Pondering Play and Therapy Podcast
In a world where play can be seen as frivolous or unnecessary, Julie and Philippa set out to explore its importance in our everyday lives.
Pondering play and therapy, both separately but also the inter-connectedness that play can in its own right be the very therapy we need.
Julie and Philippa have many years of experience playing, both in their extensive professional careers and their personal lives. They will share, ponder, and discuss their experiences along the way in the hope that this might invite others to join in playfulness.
Pondering Play and Therapy Podcast
Ep27 Play and Online games; an interview with Jessica McLauglin
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/
Pondering Play and Therapy | Instagram, Facebook, | Linktree
Welcome to this week's episode of Pondering Play and Therapy, and this week my guest is Jessica McLaughlin, and she has over 20 years of experience in designing and developing, engaging and educational digital content and products for children, families, and adults. She has led the content game design and visual design direction team as a senior creative director at Find Your Fun Studios, which is HASBO. I think we'll probably be aware of that name and Wizards of the Coast working on global brands such as Pepper Pig and other HASBO games. As an interactive director. She's received multiple nominations and awards for her work, including the Youth Media Alliance Award of Excellence, nominations, kids screen nominations, kids Screen HOT 50 and International Serious Play Awards. She's also published web based homework tools for parents, teachers, and students featuring exclusive video content, printable activity sheets and educational games. And she's really passionate about creating fun and meaningful experiences through collaboration, innovation, and diverse. Perspectives. Jessica, welcome to pondering play in therapy. Thank you for your time.
Jessica:Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Philippa:Oh, that's great. So really it's an. Unusual career path that you've got. And I suppose, I guess I'm not, hopefully this isn't disrespectful, but for a woman and 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 is going to university and doing eSports. When you get a bit past that you it's not something you imagine people to be doing. So what led you here?
Jessica:It was so accidental and a little bit serendipitous I think. There was no formal training for this in my youth when I was doing post-secondary and studying in school I took broadcasting and journalism and endeavored to work in media. I. And my first media job happened to be at a radio station, which also owned a children's television network in Canada called YTV, and I just applied to a job that was at the time, new and interesting a new space for kids to start to connect online. In the early two thousands, it was a, an online community for kids tween age, early teen age. And my first job there accidentally in children's media was moderating children in chat rooms, making sure they were being safe, and, connecting with them and learning about them, they were well aware that there was moderated chat rooms. And also that job was, just a little bit of everything in the online community space. That was fairly new and exciting in the early two thousands for kids. So I also called parents and talked to them on the phone and made sure that they knew that their child had signed up for this service. We had a bunch of user generated content. Kids would answer questions or submit stories. So it was quite accidental. I wanted to work in media. I found a job in tv, but I was doing something new and unexpected. So from there I really loved. That idea of making content for kids and connecting with kids and learning from them and seeing their interesting behaviors online that were really unlike what I was doing online. So I spent a fair bit of time there and that role expanded into writing doing video game reviews, making games. Doing contests. So it was a little bit of a let's try everything and see what kids are into online type of job. And I was there for five or six years as well, from that experience, I ended up working at a public broadcaster in Canada called TVO. And took all of those things that I learned and made a lot of games for kids preschool kids right up to high school. Worked on digital learning products. So a lot of courses that kids took in high school or junior high or elementary. So really just. Accidental. But that first job in the industry was so interesting and dynamic and exciting, and I loved interacting with children and learning from them. And that it just kept me searching for those sorts of opportunities and I just somehow made a career of it accidentally. So now, all this time later when I. Meet people who younger, who make a decision to work in Children's Medium. I was like so delighted that they're mature enough and they got it. I was just, it was an accident, but a happy accident,
Philippa:I think for lots of people you just fall in and find the thing that captures that imagination 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't understand what you're talking about, are you talking about the apps on a phone? Are you talking about Google A game or something that helps them with learning? What are you talking about? What does games mean? It's not snakes and ladders,
Jessica:All of those things. So digital, anything. In the digital space. So yeah, initially the games that I would've worked on in the early days were as expected, the technology and the trends change over time. Certainly web-based games were popular for a really long time. The early on it was, flash games and they were just kids were just going on websites and playing those games like crazy. And then, so what's
Philippa:A flash? A flash game? What's a flash game?
Jessica:I think people would remember what a flash game was, just based on a lot of the a lot of the hubbub that happened when iPhone came to be. A lot of web-based content was unavailable for iPhone because they didn't adopt Flash as a platform. It was just really like an embedded game on a site. Like at the time, we would make those games in a piece of software, embed them on the site. So it was just a moment in time. But that evolved into current day web-based games, which are just different, created differently, but still they're still web-based games, but also apps. And then a lot of what I've done in the past is just create interactive elements for whatever piece of content that I might be working on. So in the case of like digital learning content for kids, there might be manipulative items that, you can, like a number line or counting blocks. Anything interactive really. Okay.
Philippa:Okay. And you've done that in your community as a community care based project, have you where to support your, to support the community you live in? Is that right?
Jessica:What I did at at a public broadcaster making content. It was this public broadcaster I work for was in the province of Ontario in Canada. So you did have to be mindful of representing the people of Ontario or they were your main user, right? So you had to be, so when we're making digital learning products, it had to be the correct curriculum for the people of Ontario. And then you had to be mindful of just, it's a very large province with varying degrees of like connectivity. So you had to think about people in Northern Ontario, which is very, can be very remote. Not the greatest internet. So you had to be mindful of creating content that was also efficient and able to be played and downloaded for someone with bad inter internet connection or someone in a city who has a super fast internet connection. So being mindful of all of those people in users in that geography.
Philippa:Okay. And I'm, I imagine that. From a broadcaster, I guess like from 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 of access, aren't they? But then there's an encouragement to to purchase things in there. So purchase different items to progress the game faster or prettier, or you've also developed those, have you?
Jessica:Yes, absolutely. So I when I worked at Hasbro, the motivation was more around getting subscribers to an app. So yeah, you're right, there would be a free element to it to encourage, moving on to a subscription service. So a limited amount of content or games or videos would be available. For free. But you would have to subscribe ultimately 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, but definitely your motivated differently because you want to continue to make games for this platform. You want it to be profitable. Not that you don't want it to be successful when you're working in a public broadcaster and everything is free, but certainly the pressure is different. Because if you don't maintain revenue, then you can't keep making games. Yeah. So it doesn't change how. Necessarily how motivated people are or how excited people are to make kids games. It just amps up the pressure to be successful. So I think you might take a few more losses in the public realm because you have room to experiment, you wanna try things with, an app that is revenue driven. You would probably be, it would be harder to keep something and learn from something that was unsuccessful. You would kill that faster and then you would move on to the next thing. So it changes their perspective a little when you're starting to conceptualize thing, but the actual meat and potatoes of making a game, you're still thinking about. What's the kid gonna learn from it? How are they going to use it? You still put all the right thinking in place. It just, the ideas might be a little more scrutinized before they make it into production and launch.
Philippa:Okay. So if you are making games that are aimed at children, young people, teens, I'm assuming that there's some testing that goes on that you Absolutely. You, yeah. You test the games, for loads of different things. Safety, accessibility. What is that is it thorough? Rigorous? Is it is gonna make money? What are you looking at?
Jessica:I think it's very expensive to build things and then test it. So early on in definitely the few years of Covid made this a lot harder, but early on in the process of making a game, it's really valuable to do something called. Paper prototyping and it's literally cutting up pieces of paper, printing off things and sitting with a child and telling them about the game and what you wanna do, and having them take physical pieces of paper or dice or any kind of manipulative, when I was at the public broadcaster, we had a whole treasure chest of toys and gadgets that we would use to bring into a paper prototyping session. Just so that we could see how a child would interact with a concept. To give you an example, one game we worked on had a slider where we wanted them to choose how likely something would be with a slider. We weren't sure a kid at that age,'cause we were targeting a kindergarten child, so five-ish years old. We weren't sure that they would do that. So we printed off a slider and we laminated it. We went into a classroom and we were just like, Hey, if you were gonna choose the likelihood of something and this end of the slider is unlikely, and this end of the slider is likely. What would you do? We just wanted to see would they slide it? Would they tap it? And that thing is a lot cheaper to do and to observe children in the classroom or somewhere and print off some pieces of paper than to build it and then ask them to tell us if it's right or wrong. So whenever possible, to be able to do that in a more tangible way and have kids touch and feel and move things around can be so enlightening in the early stages of developing a concept. So a lot of times there's a few concepts floating around when you're in production for a larger initiative. So you have a few concepts that you're bringing into a classroom for kids and you're just watching them, and depending on the age of the kids. Those children aren't necessarily the most articulate. So you're really, depending on your observation skills and then comparing with your colleagues and saying oh, I saw this child do this, and I thought that was really interesting. What's your thought about it? So those early concepts that you have putting just in the most analog way in front of kids is a great first step and often really important. And then from there you move on to an early version of the game with maybe not the most finessed artwork and animation, but the general functionality is there and you've taken all that learning from your paper prototyping and you've put it into the first version of the game. Maybe it's not fully functional, but you think it's, to a point where the child playing it is not going to be confused. Depending on their age. Again, older kids. You can share super raw things with younger kids, you do wanna make sure it's pretty or they'll be confused, so you take another. An early version of the developed game menu, again largely observational depending on the kid, but people do these things with online tools where they'll upload a game and somebody will do it remotely. And that can work depending, but when you're designing games for younger kids, so much of it is in their body language or what they say or how they react or how they look at you or their parent. So really doing that in person for younger kids is so critical. And to see how they hold the device or the mouse or the phone or the tablet and how they manipulate that because you get the. Tiniest things like they might put their thumb on the screen. So how do you deal with that? And so you need to observe that. It's really important to see that in person and then take that away and adjust whatever's necessary, finesse and polish the final game. And then when it's near complete, you wanna again, put it in front of the children and make sure there's nothing you didn't miss. So it can be very thorough. I'm not saying that happens in every place for every game, but when you are doing this work doing that taking the time to do that, those three steps, maybe more depending on the game and the size of the game, the scope of the game and the how complex it is. But having those three pieces. Really ensures that by the time it's launched, you have some confidence that it's going to perform for kits.
Philippa:So that I'm imagining takes quite a period of time. It's not over a few weeks. And while you are going through this process, are you also assessing for safety and,'cause there's lots now about online safety and grooming and all those sorts of things. How do you test for that during that process?
Jessica:In all honesty, most of the content that I've worked on and the games that I've built have not, has not been beyond like my first role in a, in an online community has not generally been, nested anywhere where kids could interact. So it's been out of outta the scope of the actual game creation, certainly where these games sit in larger websites or apps, all of that safety kinda gets built into those platforms more than the actual game generally. But to comment on accessibility. As well, which is a huge piece of making games really for anybody. That is part of the observation too because definitely having various ages, various developmental abilities, testing games, it really helps you frame up and make adjustments that work for all. So I think when. Any, anything that you're making that's accessible, most of the changes you make are not just good for the person who has the challenge, they're good for everybody. It's a really important part of the observation piece too. And then of course you just have the standard things in place that you're always accounting for, like color contrast or certainly with. Children. I know I mentioned the idea of sliding something which is not actually the best interaction for a small, for a smaller child, a younger child. This is a very hard thing to do. Sliding your finger across. Dragging things is harder to do when you're younger. And of course if you have any physical challenges with that. So there always has to be an alternate way to play the game and still be successful. So all those things are floating around as you're designing these things.
Philippa:Okay, thank you. And then when they are completed, 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 some games are educational based, some games are fun based. Some games, I don't know, maybe there's other categories how. How do you, are the standards that if you are saying this is an educational game, is there a standard in the industry that means yes, the parent can be confident that this is an educational game or this is a fun game or whatever it is?
Jessica:I, you know what, not that I'm aware of. I don't think there's a standard and certainly when you look at the app store and you type in educational games, they're all over the place. It really, in my experience, has been wherever you, whatever company you're working for it's, they have decided the standard for their educational games. And certainly when I was working on games like Peppa Pig games, they're all broadly educational. Social emotional learning or like really basic math or language concepts, but. Not specifically educational, and I would classify it more as like edutainment than education. When I worked for a. Public broadcaster. We did both because we were supporting a lot of the broadcasts, the television shows with associated games or activities for those shows. Those ones were more broadly educational edutainment, but then we also did things that were really more specifically. Classroom based because that broadcaster was supported, primarily funded by the Ministry of Education in Ontario, a lot of the educational games we did were specifically curriculum driven, working with educators who were specialists in the curriculum. So we were really identifying certain learning objectives in the curriculum in any given game. We would layer those. So we were, we I spent a lot of time working on a suite of games that were math and stem. So really specific like learning objectives in there. But we would also. Overlay the narrative with other curriculums like the social studies curriculum, so we could have the narrative that would support another curriculum. And then the actual learning activity in the game was more math or STEM related. So we tried to. Layer in as much learning as we could.'cause we didn't wanna make here's a social studies game and let's learn about the geography of Canada. We just wanted to embed that into the narrative of the game.
Philippa: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 you were learning the educational things as well.
Jessica:It certainly helped me like to learn all about this curriculum all about the Ontario curriculum right before my children actually ended up in the school system. So sometimes I'm like, oh, that's interesting that you're learning this here. Is that, has the curriculum changed? I became such a nerd about it.
Philippa:Oh that's great. I suppose one of the things I wondered was when you are developing games for children, are you, are developers thinking about how what the safety is within that? Or are you relying on parents to be vigilant about that? Are there, things around we are not gonna let somebody be on this app for five and a half hours when they're four. We're not going to give them access to be able to buy things or do you know what I mean? Or are you thinking about Actually we are gonna build this up and each parent is gonna manage and police it themselves.
Jessica:Yeah, I mean there's definitely an element of, at any place I've worked where you are thinking about the amount of time and that they are spending on a game or an app, and it is definitely, or it has been definitely used as a success metric to get more time. I think the way that is thought about is not necessarily. I am trying to think about how to frame this. Definitely when I worked for like at Hasbro, you definitely thought more about a higher time spent and it was, thought about as you wanna keep people on the app When working for a public broadcaster, it wasn't necessarily used in the same way. I think it was used more to indicate. To think about if we might have failed on a game or there might be a failure to the game or something we've missed. To give you an example, a lot of the preschool games that we made, generally, we were thinking about a three to five minute play experience. So we weren't thinking about creating play experiences that were like 20 minutes long. We were thinking a 5-year-old is gonna reasonably go through a game experience in three to five minutes, and it's gonna be a nice. Amount of gameplay. So if that time spent was either too high or too low, we're like, why are they going back and repeating this game? Is that a good thing or not? And if it was too low or we were like, oh, did we fail something somewhere? And they're confused and they're just dropping off'cause they don't like it or they don't understand it. So the conversation around time spent was different in both places.
Philippa:So if you were play, if you were developing, I suppose I'm just aware that for lots of families that I work with and lots of conversations that, that I have, one of the biggest battles that I think families have nowadays is getting their children off their devices. And you know what? However they try it, whether they're doing timers, whether they're doing countdowns, whether they're changing the games. Yeah. It feels like there's this constant draw to be on their tablet. Yes. And I suppose I was wondering from a production end, is that what you are? Trying to do, I don't mean have conflict in the parent house. That's not, yes. What I mean, but that the aim is to encourage the child to be on the game for the maximum of time possible.
Jessica:I don't think that's like the main driver by any means. I just think the conversations about it are different. I don't think personally, and maybe that's because I've been in the position of being able to lead a lot of these teams. It's never been like personally something I've driven as like a metric that is super important to have somebody on a game for an hour or anything. That was never but it was more that the way it was perceived was like more of a. Higher time spent was a good thing when you're working for a private or like a for-profit type of thing. And then having that conversation is just diff more about the child's experience when you're working with a not-for-profit. So I don't think it is like a huge, at least in my experience, it's not like the main driver or there's not like some sort of nefarious, like we must keep the kids on there. For as long as possible. But I do think there are a lot of companies having more meaningful conversations about that and ensuring that there we're not engaging in addictive practices. Certainly that does come into play sometimes when you're creating game concepts and every once in a while you create a concept and you're like, this feels 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 the path of a con a concept and you're like, oh, this, it's more this feels wrong because it Yeah. The mechanic might feel a little bit Yeah. Like gambling,
Philippa:yeah. So the
Jessica:conversation kind of ends there
Philippa:because I guess there's, for the games for them to be. Entertaining and engaging. In some ways they've got to be high reward, haven't they? Because if kids are working, especially at 5, 6, 7, 8, and even, if you're working really hard and the reward you are getting from that is, is limited, then you are. You don't have to stay on that game or you're gonna go to the next one. So I guess there's a balance between having this reward that keeps the child engaged enough and not rewarding it too much, that it becomes highly addictive or,
Jessica:yes, and actually that's a good point because the. Idea of a lot of the games that I've worked on haven't had that extra element of rewards, and I think it's, a little bit inappropriate to have a lot of badges and stars and things for younger children because. A lot of times it doesn't actually motivate them. They don't actually understand the concept of collect, depending on their age. They don't understand the concept of collecting. So one of the things that I've actively done in the content that I've worked on is try to avoid those like gamified elements like stars or badges or stickers, because I don't think 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 of those practices in a lot of kids' games that probably, I. No expert on the actual results of putting these things in games, but, probably motivates some kids to stay on longer than they should because they're like, I need another sticker. So in, in my work, I've actively tried to avoid adding those features'cause I don't think they often makes sense.
Philippa: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 set up your own company and it's really about giving parents information. So it's not about reviewing the games or saying, no, this is a great game. This is not a great game. It's about almost giving parents a tool bag of information that they can use to then decide, yes. Whether the games are, what they want their children to participate in play or what they were looking for. So tell us a little bit more about that, Jessica. Sure.
Jessica:So originally I thought I would take all of my knowledge around making games for kids for a couple of decades and turn that into, maybe I would start to review. Games out there. But I think what I noticed was that there's a lot of people doing content about safety and it's completely needed and valuable. And it's important for parents to educate themselves on like the tools and Roblox or YouTube and be aware of that. But what I didn't see was really. Anything out there that helped parents understand what is good or valuable inside of a game and what isn't. So it evolved into, it's called Play Wise. It's play wise labs on YouTube Instagram, et cetera, Facebook and, wanted to just dissect pieces of games or often used mechanics or marketing tactics and just give parents small nuggets of information that will help them make decisions. So I know for me, because I've spent so much time. Working on kids games, I can go to the app store, open up a game and know oh, that's not really educational. Like I, I can assess those things really quickly, but what are some things that I can pull apart from that knowledge and give one minute little pieces of information that will help. To give an example on the marketing front, pretty much every kid's educational game that you look at in the app store says thousands of games. That has began become like just a every big app will market itself that way. And even when I was working in Hasbro, I was like how can we say that we have thousands of games In reality, those games, mostly the preschool set, even if there are thousands of games, your child is gonna download that and play like three of them, and they're gonna go back and play those same three over and over. It's more like this. This one video we created is don't let that be your decision point, because no child is ever gonna play thousands of games. And on top of that, within those thousands of games, mostly they've created a bunch of different games, like a tracing game or a sorting game, and they've just re-skinned it or redesigned it a hundred times. So those thousand games may be a hundred, but they're all repurposed. Several times. So it's just a little tip don't be fooled by that type of marketing. Because it shouldn't play into your 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 little nuggets and just the spirit of little bit of media literacy, different media literacy that doesn't ex I don't see existing out there for parents. And we also dissect different game types or. Different approaches to feedback or like the rewards piece, the gamification piece, and not saying like it's right or wrong, just make the decision that's right for your family with some of these nuggets in mind.
Philippa:Okay? And then so that will then help parents think about. So this is the type of game I'm after. We are looking for something to maybe help my child on a car journey and we want something that, but when we get to the end of the car journey that they're not then gonna be screaming and shouting that they want to continue the game or we are looking for them to, hear language or, whatever it is. So that those. Kind of nuggets will then help parents to look at the games that are available.'cause there are hundreds, aren't they in the app store? Oh, or
Jessica:more
Philippa:Yeah. Yeah, millions. It will help them then to decide which ones are going to be okay. Because one of the other things that I noticed is that you get a game that becomes popular. And then when you try and find it, there's so many others that are similar to it. Like the branding is the same, the name it, and you get, I get really confused about actually, which 1:00 AM I using? Which one is the original, which one is gonna give me the content that I want?
Jessica:Yeah. Yeah. I think that's just the nature of the beast right now. People are glomming onto whatever's successful and trying to repeat it, which makes it so hard to sift through the noise. Because I agree. Or even just the sponsored ads that pop up on top of you look for a game, but you have to scroll down because it's nested way below because those people have bought. Your keyword and sponsored. So it, it does become really confusing and certainly we haven't done in our, in play wise, we haven't done a ton of game recommendations yet, but one of our intentions is to also recommend games and not analyze them because it is, it's hard to make kids games. I know it looks simple, right? They look simple and easy, but it is hard. So I personally don't. Love the idea of criticizing people who probably worked super hard on, on a game. I'd rather I could Happy to recommend some, but No it's a complex thing even though it's seemingly simple. But yeah. 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 through it.
Philippa:And I think just knowing what you said, that some people will buy the words you've searched, so you might be searching, I don't know, cookery or wordle or something like that. But actually the actual wordle game is like five lines down, isn't it? Yeah. Because there's these other things, and I think that's just really useful for people to know that actually,
Jessica:yeah, pay attention to that sponsored banner.
Philippa:Absolutely. So what do you think the value is in, in these online game apps, whether it's on the phone, on the tablet, on the computer? Is there a value for children and young people?
Jessica:Yeah, absolutely. I think there is value in finding. Engaging interactive screen time, I know for my kids, I try to ensure that I structure their time so that they're not just staring down the barrel at YouTube and droning and, so I think it's really important to have. A variety and a mix of screen time that is, it's screens are pervasive, right? You can't, it's, you can't avoid them. So if your child is gonna be on a screen at least try to find something that's interactive, that is positive, that is enjoying, enjoy, offers them some enjoyment is something that they can not just interact with their hands, but maybe they even speak back to the screen. I think those are my favorite games when kids start to talk back. And answer the questions that have been asked. So I think it's just important to, to look and have a mix of media for your child and be equipped with the knowledge and tools to have that mix for your child.'cause it's so hard with all these different platforms and safety and for me, if I can contribute to a world where at least the game or activity that I'm working on, it is engaging, enjoyable, the child learns something we do our best to make sure that it's going to be fun. Fun is the first thing. So I think it's, I wanna contribute to that mix of media that's out there, and I think as a parent it's really hard to navigate that. So if I can also help, I. Help people navigate that's good too.
Philippa:Definitely, because it's definitely that a thief of time, isn't it? Yes. That, that you can start on one thing 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 children and young people. And I, I. I suspect my, my son is just in his early twenties, so we've missed, I missed the big, the explosion. Whereas I see my nieces who are much younger, they, they want the phones, they want their apps. They, even at a younger age, but I imagine there are interactive games there. I know that we, used one my son set up at Christmas where everybody can have something on the phone. And then we answer a question that's on the tv. So yes, there is ways that you can play together. Yeah. As a family using apps is absolutely.
Jessica:I think it, I think that's just it. I've always, my feeling has been it. If there's interaction, if there's play, if there's collaboration happening, it shouldn't be demonized'cause there's a screen involved with that. I know personally speaking as a parent, my kids are, my boys are nine and 12 and yeah, sometimes they're just deep in YouTube and you kinda have to snap them out of it. But other times they're. On their computers, which are next to each other playing Roblox, and they're just talking and chatting and saying meet me here, do this. And those are the times that I might let them play a little longer than I would usually because they're actually engaged in doing something together. And I think that's. Where the magic is of like a having screen as part of your media mix. But as soon as they're, if they're just silently playing for an hour and their time is up, I'm like, okay, time to go. But I think that's so important, right? If there's a piece of interactivity or fun or collaboration or conversation with it, then. It shouldn't be demonized. And at the same time, that makes like those screen time rules an extra layer of like complexity for parents to manage. Because I don't think it's as simple as saying this aged child should only get this many hours a day. I think you have to feel that out as a parent and find out what works for you and your family, right?
Philippa:Absolutely. And I guess, so I remember. Again, when my son was really tiny, I went to a conference and the speaker there said, over 40% of your children are going to have jobs that haven't even been invented yet. That, that we don't even know that are going to be jobs. And then my son in Covid really didn't enjoy what he was doing at college, and so I just said to him. Babe, you just have to do 30 hours of something a week. I don't mind what it is. You can go to college, you can go to work, you can do a bit of both. It doesn't really matter, but you have to do 30 hours. So he came to me, makes me laugh now, and he said I found a game. I found a college course where I can 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 do something for 30 hours. So I was like, yeah, okay, then. Yeah, that's fine. And actually he's now, he went through college and did it, and he is now doing eSports as a degree. And, who would've thought that you could go to college? And I am oversimplifying it. It's a lot more work than playing computer games. Of course. Technically that in the first year, that is what they did. They assessed and looked at computer games. Yeah. And played them and got access to them. So I guess my point is that, that we have to adapt, don't we, in a world, but we need knowledge to do that because Yes. Some it moves so fast, especially when you're my age. We didn't have mobile phones and all those sorts of things. Yeah. And now it's growing up so it does move very fast. So it's about keeping, as parents, as up to date as you possibly can. And I'm guessing that's what Play Wise Labs wants to do is keep parents as up to date as they can about things that are going on so they can make those safe decisions.
Jessica:Exactly.'cause it's so hard and there's definitely a lot of people making excellent content about the specifics of, the safety tools that you can use, but figuring out, like I don't even know if the game they're playing is worthwhile playing. Is hard enough. So that's what we're hoping to contribute through that. And yeah, it's just so complex to, it's the layers that are involved in parenting nowadays. Or Yeah, I didn't, there was no phones when I grew up. Even my kids sometimes were like, what did your parents do with screen time? We didn't get a PC till, I was like, in high school
Philippa:I used to put two p in a call box to phone my friend. Yeah, exactly.
Jessica:Exactly. We just met, there was no phones.
Philippa:Yeah.
Jessica:Yeah. That's very funny. I.
Philippa:Absolutely. And you can't, Ima, even now, I couldn't imagine whether we wouldn't be doing this, would we without the development. So it is an amazing thing, what age would do, are the youngest games aimed at do do you think?
Jessica:2, 2, 2 years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, really that feels like too young for me. But again, I do think it's a personal parental choice, but certainly people are designing games for two to five year olds. Probably like in that bucket often. But. Again, I'm, and people, kids are playing them. It just depends on, it's a parent's personal choice whether or not they're giving phones and tablets to their kids at two. But I think a lot of the games that are being designed for really young children are, often really good and thoughtful and thinking about that age. So again, I think it just comes down to a personal choice of. The parents' ideas and thoughts around screens in their children's lives, right? It becomes increasingly hard to keep it away from your kids. It feels like a game. How long can I keep screens away from my kids, right?
Philippa:I guess especially'cause adults are run them all the time and our children just do what we model, don't they? And if we are looking at phones and 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 about content and games for children, I guess depending on with, you are gonna be thinking about something different when you're thinking about a two and 3-year-old than you are an a, an eight and 9-year-old. Yes. And I'm guessing you are, you are. Play wise Lab will help parents think about actually what do I want to be thinking about for my 4-year-old compared to what do I want to be thinking about for my 9-year-old?
Jessica:Yeah, absolutely. I think too, it's, it, there's an extra layer of like complexity defining that content because the app stores aren't set up to tell you, I think, they'll generally say it's four plus or something, so it becomes even harder. But yeah, definitely though when games are designed, generally you are thinking about a pretty narrow age target because children's change every six months for the time they're born. So generally games are designed really specifically for, in my experience, for a really targeted age and ability. But it does become hard to find specific content through like the way that app store searches exists. So definitely when we're figuring out content for play wise, we are trying to be specific to like, if you have a toddler, and these are the kinds of things you wanna ask yourself when you're evaluating games.
Philippa:Yeah. So that will then help people or parents, grandparents think about, okay, so this is gonna be more 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 different things. But I suppose having the knowledge to then be able to make that in a as an informed way as possible as a parent is just going to give. Was, I guess a peace of mind and our children the best possible experience of online games.
Jessica: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 and Roblox and Minecraft. Those are, technically seen as kids games, but they're exposed then to everyone, right? Yeah. Because at all ages are playing those games.
Philippa:Okay. Very last question though, Jessica. Sure. How do you think this world is gonna develop? This is a big question for the last one, but how do you see it developing over the next kind of five or 10 years?
Jessica:That's a tough one. It. Thinking back about how things have evolved from the past like 20 plus years. It's, there's been interesting incremental changes, but there's been so much it feels the last couple years has been this anticipation that things like VR might. Explode. I think that's pretty inappropriate for children. I don't think any kid under eight probably should have a be playing in vr. I don't think it makes sense.
Philippa:Why kid has to take when he first had it, anti sickness. Tablet. Yes. Yes. Mean really? You'd be like, I wanna play with my headset more minute in an hour or so. So we'd come down and take travel sickness pills.
Jessica:I get that because I have the same problem.
Philippa:Like
Jessica: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's going to hit, it doesn't feel like it's going to hit commercially. I think it's had a moment, but I don't know that it's. But I do have felt for a long time, there's always this potential about like more. Augmented reality. When Pokemon Go became a huge thing. I always felt like that hasn't completely hit the kids arena yet. I've certainly heard about a few things and there's things out there that are interesting, but I do think that's an interesting place that, that children's gaming could go just because of that interactive piece that I talked about. Being out in the world or using your movement. I think there's opportunities in that space that will, I'm hoping will come to be because I think it's a really interesting place for kids to play because I always think about these very these. My youngest had these moments in his childhood that I've always thought about as something that was so powerful. Like at some point I decided just because of myself to introduce my youngest to Mr. Rogers neighborhood and he would talk back to the screen and I love that he would answer the questions out loud. So I've always held onto this idea of I want kids to. Feel compelled and safe enough to answer and interact in a way. And then he also had this very similar experience. He was playing. He was really into the Khan Academy kids games and apps, and there was a bunch of really great. Videos in there and he would put his tablet down and start to dance and do the activities. So I've always felt like those two 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 like that. So that's why I feel and hope that sort of augmented reality, XR air like that moves forward and explodes a little, because I think that's such a. A more interesting place to play for kids and I don't know that it, do you think I'm out there enough?
Philippa:Do you think AI will be part of that? That kind of being able to, to I guess yeah, interact in the moment, I suppose if you are, with the Pokemon Go that and then we
Jessica:have the, if there's a back and forth. Yeah, absolutely. It'll be so interesting. I think that is is the exploration that is next.
Philippa:A bit scary though. Jessica Pokemon go first round out, you'd see everybody walking around with their phones. Wouldn't you like trying to catch the Pokemon with the balls or whatever.
Jessica:But there was something so powerful about like when that really hit and going to the park and 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'm hopeful that is a, is the next wave, yeah.
Philippa:And that was all different ages. But I had friends who I think probably still do play it. Yeah. But there was a, it was a wide variety, age range. It wasn't really aimed at one person. And like you say, yeah, you'd see them walking around the street or there was an event, wasn't there, and everybody's out trying to, everybody's out. Yeah.
Jessica:I remember walking outta my house during that time and my neighbor was just standing in front of her door and then she's oh, it's Pokemon going. I'm like, okay.
Philippa:Normal.
Jessica:She's standing there randomly is she okay?
Philippa:Oh yeah. Yeah, so that would be it. It's, I guess that's really taking it off the screen and into the world, isn't it? But what's still with those elements?
Jessica:Yeah.
Philippa:We'll see if your predictions come.
Jessica:Yeah.
Philippa:So I will in the description of the podcast, we'll put a link to your website. You also have a, like you said, a Facebook page, an Instagram page, and a YouTube page so people can find it's play wise labs. You're based in Canada aren't you accessible everywhere? Yes, correct. Through the joy of online, yeah. So thank you very much for spending this time and talking to us. Jessica.
Jessica:Thanks for having me. I love talking about this stuff, so it was fun.
Philippa:Thank you.
