My buddy's 3 year old still beats me at Candy Land because of this one thing he said

I was over at my friend Mike's house last weekend. He has a 3 year old daughter who loves board games. We sat down to play Candy Land, and I swear she destroyed me like 5 times in a row. I was getting frustrated, thinking about strategy for a kids game. Then Mike just goes, "You're overthinking it. She just likes the colors and the moving forward feeling. That's all that matters." It hit me that I do this with every game, even casual ones. I get so caught up in winning or optimizing that I forget the simple fun part. Has anyone else had a moment where a kid or a non-gamer reminded them why they like games in the first place?

3 comments

3 Comments

gray616d ago

Oh man, that's such a good point. I had a similar wake up call playing Uno with my niece, she just liked the sound the cards make when you slap them down. Made me realize I was way too focused on counting cards and blocking moves instead of just having fun with it.

rowan216d ago

One of my buddies had this happen with his little cousin and a board game. He was trying to teach him the rules of Sorry, all serious about strategy, and the kid just kept sliding the pawns around the board on their sides. It wasn't about winning, it was about the toy cars. My friend felt kinda silly after that, realized he'd been taking a kids' game way too seriously.

patricia_green2115d ago

My three year old nephew did something similar with checkers. He didn't care about the rules at all, he just wanted to stack the red pieces on top of the black ones to make tall towers. I kept trying to show him how to jump my pieces and he'd just knock the whole stack over and laugh. It hit me that I was trying to teach him a game from 3000 BC and he just wanted to build stuff. Now when we play I let him set up the board however he wants and we just knock things down together.