In his book Everything Bad is Good for You, Steven Johnson writes what teachers and parents might have said had videogames been invented before books:

“Reading books chronically understimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding traditions of gameplaying – which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements – books are simply a barren string of words on the page. Only a small portion of the brain devoted to processing written language is activated during reading, while games engage the full range of the sensory and motor cortices.”

For awhile I have wondered when my son would enjoy videogames. He’s 5 1/2 now and up until recently he wasn’t super interested. He would play more of the activity oriented CD-ROMs on his computer, but pure videogames weren’t super interesting. He had a hard time with the hand-eye coordination required from the controls and he didn’t really enjoy any of hte pressure situations in the game where either the clock or rapidly approaching enemies would end the game. Too much stress. Then we got him Lego Star Wars for the XBOX and all that changed.

Lego Star Wars (and its successor Lego Star Wars II – The Original Trilogy) are videogames targeted at younger kids where both Star Wars trilogies are depicted almost entirely in Lego. The player goes through every major scene in the movie as one of the Star Wars characters. It’s true that the Star Wars franchise (story, characters, music, props) is a reason this game is so good. But as anyone familiar with videogames knows, movie licenses are usually a creative crutch that make videogame quality suffer rather than enhance anything but the undelivered promise of the game to customers. As it turns out, this is a game that both my son and I love to play. Since he’s grown enormously in a variety of areas: hand-eye coordination, puzzle solving, discipline, focues, etc. Not to mention we would gladly have him playing videogames instead of bugging his sister out of boredom.

The things that made the videogame approachable and fun for him are the same things that made it enjoyable and addictive for me. These are:

• No stress. Dying in this game is low stress. The penalty for dying is losing all the lego “studs” you’ve collected. But you can complete the level with zero studs. And nothing’s worse than not being able to complete a level because you keep dying.
• That said, once you’ve completed a level you may want to go back and try to complete the level while keeping dying to a minimum. There’s an entire ecosystem around collecting studs where you can trade them in for extra game features. Collecting a minimum of studs on each of the 17 levels of the game opens up a secret 18th level. Not only does moving the death penalty to this secondary ecosystem relieve pressure when you’re playing the game for the first time, but it ensures replayability for anyone who wants the extras.
• The game is on “loose rails”. It’s neither an old platform game where you follow one strict path from beginning to end, nor is it totally freeform where can go anywhere and do anything. Clear beginning and ends, and decent cues on where you should go are important. Feeling like you know what to do next helps keep you motivated. Closure at the end of levels is also key.
• If the two additional goals with the studs aren’t enough to ensure replayability, there’s also collecting hidden “cannisters” of lego that build little virtual miniature Lego kits (spaceships, etc.). There are ten cannisters per level. In between level you can browse your “parking lot” where all your minikit ships are parked and admire them. Interestingly, going off the rails and doing things that seem counter-intuitive in terms of which path you follow is how you find these cannisters. Another level of replayability. If I had one complaint it’s that you should get more once you collect all the minikits – maybe the ability to fly them around.

Low stress, multiple levels of replayability, clear beginnings and endings, not to mention a great attention to coherent detail are all things that could be applied not just to other videogames, but to all manner of software. Lego Star Wars I was an enormous hit selling over 3 million copies worldwide. It’s clearly an expensive and high quality production. But because the graphics (which are gorgeous) are all done in blocky Lego style, the game is not as hugely computing intensive (relative to some of today’s games) and will run on all manner of consoles, handhelds, and PCs beautifully. Lego Star Wars II sold over 1.1 million units in only its first week out. The sequel adds all manner of additional game-within-a-game ecosystems and goals adding even more replayability, but the basic things that made the first game so good are all still in place. As much as the Star Wars content adds value to the game I am convinced that using these game mechanics and principles could make any backstory an approachable, fun, and addictive game. I hope that more games come out in this format. But for some reason I suspect that game developers will overestimate the content and underestimate the user experience philosophy and principles as the reason for its success.