 So if that was going through one of the the blockbusters, I thought I'd show you two of my favorite ones This is what it's a two blockbusters that I grew up with. I spent Disproportionate the large part of my being a kid playing with these two I'm not exactly sure what that made of me today, but this is these were my two best friends anyway this he-man and transformers and Sort of digging back into sort of the the characteristics of these things and ways upon which you can think When designing games and fun, I thought I'd take a step back to Anders pyramids Because this is one of the models that you can use called the play pyramid The idea is that it's it's a toy design model so we can see you can steer products in different types of directions So any product at any given time would be inside this pyramid and depending on the position It would be sort of more skewed towards construction Challenge sensory or fantasy and the idea is that you take a concept Perhaps you place it in this pyramid in a metaphorically speaking and you shift it to sort of say what happens with this product If we make it more of a challenge, what would that entail? How would this product be changed in that case? What would be the benefits and what would be more difficult or perhaps it needs to be more construction oriented? There are several of these these models around that you can use to sort of tweak and also to try to understand the The the the actual behind-lying Characteristics of products are already out there you could take any any toy or game that you like You could place it within this pyramid to get a sort of an idea of the type of feeling or the type of emotions that they were trying to address Another way of looking at it is is segmenting things into different types of play And of course there are many different ways of doing this There are many models of looking at how to how to divide different ways of playing But this is one of them that we chose to to work with look like this. It's it's five ways and This is interesting and I'll get to to why this is interesting specifically for digital products is that it's it's very very different how these types of ways of playing Manifest in one world and how when it moves into digital to digital world that seems to change at least in people's perception So going through what this actually entails is that the first first one is active play. It's being outdoors. It's playing sports Sort of like the cats that Anderson for the beginning sort of chasing each other about sort of moving and being active in one way or another That's a way of playing Another way of playing is is make believe it's more It's it's dolls. It's fantasy oriented role-playing maybe acting out scenes or one thing another. It's very much play with the imagination The third one is manipulative play which is more skewed towards puzzles and construction Lego for instance is a good example of manipulative play Then we have creative play Which is music arts craft painting drawing that sort of thing Large sector of course and then finally we have learning play and in this case it's books and games because games Are generally speaking fairly linear you learn how to navigate through the Super Mario levels You learn what to do and what not to do in order to to move along in the game So in a way that's something that you don't intrinsically know with the moment you open it And there might be a slight variation of freedom But more or less if you want to finish the game you have to go through that process and it's something that you learn Same thing with books of course The idea here is that kids like playing all of these types It goes through ages and stages of course it varies a lot But as a rule of thumb all kids like all all of these ways of playing and just depends on on their mood It depends on where they are on their development So when we were trying to make sort of so okay, so how can we make digital toys? We tried to see so if this is the on the backdrop of what we have and this is how kids like to play in general in In an offline world. What does it look like in an online world? So Emil who did a lot of this work? Look through The App Store To see in the kids games category what type of products are there what what's currently on offer? What's current currently available and this is one way of segmenting that so it's it's going from an interaction level From being purely consumption in the top left corner moving into an easy interaction and then going out into a hard interaction sort of more more advanced It takes things like play in toys and moves that as it gets more and more intricate into gaming Exploration and exploring turns into education and creation turns into art and Sort of looking at so so this is one way of looking at different types of products We look we sort of place them out and sort of say well Well, where are they all then and then burying this model in mind sort of saying well Okay, if kids like to do all these things are these all these needs and all these ways of Taking on play are they actually being addressed in the App Store? And this is what we found So if the size of this These pieces sort of represent how many are there. It's about this many active apps or apps encouraging an active play About that's this many make-believe apps that stimulate your imagination and are driven by something which is maybe beyond the screen Something that is around the object where the the screen the iPad or the iPhone is only a part of what you're trying to Trying to play with I would say it's about that many manipulative games construction-based things There's quite a few creative things of course There's a few drawing apps here and there and when it comes to learning it's about that much Now why could that be? So how come everything in the App Store so far intended for kids is skewed in this way Well, one of the reasons could could be at least That's learning play reading books and playing games is the way that adults play This is what adults like to do when we play when we have time off We like to read a book and sometimes we play a game It's it's it's fairly similar very rarely do we sort of we take out the masters of the universe and start playing with that in an Imaginary way very rarely sometimes, but not very often And there's something there and I think when developing products for kids and a specific specifically Trying to translate why these products initially have been so successful You have to take a step back and think what are the genuine ways that kids actually like to play and then try to address Those needs rather than just copying the actual products themselves and this and especially not looking towards yourself But rather looking towards the target group that you're after It doesn't really matter what adults think is fun at what matters is what kids like and trying to find that out and Trying to take that knowledge into something which is very concrete This sort of leads to to and as last point in a way Thinking sort of so if we if we now can construct these types of toys from these models And we can at least have an ambition of trying to address a Certain way of playing and we can sort of synthesize that and facilitate that through the the creation of applications Or even physical objects, of course It's just the objects and the toys and the games are there in order to stimulate something the ambition that you have as a maker But what that ambition could also be be very different Often the ambition is to just make something which is really really fun But what would happen if we took a step beyond that? We had this quote from the the blockbuster toy book who describes How these blockbuster toys were thought through and what made them what made them good? It says that many toy makers who invented blockbuster toys did so not by following the pack IE the money instead they followed new paths that had yet to demonstrate their financial worth They satisfied emotional needs that other toy makers had ignored They found ways to produce smiles that others missed This is sort of something that's been inspiring to us trying to find sort of okay So if we don't always I mean it's that there's a reason why all these these books and games are doing well They're selling fairly well. There's a lot of them, but they're also doing fairly well But it's inspiring for us to try to take a step back for that and not immediately jump into the pool Where everybody else is but trying to see if we can create our own our own pool so to speak and Looking further sort of what type of emotional needs might this be that you that we could be addressing These are a few of them This is something that you could imagine at least that a toy or a game could have as an ambition to to address How could we teach someone to be proud? For instance, how can we sort of make them feel independent or even a sense of belonging? These types of needs which are natural for children in one way or another and that come through sort of daily life but can also if you have that specific idea and that specific ambition be very Instrumental in your design to sort of see how could we accomplish this? How could we make kids feel or stimulate these emotional needs that they have? This leads me to sort of think of the more or less the absolute countertrend of what has been Probably the most talked about trend within this area, which is gamification One definition of a trend is that it's not a trend if there's no countertrend You know if nothing goes against it sort of it is actually flying right in the face of a trend Then it's not really a trend which sort of possibly says that gamification is a very strong trend So I'm arguing against it now It's that play is not the same thing as as gamifying something And I think it's been clear and I'm sure that you've all read articles about it You may have read books you may have read this little thing about gamification that media evolution has put out It's a good read for sure It's a very interesting concept and it's it it takes up and sort of takes up how game mechanics Can be used in order to make people do what you want them to do more or less or feel more as a sense of accomplishment of some way but So I think it's fairly fair to say that everything can be a game But perhaps we should sort of allow us to think that maybe everything shouldn't be Maybe everything in you know, even if it's possible for it should not be led to think that everything has to be a game I don't think we could sort of look beyond that and sort of have another ambition And if our ambition was sort of greaty with that I'd like to sort of leave you with a thought that Using play What if we could address other emotional needs like the ones that I listed before and Looking at the needs that are beyond just fun and winning What could we use these these tools of games toys and play in order to invoke for children and for adults?