Last week a good bit of our mama and me gaming revolved around Minecraft Story Mode…until Pea watched her first episode of StampyCat playing Super Mario Maker. Oddly lots of our gaming choices revolve around StampyCat. Doesn’t every 7 year old want to play what Stampy plays? But this time I have to say it was a good choice.
We started with impatiently playing through the tutorial (where kiddo spun the wheel and magically got a Caucasian hand) and then we jumped right into some serious level design. And with the level design came the challenge. Never let it be said that there isn’t a healthy dose of competition going on in our house, so it’s only fitting that there is competition when it comes to even the most non-competitive games.
Wee One decided that it would be fun to alternate designing levels for each other to play and that I wasn’t going to be allowed to see any of her design process lest it give me some kind of unfair advantage. So she was forced to figure out how to play/design all by herself while being at the distinct disadvantage of not playing any Mario games before Super Mario 3D World/Land. This is when I discovered how well Super Mario Maker really worked when it came to scaffolding learning objectives and not giving my little designer access to all of the enemies at once (also note that the game limits the number of enemies that you can put on each level…thank God).
The scaffolding itself is gamified in that new items and level themes are released as you play more (aka reward for practice). There is (seemingly) nothing more exciting than seeing the little panel van pull on to the screen and announce that you have earned a building bonus that is coming soon and encouraging you to continue your quest toward mastery.
With Pea not having any familiarity with most of the game’s content, I am also seeing her hone her kiddie research skills. She is asking to look up particular in-game items so that she can learn their names and see what they are actually capable of (who knew that cute, little caterpillar with anger issues was actually called a Wiggler). And after her initial phase of discovery, it is apparently crucial that she see these things in action by watching more of her favorite YouTubers build levels in SMM and do Let’s Plays of the older platformers themselves. And would a mother really want to stop her child from a bit of educational exploration?
Once we finally got down to the business of making levels for one another I quickly learned that my child is just plain old mean. She spent lots of time making sure that she hid enemies in question blocks where one would expect to find things to help. And when I talked to her about it she admitted that it was her attempt at being intentionally “sneaky”. So before going into an area that was filled with enemies where one might expect a power-up of some sort I instead was rewarded with a goomba dropped on my head. The only saving grace for our level exchange was that we added the rule that you must complete the level in one pass before we could share (like the rules for uploading levels to the system). At least now we have levels that aren’t completely impossible. Even more fun has been having her sit next to me to watch and walk me through the levels. It’s beautiful to watch the student become the teacher.
