Jakob and me were playing a nice game of cards the other day. It started out as a simple attempt at getting an overview of exactly how many trading cards he owns, and ended up up a fierce battle between good and evil, between darkness and light.
It was a special battle with Pokemons, Duel Masters, Yo-Gi-Ohs and the recently added Narnia cards, all fighting next to each other, against each other, across race, kind and manufacturer. Jakob isn’t old enough to know or understand the *real* rules, and I’m old enough to know that I don’t care about the *real* rules anymore. When playing like this, rules are added, revised, rendered obsolete and overruled on the fly.
If we cared about the actual rules, I think we would run into trouble pretty fast after all. Some of the cards – especially the Yo-Ghi-Oh cards manufactured by Konami – are written in Engrish (Japanese-English) and make no sense what so ever (some of them are hillarious – remind me to find some examples at some point). If the rules did make any sense, it seems that they would turn out to be either too complex or too shallow for it to make any fun at all.
Back in the days I had a brief fling with ‘Magic – The Gathering’ cards, and I actually played the game while learning and obeying the ruleset. It seemed to wear out and get boring pretty fast though, unless you really got into the whole collecting and trading side of things. Which is – obviously – the key feature of the trading card games. Buy more cards buy more cards buy more cards. My guess is, that I was getting too depressed and bored at the time to really dig it.
In Jakob’s mind the cards are plain cool. All of them. Just looking at them one by one is great fun. Commenting on every single one of them, while making up cool-sounding names for the ones he doesn’t remember, or asking anyone within hearing range if they would read the card to him. Pick basically any card and it will turn out to be one of the supreme ones, one of his favourites and/or the most powerfull card of them all. All the boys at kindergarten seem to be emerged in the same kind of card frenzy. Each of them having their own additions to the backstories, the myths, the rankings of the cards and their own set of on-the-fly rules.
I remember the thrill he gets from looking at the cards from my self. Not that something quite like it existed when I was his age. But the idea of this ever-expanding world of absolute and supreme coolness, wow and power, that more or less all takes place inside your head is really how most boys play I’d say. It somehow all boils down to “My dad can beat up your dad!” “My monster is stronger than yours!” “My car is faster than yours!” Boys will be boys. Always. “Mine is bigger than yours!”
Anyway, what made me thinking wasn’t really all that usual macho pissing contest stuff that the trading cards are really about, but more the way that the rules in this testosterone universe are bendable, pliable, stackable and – to some extent – breakable. At least when you’re 5 and a half years old and still learning how to become a big boy.
It’s a wonderful flow of creativity, innovation and fun that floods you if you play by the on-the-fly-rules of a 5 year old. Experimenting is allowed at all times. Unless when it’s not. New rules can be added at any time. Except when they can’t. Rules apply as long as they’re fun, relevant or anyone can remember them. Jakob can add new rules. Dad can add new rules, except sometimes when he can’t. This card can beat that card, but not that one, unless I say so.
The end result is, that we play a unique game with a ruleset the size of Amsterdam and we have a great time. We wouldn’t be able to play the same game again, and it wouldn’t matter, because we would make up another one from the same cards.
This way of playing (/learning) is so natural for kids.
This way of playing (/learning) is so rare in computer games for kids. Needless to mention that I think that’s stupid.
