Month: January 2009

The case against Candy Land is a BoingBoing post by Steven Johnson, author of many wonderful books (and fellow roundtable-ee for that Harper’s piece a long while ago).

In it, he points out that many classic kids’ board games are built primarily on randomness, not skill. He even goes after Battleship:

…Yes, at the very end, you might adjust your picks based on your knowledge of which ships you’ve sunk. But for the most part, it’s about as mentally challenging as playing Bingo.

And Battleship might as well be Battleship Potemkin compared to something like Candy Land, which was fiendishly designed to prevent the player from ever having to make a single decision while playing the game. You pick a card from a shuffled deck, and follow the instructions. That’s it.

I realize that games of pure chance have a long history, but that doesn’t make them any less moronic.

A lot of kids’ games aren’t as dumb as they seem — I often cite Chutes and Ladders as a game with a deep lesson in it, though one we learn quickly and then take for granted. (It has a discontinuous map with “hyperjumps” between positions; you could even take it as a training tool for “black swan” events if you want to get lofty about it). 🙂

I think Steven is underselling Battleship a bit; I used it to demonstrate to my kids how well-organized search grids usually destroyed their random selections (I prefer a slanted grid with an interval of 3; I usually spiral it rather than proceed top to bottom). Not to mention that the psychology of estimating your opponent’s skill in ship placement does indeed matter.

But I always hated Candy Land.