Gregg Collins recently posted about How Games Drive Learning. He also linked to “Does Easy Do It? Children, Games, and Learning,” an article by Seymour Papert. Both are great reads, and both emphasize that part of what makes video games so engaging is that they’re challenging.
Papert’s piece in particular got me thinking about the first video games I played. Some of them weren’t just hard—they were swear-at-your-TV-smash-your-controller-against-the floor-and-quit impossible. To this day, it still kills me that I couldn’t beat Battletoads on my old-school Nintendo. (Coincidentally, it took top honors on this list of all-time frustrators.)