more interesting place to playfor kids and I don't know that
it, do you think I'm out thereenough?
Philippa (50:46):
Do you think AI will be part of that?
That kind of being able to, to Iguess yeah, interact in the
moment, I suppose if you are,with the Pokemon Go that and
then we
Jessica (50:58):
have the, if there's a back and forth.
Yeah, absolutely.
It'll be so interesting.
I think that is is theexploration that is next.
Philippa (51:07):
A bit scary though.
Jessica Pokemon go first roundout, you'd see everybody walking
around with their phones.
Wouldn't you like trying tocatch the Pokemon with the balls
or whatever.
Jessica (51:19):
But there was something so powerful about like when that
really hit and going to the parkand there's all these other
people doing the same thing.
So I love that.
Or whatever that was, that,those elements of community and
interaction, and I am I'mhopeful that is a, is the next
wave, yeah.
Philippa (51:37):
And that was all different ages.
But I had friends who I thinkprobably still do play it.
Yeah.
But there was a, it was a widevariety, age range.
It wasn't really aimed at oneperson.
And like you say, yeah, you'dsee them walking around the
street or there was an event,wasn't there, and everybody's
out trying to, everybody's out.
Yeah.
Jessica (51:55):
I remember walking outta my house during that time
and my neighbor was juststanding in front of her door
and then she's oh, it's Pokemongoing.
I'm like, okay.
Philippa (52:04):
Normal.
Jessica (52:04):
She's standing there randomly is she okay?
Philippa (52:08):
Oh yeah.
Yeah, so that would be it.
It's, I guess that's reallytaking it off the screen and
into the world, isn't it?
But what's still with thoseelements?
Jessica (52:16):
Yeah.
Philippa (52:17):
We'll see if your predictions come.
Jessica (52:20):
Yeah.
Philippa (52:21):
So I will in the description of the podcast,
we'll put a link to yourwebsite.
You also have a, like you said,a Facebook page, an Instagram
page, and a YouTube page sopeople can find it's play wise
labs.
You're based in Canada aren'tyou accessible everywhere?
Yes, correct.
Through the joy of online, yeah.
(52:43):
So thank you very much forspending this time and talking
to us.
Jessica.
Jessica (52:48):
Thanks for having me.
I love talking about this stuff,so it was fun.
Philippa (52:52):
Thank you.
Welcome to this week's episode of Pondering Play and
Therapy, and this week my guestis Jessica McLaughlin, and she
has over 20 years of experiencein designing and developing,
engaging and educational digitalcontent and products for
children, families, and adults.
(00:22):
She has led the content gamedesign and visual design
direction team as a seniorcreative director at Find Your
Fun Studios, which is HASBO.
I think we'll probably be awareof that name and Wizards of the
Coast working on global brandssuch as Pepper Pig and other
(00:47):
HASBO games.
As an interactive director.
She's received multiplenominations and awards for her
work, including the Youth MediaAlliance Award of Excellence,
nominations, kids screennominations, kids Screen HOT 50
and International Serious PlayAwards.
(01:08):
She's also published web basedhomework tools for parents,
teachers, and students featuringexclusive video content,
printable activity sheets andeducational games.
And she's really passionateabout creating fun and
meaningful experiences throughcollaboration, innovation, and
(01:30):
diverse.
Perspectives.
Jessica, welcome to ponderingplay in therapy.
Thank you for your time.
Jessica (01:38):
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Philippa (01:40):
Oh, that's great.
So really it's an.
Unusual career path that you'vegot.
And I suppose, I guess I'm not,hopefully this isn't
disrespectful, but for a womanand a woman of our age as well
do you know what I Yeah,absolutely.
I get it.
Like my son is all into this,but he's in his twenties and he
(02:01):
is going to university and doingeSports.
When you get a bit past that youit's not something you imagine
people to be doing.
So what led you here?
Jessica (02:12):
It was so accidental and a little bit serendipitous I
think.
There was no formal training forthis in my youth when I was
doing post-secondary andstudying in school I took
broadcasting and journalism andendeavored to work in media.
I.
And my first media job happenedto be at a radio station, which
(02:33):
also owned a children'stelevision network in Canada
called YTV, and I just appliedto a job that was at the time,
new and interesting a new spacefor kids to start to connect
online.
In the early two thousands, itwas a, an online community for
(02:54):
kids tween age, early teen age.
And my first job thereaccidentally in children's media
was moderating children in chatrooms, making sure they were
being safe, and, connecting withthem and learning about them,
they were well aware that therewas moderated chat rooms.
And also that job was, just alittle bit of everything in the
(03:18):
online community space.
That was fairly new and excitingin the early two thousands for
kids.
So I also called parents andtalked to them on the phone and
made sure that they knew thattheir child had signed up for
this service.
We had a bunch of user generatedcontent.
Kids would answer questions orsubmit stories.
(03:40):
So it was quite accidental.
I wanted to work in media.
I found a job in tv, but I wasdoing something new and
unexpected.
So from there I really loved.
That idea of making content forkids and connecting with kids
and learning from them andseeing their interesting
(04:01):
behaviors online that werereally unlike what I was doing
online.
So I spent a fair bit of timethere and that role expanded
into writing doing video gamereviews, making games.
Doing contests.
So it was a little bit of alet's try everything and see
what kids are into online typeof job.
(04:25):
And I was there for five or sixyears as well, from that
experience, I ended up workingat a public broadcaster in
Canada called TVO.
And took all of those thingsthat I learned and made a lot of
games for kids preschool kidsright up to high school.
Worked on digital learningproducts.
(04:45):
So a lot of courses that kidstook in high school or junior
high or elementary.
So really just.
Accidental.
But that first job in theindustry was so interesting and
dynamic and exciting, and Iloved interacting with children
and learning from them.
And that it just kept mesearching for those sorts of
(05:08):
opportunities and I just somehowmade a career of it
accidentally.
So now, all this time later whenI.
Meet people who younger, whomake a decision to work in
Children's Medium.
I was like so delighted thatthey're mature enough and they
got it.
I was just, it was an accident,but a happy accident,
Philippa (05:28):
I think for lots of people you just fall in and find
the thing that captures thatimagination for you and captures
that passion.
Absolutely.
And it sounds like that, that,did you, when you say games.
So for people that maybe don'tunderstand what you're talking
about, are you talking about theapps on a phone?
Are you talking about Google Agame or something that helps
(05:51):
them with learning?
What are you talking about?
What does games mean?
It's not snakes and ladders,
Jessica (05:56):
All of those things.
So digital, anything.
In the digital space.
So yeah, initially the gamesthat I would've worked on in the
early days were as expected, thetechnology and the trends change
over time.
Certainly web-based games werepopular for a really long time.
The early on it was, flash gamesand they were just kids were
(06:20):
just going on websites andplaying those games like crazy.
And then, so what's
Philippa (06:24):
A flash?
A flash game?
What's a flash game?
Jessica (06:27):
I think people would remember what a flash game was,
just based on a lot of the a lotof the hubbub that happened when
iPhone came to be.
A lot of web-based content wasunavailable for iPhone because
they didn't adopt Flash as aplatform.
It was just really like anembedded game on a site.
(06:48):
Like at the time, we would makethose games in a piece of
software, embed them on thesite.
So it was just a moment in time.
But that evolved into currentday web-based games, which are
just different, createddifferently, but still they're
still web-based games, but alsoapps.
And then a lot of what I've donein the past is just create
(07:10):
interactive elements forwhatever piece of content that I
might be working on.
So in the case of like digitallearning content for kids, there
might be manipulative itemsthat, you can, like a number
line or counting blocks.
Anything interactive really.
(07:31):
Okay.
Philippa (07:32):
Okay.
And you've done that in yourcommunity as a community care
based project, have you where tosupport your, to support the
community you live in?
Is that right?
Jessica (07:44):
What I did at at a public broadcaster making
content.
It was this public broadcaster Iwork for was in the province of
Ontario in Canada.
So you did have to be mindful ofrepresenting the people of
Ontario or they were your mainuser, right?
So you had to be, so when we'remaking digital learning
(08:05):
products, it had to be thecorrect curriculum for the
people of Ontario.
And then you had to be mindfulof just, it's a very large
province with varying degrees oflike connectivity.
So you had to think about peoplein Northern Ontario, which is
very, can be very remote.
Not the greatest internet.
(08:26):
So you had to be mindful ofcreating content that was also
efficient and able to be playedand downloaded for someone with
bad inter internet connection orsomeone in a city who has a
super fast internet connection.
So being mindful of all of thosepeople in users in that
geography.
Philippa (08:45):
Okay.
And I'm, I imagine that.
From a broadcaster, I guess likefrom our B, B, C, then you would
expect that content to be free.
Yes.
And accessible to anybody.
But you've also worked on games,for HaBO and that, that are
paid.
They're free at the point ofaccess, aren't they?
But then there's anencouragement to to purchase
(09:09):
things in there.
So purchase different items toprogress the game faster or
prettier, or you've alsodeveloped those, have you?
Jessica (09:20):
Yes, absolutely.
So I when I worked at Hasbro,the motivation was more around
getting subscribers to an app.
So yeah, you're right, therewould be a free element to it to
encourage, moving on to asubscription service.
So a limited amount of contentor games or videos would be
(09:44):
available.
For free.
But you would have to subscribeultimately to get the whole
package and any new content.
So it does change not the way,necessarily the way you design
and conceptualize a game, butdefinitely your motivated
(10:05):
differently because you want tocontinue to make games for this
platform.
You want it to be profitable.
Not that you don't want it to besuccessful when you're working
in a public broadcaster andeverything is free, but
certainly the pressure isdifferent.
Because if you don't maintainrevenue, then you can't keep
(10:25):
making games.
Yeah.
So it doesn't change how.
Necessarily how motivated peopleare or how excited people are to
make kids games.
It just amps up the pressure tobe successful.
So I think you might take a fewmore losses in the public realm
(10:47):
because you have room toexperiment, you wanna try things
with, an app that is revenuedriven.
You would probably be, it wouldbe harder to keep something and
learn from something that wasunsuccessful.
You would kill that faster andthen you would move on to the
next thing.
So it changes their perspectivea little when you're starting to
(11:10):
conceptualize thing, but theactual meat and potatoes of
making a game, you're stillthinking about.
What's the kid gonna learn fromit?
How are they going to use it?
You still put all the rightthinking in place.
It just, the ideas might be alittle more scrutinized before
they make it into production andlaunch.
Philippa (11:32):
Okay.
So if you are making games thatare aimed at children, young
people, teens, I'm assuming thatthere's some testing that goes
on that you Absolutely.
You, yeah.
You test the games, for loads ofdifferent things.
Safety, accessibility.
What is that is it thorough?
Rigorous?
(11:52):
Is it is gonna make money?
What are you looking at?
Jessica (11:56):
I think it's very expensive to build things and
then test it.
So early on in definitely thefew years of Covid made this a
lot harder, but early on in theprocess of making a game, it's
really valuable to do somethingcalled.
Paper prototyping and it'sliterally cutting up pieces of
(12:18):
paper, printing off things andsitting with a child and telling
them about the game and what youwanna do, and having them take
physical pieces of paper or diceor any kind of manipulative,
when I was at the publicbroadcaster, we had a whole
treasure chest of toys andgadgets that we would use to
(12:39):
bring into a paper prototypingsession.
Just so that we could see how achild would interact with a
concept.
To give you an example, one gamewe worked on had a slider where
we wanted them to choose howlikely something would be with a
slider.
We weren't sure a kid at thatage,'cause we were targeting a
(13:02):
kindergarten child, so five-ishyears old.
We weren't sure that they woulddo that.
So we printed off a slider andwe laminated it.
We went into a classroom and wewere just like, Hey, if you were
gonna choose the likelihood ofsomething and this end of the
slider is unlikely, and this endof the slider is likely.
(13:24):
What would you do?
We just wanted to see would theyslide it?
Would they tap it?
And that thing is a lot cheaperto do and to observe children in
the classroom or somewhere andprint off some pieces of paper
than to build it and then askthem to tell us if it's right or
wrong.
So whenever possible, to be ableto do that in a more tangible
(13:46):
way and have kids touch and feeland move things around can be so
enlightening in the early stagesof developing a concept.
So a lot of times there's a fewconcepts floating around when
you're in production for alarger initiative.
So you have a few concepts thatyou're bringing into a classroom
for kids and you're justwatching them, and depending on
(14:08):
the age of the kids.
Those children aren'tnecessarily the most articulate.
So you're really, depending onyour observation skills and then
comparing with your colleaguesand saying oh, I saw this child
do this, and I thought that wasreally interesting.
What's your thought about it?
So those early concepts that youhave putting just in the most
(14:30):
analog way in front of kids is agreat first step and often
really important.
And then from there you move onto an early version of the game
with maybe not the most finessedartwork and animation, but the
general functionality is thereand you've taken all that
(14:50):
learning from your paperprototyping and you've put it
into the first version of thegame.
Maybe it's not fully functional,but you think it's, to a point
where the child playing it isnot going to be confused.
Depending on their age.
Again, older kids.
You can share super raw thingswith younger kids, you do wanna
make sure it's pretty or they'llbe confused, so you take
(15:13):
another.
An early version of thedeveloped game menu, again
largely observational dependingon the kid, but people do these
things with online tools wherethey'll upload a game and
somebody will do it remotely.
And that can work depending, butwhen you're designing games for
younger kids, so much of it isin their body language or what
(15:35):
they say or how they react orhow they look at you or their
parent.
So really doing that in personfor younger kids is so critical.
And to see how they hold thedevice or the mouse or the phone
or the tablet and how theymanipulate that because you get
the.
Tiniest things like they mightput their thumb on the screen.
(15:55):
So how do you deal with that?
And so you need to observe that.
It's really important to seethat in person and then take
that away and adjust whatever'snecessary, finesse and polish
the final game.
And then when it's nearcomplete, you wanna again, put
it in front of the children andmake sure there's nothing you
(16:15):
didn't miss.
So it can be very thorough.
I'm not saying that happens inevery place for every game, but
when you are doing this workdoing that taking the time to do
that, those three steps, maybemore depending on the game and
the size of the game, the scopeof the game and the how complex
(16:35):
it is.
But having those three pieces.
Really ensures that by the timeit's launched, you have some
confidence that it's going toperform for kits.
Philippa (16:49):
So that I'm imagining takes quite a period of time.
It's not over a few weeks.
And while you are going throughthis process, are you also
assessing for safety and,'causethere's lots now about online
safety and grooming and allthose sorts of things.
How do you test for that duringthat process?
Jessica (17:10):
In all honesty, most of the content that I've worked on
and the games that I've builthave not, has not been beyond
like my first role in a, in anonline community has not
generally been, nested anywherewhere kids could interact.
So it's been out of outta thescope of the actual game
creation, certainly where thesegames sit in larger websites or
(17:33):
apps, all of that safety kindagets built into those platforms
more than the actual gamegenerally.
But to comment on accessibility.
As well, which is a huge pieceof making games really for
anybody.
That is part of the observationtoo because definitely having
(17:55):
various ages, variousdevelopmental abilities, testing
games, it really helps you frameup and make adjustments that
work for all.
So I think when.
Any, anything that you're makingthat's accessible, most of the
changes you make are not justgood for the person who has the
(18:16):
challenge, they're good foreverybody.
It's a really important part ofthe observation piece too.
And then of course you just havethe standard things in place
that you're always accountingfor, like color contrast or
certainly with.
Children.
I know I mentioned the idea ofsliding something which is not
actually the best interactionfor a small, for a smaller
(18:40):
child, a younger child.
This is a very hard thing to do.
Sliding your finger across.
Dragging things is harder to dowhen you're younger.
And of course if you have anyphysical challenges with that.
So there always has to be analternate way to play the game
and still be successful.
So all those things are floatingaround as you're designing these
things.
Philippa (18:58):
Okay, thank you.
And then when they arecompleted, I guess they are
categorized, just like for the,for this podcast, we have to say
what category it falls under.
And I would imagine that somegames are educational based,
some games are fun based.
Some games, I don't know, maybethere's other categories how.
(19:22):
How do you, are the standardsthat if you are saying this is
an educational game, is there astandard in the industry that
means yes, the parent can beconfident that this is an
educational game or this is afun game or whatever it is?
Jessica (19:40):
I, you know what, not that I'm aware of.
I don't think there's a standardand certainly when you look at
the app store and you type ineducational games, they're all
over the place.
It really, in my experience, hasbeen wherever you, whatever
company you're working for it's,they have decided the standard
for their educational games.
(20:00):
And certainly when I was workingon games like Peppa Pig games,
they're all broadly educational.
Social emotional learning orlike really basic math or
language concepts, but.
Not specifically educational,and I would classify it more as
(20:20):
like edutainment than education.
When I worked for a.
Public broadcaster.
We did both because we weresupporting a lot of the
broadcasts, the television showswith associated games or
activities for those shows.
Those ones were more broadlyeducational edutainment, but
(20:41):
then we also did things thatwere really more specifically.
Classroom based because thatbroadcaster was supported,
primarily funded by the Ministryof Education in Ontario, a lot
of the educational games we didwere specifically curriculum
driven, working with educatorswho were specialists in the
(21:03):
curriculum.
So we were really identifyingcertain learning objectives in
the curriculum in any givengame.
We would layer those.
So we were, we I spent a lot oftime working on a suite of games
that were math and stem.
So really specific like learningobjectives in there.
But we would also.
Overlay the narrative with othercurriculums like the social
(21:27):
studies curriculum, so we couldhave the narrative that would
support another curriculum.
And then the actual learningactivity in the game was more
math or STEM related.
So we tried to.
Layer in as much learning as wecould.
'cause we didn't wanna makehere's a social studies game and
let's learn about the geographyof Canada.
(21:50):
We just wanted to embed thatinto the narrative of the game.
Philippa (21:55):
Those sound like really interesting projects to
work on.
Really?
I imagine you They were, yeah,they were the best.
Yeah.
You learned quite a bit.
So I wouldn't, especially if youwere learning the educational
things as well.
Jessica (22:05):
It certainly helped me like to learn all about this
curriculum all about the Ontariocurriculum right before my
children actually ended up inthe school system.
So sometimes I'm like, oh,that's interesting that you're
learning this here.
Is that, has the curriculumchanged?
I became such a nerd about it.
Philippa (22:23):
Oh that's great.
I suppose one of the things Iwondered was when you are
developing games for children,are you, are developers thinking
about how what the safety iswithin that?
Or are you relying on parents tobe vigilant about that?
(22:43):
Are there, things around we arenot gonna let somebody be on
this app for five and a halfhours when they're four.
We're not going to give themaccess to be able to buy things
or do you know what I mean?
Or are you thinking aboutActually we are gonna build this
up and each parent is gonnamanage and police it themselves.
Jessica (23:06):
Yeah, I mean there's definitely an element of, at any
place I've worked where you arethinking about the amount of
time and that they are spendingon a game or an app, and it is
definitely, or it has beendefinitely used as a success
metric to get more time.
I think the way that is thoughtabout is not necessarily.
(23:34):
I am trying to think about howto frame this.
Definitely when I worked forlike at Hasbro, you definitely
thought more about a higher timespent and it was, thought about
as you wanna keep people on theapp When working for a public
broadcaster, it wasn'tnecessarily used in the same
(23:54):
way.
I think it was used more toindicate.
To think about if we might havefailed on a game or there might
be a failure to the game orsomething we've missed.
To give you an example, a lot ofthe preschool games that we
made, generally, we werethinking about a three to five
(24:15):
minute play experience.
So we weren't thinking aboutcreating play experiences that
were like 20 minutes long.
We were thinking a 5-year-old isgonna reasonably go through a
game experience in three to fiveminutes, and it's gonna be a
nice.
Amount of gameplay.
So if that time spent was eithertoo high or too low, we're like,
why are they going back andrepeating this game?
(24:36):
Is that a good thing or not?
And if it was too low or we werelike, oh, did we fail something
somewhere?
And they're confused and they'rejust dropping off'cause they
don't like it or they don'tunderstand it.
So the conversation around timespent was different in both
places.
Philippa (24:52):
So if you were play, if you were developing, I
suppose I'm just aware that forlots of families that I work
with and lots of conversationsthat, that I have, one of the
biggest battles that I thinkfamilies have nowadays is
getting their children off theirdevices.
And you know what?
(25:14):
However they try it, whetherthey're doing timers, whether
they're doing countdowns,whether they're changing the
games.
Yeah.
It feels like there's thisconstant draw to be on their
tablet.
Yes.
And I suppose I was wonderingfrom a production end, is that
what you are?
(25:34):
Trying to do, I don't mean haveconflict in the parent house.
That's not, yes.
What I mean, but that the aim isto encourage the child to be on
the game for the maximum of timepossible.
Jessica (25:48):
I don't think that's like the main driver by any
means.
I just think the conversationsabout it are different.
I don't think personally, andmaybe that's because I've been
in the position of being able tolead a lot of these teams.
It's never been like personallysomething I've driven as like a
metric that is super importantto have somebody on a game for
(26:10):
an hour or anything.
That was never but it was morethat the way it was perceived
was like more of a.
Higher time spent was a goodthing when you're working for a
private or like a for-profittype of thing.
And then having thatconversation is just diff more
about the child's experiencewhen you're working with a
(26:31):
not-for-profit.
So I don't think it is like ahuge, at least in my experience,
it's not like the main driver orthere's not like some sort of
nefarious, like we must keep thekids on there.
For as long as possible.
But I do think there are a lotof companies having more
meaningful conversations aboutthat and ensuring that there
we're not engaging in addictivepractices.
(26:52):
Certainly that does come intoplay sometimes when you're
creating game concepts and everyonce in a while you create a
concept and you're like, thisfeels a little bit too much like
gambling.
You know what I mean?
Because gambling can be like.
It's a game.
Those are games.
Sometimes you do start down thepath of a con a concept and
(27:13):
you're like, oh, this, it's morethis feels wrong because it
Yeah.
The mechanic might feel a littlebit Yeah.
Like gambling,
Philippa (27:21):
yeah.
So the
Jessica (27:22):
conversation kind of ends there
Philippa (27:24):
because I guess there's, for the games for them
to be.
Entertaining and engaging.
In some ways they've got to behigh reward, haven't they?
Because if kids are working,especially at 5, 6, 7, 8, and
even, if you're working reallyhard and the reward you are
getting from that is, islimited, then you are.
(27:44):
You don't have to stay on thatgame or you're gonna go to the
next one.
So I guess there's a balancebetween having this reward that
keeps the child engaged enoughand not rewarding it too much,
that it becomes highly addictiveor,
Jessica (28:02):
yes, and actually that's a good point because the.
Idea of a lot of the games thatI've worked on haven't had that
extra element of rewards, and Ithink it's, a little bit
inappropriate to have a lot ofbadges and stars and things for
(28:25):
younger children because.
A lot of times it doesn'tactually motivate them.
They don't actually understandthe concept of collect,
depending on their age.
They don't understand theconcept of collecting.
So one of the things that I'veactively done in the content
that I've worked on is try toavoid those like gamified
elements like stars or badges orstickers, because I don't think
(28:50):
it adds any value to the child,and it's just like something
that they work for that.
They don't even need.
There's definitely a lot ofthose practices in a lot of
kids' games that probably, I.
No expert on the actual resultsof putting these things in
(29:11):
games, but, probably motivatessome kids to stay on longer than
they should because they'relike, I need another sticker.
So in, in my work, I've activelytried to avoid adding those
features'cause I don't thinkthey often makes sense.
Philippa (29:25):
Yeah.
And I guess that leads me on to,so you've worked in these
companies and then.
Recently I've left and I've setup your own company and it's
really about giving parentsinformation.
So it's not about reviewing thegames or saying, no, this is a
great game.
This is not a great game.
(29:46):
It's about almost giving parentsa tool bag of information that
they can use to then decide,yes.
Whether the games are, what theywant their children to
participate in play or what theywere looking for.
So tell us a little bit moreabout that, Jessica.
(30:07):
Sure.
Jessica (30:09):
So originally I thought I would take all of my knowledge
around making games for kids fora couple of decades and turn
that into, maybe I would startto review.
Games out there.
But I think what I noticed wasthat there's a lot of people
(30:29):
doing content about safety andit's completely needed and
valuable.
And it's important for parentsto educate themselves on like
the tools and Roblox or YouTubeand be aware of that.
But what I didn't see wasreally.
Anything out there that helpedparents understand what is good
(30:53):
or valuable inside of a game andwhat isn't.
So it evolved into, it's calledPlay Wise.
It's play wise labs on YouTubeInstagram, et cetera, Facebook
and, wanted to just dissectpieces of games or often used
mechanics or marketing tacticsand just give parents small
(31:19):
nuggets of information that willhelp them make decisions.
So I know for me, because I'vespent so much time.
Working on kids games, I can goto the app store, open up a game
and know oh, that's not reallyeducational.
Like I, I can assess thosethings really quickly, but what
are some things that I can pullapart from that knowledge and
(31:40):
give one minute little pieces ofinformation that will help.
To give an example on themarketing front, pretty much
every kid's educational gamethat you look at in the app
store says thousands of games.
That has began become like justa every big app will market
itself that way.
(32:00):
And even when I was working inHasbro, I was like how can we
say that we have thousands ofgames In reality, those games,
mostly the preschool set, evenif there are thousands of games,
your child is gonna downloadthat and play like three of
them, and they're gonna go backand play those same three over
and over.
It's more like this.
This one video we created isdon't let that be your decision
(32:22):
point, because no child is evergonna play thousands of games.
And on top of that, within thosethousands of games, mostly
they've created a bunch ofdifferent games, like a tracing
game or a sorting game, andthey've just re-skinned it or
redesigned it a hundred times.
So those thousand games may be ahundred, but they're all
(32:43):
repurposed.
Several times.
So it's just a little tip don'tbe fooled by that type of
marketing.
Because it shouldn't play intoyour decision factor.
Do does your child like it?
Do they have fun?
Do they go back to it?
Are they engaged?
Asking different questions.
So trying to give those littlenuggets and just the spirit of
(33:04):
little bit of media literacy,different media literacy that
doesn't ex I don't see existingout there for parents.
And we also dissect differentgame types or.
Different approaches to feedbackor like the rewards piece, the
gamification piece, and notsaying like it's right or wrong,
just make the decision that'sright for your family with some
(33:25):
of these nuggets in mind.
Philippa (33:29):
Okay?
And then so that will then helpparents think about.
So this is the type of game I'mafter.
We are looking for something tomaybe help my child on a car
journey and we want somethingthat, but when we get to the end
of the car journey that they'renot then gonna be screaming and
shouting that they want tocontinue the game or we are
(33:50):
looking for them to, hearlanguage or, whatever it is.
So that those.
Kind of nuggets will then helpparents to look at the games
that are available.
'cause there are hundreds,aren't they in the app store?
Oh, or
Jessica (34:04):
more
Philippa (34:04):
Yeah.
Yeah, millions.
It will help them then to decidewhich ones are going to be okay.
Because one of the other thingsthat I noticed is that you get a
game that becomes popular.
And then when you try and findit, there's so many others that
are similar to it.
Like the branding is the same,the name it, and you get, I get
(34:25):
really confused about actually,which 1:00 AM I using?
Which one is the original, whichone is gonna give me the content
that I want?
Jessica (34:35):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's just the natureof the beast right now.
People are glomming ontowhatever's successful and trying
to repeat it, which makes it sohard to sift through the noise.
Because I agree.
Or even just the sponsored adsthat pop up on top of you look
for a game, but you have toscroll down because it's nested
(34:57):
way below because those peoplehave bought.
Your keyword and sponsored.
So it, it does become reallyconfusing and certainly we
haven't done in our, in playwise, we haven't done a ton of
game recommendations yet, butone of our intentions is to also
recommend games and not analyzethem because it is, it's hard to
(35:21):
make kids games.
I know it looks simple, right?
They look simple and easy, butit is hard.
So I personally don't.
Love the idea of criticizingpeople who probably worked super
hard on, on a game.
I'd rather I could Happy torecommend some, but No it's a
complex thing even though it'sseemingly simple.
But yeah.
(35:41):
We would like to do more game,recommend issues.
'cause just for what you said,it's the sea of things that are
out there.
It's really hard to sift throughit.
Philippa (35:50):
And I think just knowing what you said, that some
people will buy the words you'vesearched, so you might be
searching, I don't know, cookeryor wordle or something like
that.
But actually the actual wordlegame is like five lines down,
isn't it?
Yeah.
Because there's these otherthings, and I think that's just
really useful for people to knowthat actually,
Jessica (36:10):
yeah, pay attention to that sponsored banner.
Philippa (36:13):
Absolutely.
So what do you think the valueis in, in these online game
apps, whether it's on the phone,on the tablet, on the computer?
Is there a value for childrenand young people?
Jessica (36:30):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think there is value infinding.
Engaging interactive screentime, I know for my kids, I try
to ensure that I structure theirtime so that they're not just
staring down the barrel atYouTube and droning and, so I
think it's really important tohave.
(36:52):
A variety and a mix of screentime that is, it's screens are
pervasive, right?
You can't, it's, you can't avoidthem.
So if your child is gonna be ona screen at least try to find
something that's interactive,that is positive, that is
enjoying, enjoy, offers themsome enjoyment is something that
(37:12):
they can not just interact withtheir hands, but maybe they even
speak back to the screen.
I think those are my favoritegames when kids start to talk
back.
And answer the questions thathave been asked.
So I think it's just importantto, to look and have a mix of
media for your child and beequipped with the knowledge and
(37:34):
tools to have that mix for yourchild.
'cause it's so hard with allthese different platforms and
safety and for me, if I cancontribute to a world where at
least the game or activity thatI'm working on, it is engaging,
enjoyable, the child learnssomething we do our best to make
(37:56):
sure that it's going to be fun.
Fun is the first thing.
So I think it's, I wannacontribute to that mix of media
that's out there, and I think asa parent it's really hard to
navigate that.
So if I can also help, I.
Help people navigate that's goodtoo.
Philippa (38:12):
Definitely, because it's definitely that a thief of
time, isn't it?
Yes.
That, that you can start on onething and two hours later you're
like, oh my gosh.
I was just having a look.
And you, it's like you go down,down a rabbit hole and I imagine
that's no different for childrenand young people.
And I, I.
I suspect my, my son is just inhis early twenties, so we've
(38:33):
missed, I missed the big, theexplosion.
Whereas I see my nieces who aremuch younger, they, they want
the phones, they want theirapps.
They, even at a younger age, butI imagine there are interactive
games there.
I know that we, used one my sonset up at Christmas where
(38:54):
everybody can have something onthe phone.
And then we answer a questionthat's on the tv.
So yes, there is ways that youcan play together.
Yeah.
As a family using apps isabsolutely.
Jessica (39:06):
I think it, I think that's just it.
I've always, my feeling has beenit.
If there's interaction, ifthere's play, if there's
collaboration happening, itshouldn't be demonized'cause
there's a screen involved withthat.
I know personally speaking as aparent, my kids are, my boys are
nine and 12 and yeah, sometimesthey're just deep in YouTube and
(39:30):
you kinda have to snap them outof it.
But other times they're.
On their computers, which arenext to each other playing
Roblox, and they're just talkingand chatting and saying meet me
here, do this.
And those are the times that Imight let them play a little
longer than I would usuallybecause they're actually engaged
in doing something together.
(39:51):
And I think that's.
Where the magic is of like ahaving screen as part of your
media mix.
But as soon as they're, ifthey're just silently playing
for an hour and their time isup, I'm like, okay, time to go.
But I think that's so important,right?
If there's a piece ofinteractivity or fun or
collaboration or conversationwith it, then.
(40:13):
It shouldn't be demonized.
And at the same time, that makeslike those screen time rules an
extra layer of like complexityfor parents to manage.
Because I don't think it's assimple as saying this aged child
should only get this many hoursa day.
I think you have to feel thatout as a parent and find out
what works for you and yourfamily, right?
Philippa (40:35):
Absolutely.
And I guess, so I remember.
Again, when my son was reallytiny, I went to a conference and
the speaker there said, over 40%of your children are going to
have jobs that haven't even beeninvented yet.
That, that we don't even knowthat are going to be jobs.
(40:55):
And then my son in Covid reallydidn't enjoy what he was doing
at college, and so I just saidto him.
Babe, you just have to do 30hours of something a week.
I don't mind what it is.
You can go to college, you cango to work, you can do a bit of
both.
It doesn't really matter, butyou have to do 30 hours.
So he came to me, makes me laughnow, and he said I found a game.
(41:18):
I found a college course where Ican play computer games for 30
hours.
That's what I want to do.
Wow.
Yeah, like it's a local college.
It's called eSports.
They give you the games.
There's a whole suite.
That's what I wanna do.
So what could I say?
I'd said, as long as you dosomething for 30 hours.
(41:39):
So I was like, yeah, okay, then.
Yeah, that's fine.
And actually he's now, he wentthrough college and did it, and
he is now doing eSports as adegree.
And, who would've thought thatyou could go to college?
And I am oversimplifying it.
It's a lot more work thanplaying computer games.
Of course.
Technically that in the firstyear, that is what they did.
(42:02):
They assessed and looked atcomputer games.
Yeah.
And played them and got accessto them.
So I guess my point is that,that we have to adapt, don't we,
in a world, but we needknowledge to do that because
Yes.
Some it moves so fast,especially when you're my age.
We didn't have mobile phones andall those sorts of things.
(42:24):
Yeah.
And now it's growing up so itdoes move very fast.
So it's about keeping, asparents, as up to date as you
possibly can.
And I'm guessing that's whatPlay Wise Labs wants to do is
keep parents as up to date asthey can about things that are
going on so they can make thosesafe decisions.
Jessica (42:44):
Exactly.
'cause it's so hard and there'sdefinitely a lot of people
making excellent content aboutthe specifics of, the safety
tools that you can use, butfiguring out, like I don't even
know if the game they're playingis worthwhile playing.
Is hard enough.
So that's what we're hoping tocontribute through that.
And yeah, it's just so complexto, it's the layers that are
(43:07):
involved in parenting nowadays.
Or Yeah, I didn't, there was nophones when I grew up.
Even my kids sometimes werelike, what did your parents do
with screen time?
We didn't get a PC till, I waslike, in high school
Philippa (43:21):
I used to put two p in a call box to phone my friend.
Yeah, exactly.
Jessica (43:27):
Exactly.
We just met, there was nophones.
Philippa (43:31):
Yeah.
Jessica (43:32):
Yeah.
That's very funny.
I.
Philippa (43:33):
Absolutely.
And you can't, Ima, even now, Icouldn't imagine whether we
wouldn't be doing this, would wewithout the development.
So it is an amazing thing, whatage would do, are the youngest
games aimed at do do you think?
Jessica (43:50):
2, 2, 2 years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think, really that feelslike too young for me.
But again, I do think it's apersonal parental choice, but
certainly people are designinggames for two to five year olds.
Probably like in that bucketoften.
(44:10):
But.
Again, I'm, and people, kids areplaying them.
It just depends on, it's aparent's personal choice whether
or not they're giving phones andtablets to their kids at two.
But I think a lot of the gamesthat are being designed for
really young children are, oftenreally good and thoughtful and
(44:32):
thinking about that age.
So again, I think it just comesdown to a personal choice of.
The parents' ideas and thoughtsaround screens in their
children's lives, right?
It becomes increasingly hard tokeep it away from your kids.
It feels like a game.
How long can I keep screens awayfrom my kids, right?
Philippa (44:52):
I guess especially 'cause adults are run them all
the time and our children justdo what we model, don't they?
And if we are looking at phonesand screens all the time, then I
guess they want to.
But I suppose my last question'cause I know we are running
outta time, is.
When you are thinking aboutcontent and games for children,
I guess depending on with, youare gonna be thinking about
(45:14):
something different when you'rethinking about a two and
3-year-old than you are an a, aneight and 9-year-old.
Yes.
And I'm guessing you are, youare.
Play wise Lab will help parentsthink about actually what do I
want to be thinking about for my4-year-old compared to what do I
want to be thinking about for my9-year-old?
Jessica (45:35):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think too, it's, it, there'san extra layer of like
complexity defining that contentbecause the app stores aren't
set up to tell you, I think,they'll generally say it's four
plus or something, so it becomeseven harder.
But yeah, definitely though whengames are designed, generally
you are thinking about a prettynarrow age target because
(45:58):
children's change every sixmonths for the time they're
born.
So generally games are designedreally specifically for, in my
experience, for a reallytargeted age and ability.
But it does become hard to findspecific content through like
the way that app store searchesexists.
So definitely when we'refiguring out content for play
(46:23):
wise, we are trying to bespecific to like, if you have a
toddler, and these are the kindsof things you wanna ask yourself
when you're evaluating games.
Philippa (46:33):
Yeah.
So that will then help people orparents, grandparents think
about, okay, so this is gonna bemore suitable for this age range
of children, right?
Like you say, you can't say,every family's gonna be
different, aren't they?
And gonna choose differentthings.
But I suppose having theknowledge to then be able to
make that in a as an informedway as possible as a parent is
(46:56):
just going to give.
Was, I guess a peace of mind andour children the best possible
experience of online games.
Jessica (47:06):
Exactly.
And by the time they hit eight,nine years old, they don't wanna
play kids' games anymore.
No.
They're off to Fortnite andRoblox and Minecraft.
Those are, technically seen askids games, but they're exposed
then to everyone, right?
Yeah.
Because at all ages are playingthose games.
Philippa (47:27):
Okay.
Very last question though,Jessica.
Sure.
How do you think this world isgonna develop?
This is a big question for thelast one, but how do you see it
developing over the next kind offive or 10 years?
Jessica (47:42):
That's a tough one.
It.
Thinking back about how thingshave evolved from the past like
20 plus years.
It's, there's been interestingincremental changes, but there's
been so much it feels the lastcouple years has been this
anticipation that things like VRmight.
Explode.
I think that's prettyinappropriate for children.
(48:04):
I don't think any kid undereight probably should have a be
playing in vr.
I don't think it makes sense.
Philippa (48:11):
Why kid has to take when he first had it, anti
sickness.
Tablet.
Yes.
Yes.
Mean really?
You'd be like, I wanna play withmy headset more minute in an
hour or so.
So we'd come down and taketravel sickness pills.
Jessica (48:26):
I get that because I have the same problem.
Philippa (48:30):
Like
Jessica (48:30):
what?
Yeah, but I think that, I think,I don't think that's going to
hit with children.
I think, I don't think it'sgoing to hit, it doesn't feel
like it's going to hitcommercially.
I think it's had a moment, but Idon't know that it's.
But I do have felt for a longtime, there's always this
potential about like more.
(48:53):
Augmented reality.
When Pokemon Go became a hugething.
I always felt like that hasn'tcompletely hit the kids arena
yet.
I've certainly heard about a fewthings and there's things out
there that are interesting, butI do think that's an interesting
place that, that children'sgaming could go just because of
(49:15):
that interactive piece that Italked about.
Being out in the world or usingyour movement.
I think there's opportunities inthat space that will, I'm hoping
will come to be because I thinkit's a really interesting place
for kids to play because Ialways think about these very
these.
(49:36):
My youngest had these moments inhis childhood that I've always
thought about as something thatwas so powerful.
Like at some point I decidedjust because of myself to
introduce my youngest to Mr.
Rogers neighborhood and he wouldtalk back to the screen and I
love that he would answer thequestions out loud.
(49:57):
So I've always held onto thisidea of I want kids to.
Feel compelled and safe enoughto answer and interact in a way.
And then he also had this verysimilar experience.
He was playing.
He was really into the KhanAcademy kids games and apps, and
there was a bunch of reallygreat.
Videos in there and he would puthis tablet down and start to
(50:18):
dance and do the activities.
So I've always felt like thosetwo things cemented in my mind
is like so powerful.
Like I wanna have kids play,like I wanna design things where
kids play and interact likethat.
So that's why I feel and hopethat sort of augmented reality,
XR air like that moves forwardand explodes a little, because I
(50:39):
think that's such a.
A more interesting place to playfor kids and I don't know that
it, do you think I'm out thereenough?
Philippa (50:46):
Do you think AI will be part of that?
That kind of being able to, to Iguess yeah, interact in the
moment, I suppose if you are,with the Pokemon Go that and
then we
Jessica (50:58):
have the, if there's a back and forth.
Yeah, absolutely.
It'll be so interesting.
I think that is is theexploration that is next.
Philippa (51:07):
A bit scary though.
Jessica Pokemon go first roundout, you'd see everybody walking
around with their phones.
Wouldn't you like trying tocatch the Pokemon with the balls
or whatever.
Jessica (51:19):
But there was something so powerful about like when that
really hit and going to the parkand there's all these other
people doing the same thing.
So I love that.
Or whatever that was, that,those elements of community and
interaction, and I am I'mhopeful that is a, is the next
wave, yeah.
Philippa (51:37):
And that was all different ages.
But I had friends who I thinkprobably still do play it.
Yeah.
But there was a, it was a widevariety, age range.
It wasn't really aimed at oneperson.
And like you say, yeah, you'dsee them walking around the
street or there was an event,wasn't there, and everybody's
out trying to, everybody's out.
Yeah.
Jessica (51:55):
I remember walking outta my house during that time
and my neighbor was juststanding in front of her door
and then she's oh, it's Pokemongoing.
I'm like, okay.
Philippa (52:04):
Normal.
Jessica (52:04):
She's standing there randomly is she okay?
Philippa (52:08):
Oh yeah.
Yeah, so that would be it.
It's, I guess that's reallytaking it off the screen and
into the world, isn't it?
But what's still with thoseelements?
Jessica (52:16):
Yeah.
Philippa (52:17):
We'll see if your predictions come.
Jessica (52:20):
Yeah.
Philippa (52:21):
So I will in the description of the podcast,
we'll put a link to yourwebsite.
You also have a, like you said,a Facebook page, an Instagram
page, and a YouTube page sopeople can find it's play wise
labs.
You're based in Canada aren'tyou accessible everywhere?
Yes, correct.
Through the joy of online, yeah.
(52:43):
So thank you very much forspending this time and talking
to us.
Jessica.
Jessica (52:48):
Thanks for having me.
I love talking about this stuff,so it was fun.
Philippa (52:52):
Thank you.
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