Comments on: Frustration with online games for kids

By: mysterious stranger

mysterious stranger — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 22:06:01 +0000

hey,

i have a website its preety fun, i was just surfing the web trying to find a fun site to play on cause games like clubpenguin,and webkinz are just not fun anymore.I am 10 though so i think i could give you a fair list of games that actually work case i’m online a lot:

clubpenguin.com:make your own penguin and explore a fun new world chat with other penguins choose safe chat(list of words to choose from very safe) or free chat(type in words, however it won’t let you type in e-mails phone numbers adresses or inapropriate langue)

sorry i could only type in one but go to my website to get more.
ps.i didnt forget a period in my websites name so dont put in a period please

By: Hand Me Downs

Hand Me Downs — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:14:07 +0000

Hi,

I totally agree with you. Its realy annoying when we encounter such tecnical issues while playing games.

My kids love computer games and playing it all the time and they get upset if they cant find a level or game they were previously playing.

So game makers, please take a note of this.

By: Kids Games

Kids Games — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 02:29:27 +0000

PBS kids games are really good. Kids enjoy this games, Any game it has to increase the mental ability for kids. Also we need to take care that they should not get addicted to game.

Thanks
Jessica

By: matt mcknight

matt mcknight — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 15:43:04 +0000

Almost forgot…you can download many of the flash files to run locally. Beats the “where’s my game?” problem and let’s you set up a local homepage full of links to various games to run.

By: matt mcknight

matt mcknight — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 15:40:42 +0000

My daughter learned to read with the help of http://www.starfall.com when she was 3- I give it a lot of credit.. My 1yr old likes the alphabet section and is getting pretty good. It’s well done- the flash segments are launched from an html page, so it’s all bookmarkable. Looking for an equivalent site on mathematics. So many of them are horribly done. I just got the older daughter (5yr old) started on creating animations on Scratch (scratch.mit.edu). She got the hang of it in a couple of hours. I guess learning Flash itself is next?

By: Ray Cromwell

Ray Cromwell — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 07:11:26 +0000

I ran into the same issues. There are some 3D plugins that the NickJr site uses. I got them to run on OSX, but they crash often, leaving me to explain to a 3 year old what segfaults are.

Sesame Street’s website used to have this game Keyboard-o-Rama that my son loved, but they unlinked it, and now hide everything behind this portal-like flash page. Fortunately, some parents bookmarked it, and Google can still find it.

My son likes PBS, Playhouse Disney, NickJr, and the Sesame Street websites. I was amazed that even when he was 2 years old, he was capable of using a trackpad. Some of the games require drag-and-drop however, and it took him a long time to figure out how to do that. I advocate that these kids games use click-and-drop. You press a button, pick up an item, let go of the button, drag it around, and then click to drop.

+1 for Apple and 1-button. When my son tried to use a PC notebook, he kept accidently clicking the right mouse button!

By: Robert Kaiser

Robert Kaiser — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:20:21 +0000

Sorry, not on games, I’m still looking forward to having my own kids, but the problem you started with is even worse if you’re not using a browser with the brand name of the major players in the UA string, e.g. on SeaMonkey or Minefield, you’ll easily find a large number of pages telling you that “you need IE6 or higher, or Firefox 1.5 or higher to view this website”. I really hoped the open web would look different.

By: philip

philip — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:53:54 +0000

our kids LOVE neopets.com.

we had to implement time limits on the computer because they’d play for hours. neopets lets you earn ‘coins’ that enable you to buy virtual goods, so it isn’t just about individual games. while the kids love the games, they also love earning the virtual money so they can spend it on the virtual goods.

we let them try other sites from time to time, but they always go back to neopets. we also don’t have to worry as much about inappropriate ads on the neopets site as compared to some more mature sites (our kids are 9 and 11).

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:27:32 +0000

I’m not a parent, but I have suggestions none-the-less.

Try using the User Agent Switcher extension to get around the IE detection. Might work. It’s worth a try at least.

Some flash games you can save locally by figuring out the location of the SWF file and saving it to disk (make sure it is fully loaded into the cache first). With flash games that grab additional content from the server this probably won’t work. But if it does work, you have a backup in case the game gets deleted off the server.

By: Nicki

Nicki — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:06:57 +0000

My daughter loves that site too. We both also play on Neopets.com. They have a ton of games but they are no different than Nickelodeon’s in that you can’t skip to the last level you play the day before, etc.

We are also a big fan of the flash games on Orisinal.com