The legacy of Princess Maker 2

 As someone who helped write a game about parenting, I have opinions about parenting games. It's difficult to combine fiddly statistics with a narrative that gives a good simulation of both the day-to-day parenting decisions and an occasional event that feels like a pivotal moment, like how much dessert to give your child vs, deciding if you're going to force your child to take piano lessons. I'm on a quest to find and review all the parenting games that I can! I want to find the best parenting games and learn from their game design.

The first parenting game I ever played was Princess Maker 2 (1996). It's set in a medieval fantasy world where you become guardian of an 11-year-old orphan. You decide her schedule, where you can pay for her to attend expensive classes or she can make money by working. She can learn etiquette so she can properly greet the king's concubine, or she can work on a farm improving her stamina and earning money. She can study art and enter the yearly art contest, or hone her spiritual sensitivity while work in the graveyard. She can go to church and be pious, or work in a sleazy bar! Your daughter can also go out adventuring and either talk to or beat monsters she encounters in four different areas. I remember trying out lots of different ways of raising my child. Essentially, this game is a stat-cruncher and it's hard to feel connected to your daughter in the game. She seems more like a collection of numbers than a real person. Your choices for her schedule definitely affect her ending occupation and role in society, and there are many, many different endings. I would say that it's a classic that introduced parenting as a worthy game narrative to a western audience. The sequels were only recently localized and made available in the United States, although fans agree that Princess Maker 2 is the best of the series. You can play the original localization that wasn't sold in the US, or you can buy the remake on Steam.

Ciel Fledge: A Daughter Raising Simulator is a direct descendent of the Princess Maker games, but there is a science-fiction setting and more things to fiddle with. You decide what classes your daughter should take and they raise various stats that she needs, and I think they affect the endings. Your daughter can make a lot of friends, and there is a mood system where your daughter will get depressed if she's too stressed out. Unfortunately, I didn't really like this game. Learning about how to battle felt like reading a textbook, and the writing was not compelling. If you've played a lot of Princess Maker 2 and want to see a different take on the stat-raising simulation, you might want to try it. It's on Steam. 

If you prefer an interactive narrative, The Parenting Simulator is a text-based game that allows you to make a few key decisions for each year of your child's life. Instead of just saying you're a permissive parent, like in Ciel, you have to actually role-play being permissive, which in the above scenario would entail letting your child have as much screen time as they want! The writing in this game is good, and if I have any complaints, it's that their pandemic year event was a bit TOO lifelike and brought me out of my games-as-escape reverie. At the same time, I had a hard time believing that letting my child stay up all night at her sleepover made her that unpopular. There are still stats in the background, although some reviewers complained that it's difficult to get different endings. As a game designer, I wonder if it's because you have the option of playing an abbreviated version of the game with only a few random events per year vs. playing every event each playthrough--having fewer events would be less opportunity to affect end-determining stats.

Of course, I'm not going to end a post about parenting without mentioning my own game that I made with my sister and sister-in-law, Space to Grow. Like The Parenting Simulator, we tried to focus on a few key parenting events each year. You also choose how much your daughter should help you with your farm. Your daughter has a definite personality! My family was speculating about how much she was based on my nephews and nieces. The game is set on a foreign planet, and you make decisions that affect your community as well as your family. I think we reached a good balance of realism vs. cool science fiction stuff. Let me know how you like the game if you decide to play it! It's available on Steam, itch.io, and Google Play.

I love parenting games! I'm hoping to make another post that includes Growing Up, Cute Bite, and My Child Lebensborn. 

Princess Maker 2 screenshot by Donald Love 87 on GameFAQs

Indiecade 2015 Overview - Lots of cool games in a creative atmosphere

The best part of Indiecade is seeing games and their designers together, and seeing games you can't just download off the internet. There's a playful, creative atmosphere that I really enjoyed. My sister Andrea and I showed Our Personal Space at the gametasting on Thursday.

Andrea made the cute paper doll diorama

I got the all-access pass so I could see some of my videogame idols (? famous people in games that I like?) at the panels. I'm glad I did that, but if I go again I would just get an exhibit pass (the 3-day  all-access pass was about $500, while the exhibit pass was about $100). Many of the panelists talked off the top of their heads about admittedly interesting topics. Adam informed me that most panels are like that. But I'd rather read and essay or play a game those people spent a lot of time preparing. And if you want to spend money to get close to a writer or artist, that's what Patreon is for. So part of me thinks that panels at conventions are a weird thing that should change into something cooler. But another part of me knows that some people really love panels and it's a good way for conventions to support artists in the industry.

I wish I had been able to spend more time looking at all the games, especially the digital selects and the finalists. And the VR games! I didn't realize the lines for games would be so reasonable! All my convention experience is basically MineCon and the Salt Lake Comic Con, which were both super crowded. At those conventions, the panels were a welcome respite from the chaos of the exhibit hall. But at Indiecade, the exhibits didn't feel chaotic and stressful; they felt welcoming and accessible. So big kudos to the organizers for not overselling their convention and keeping it manageable.

We brought my 16-month-old daughter along. Adam was long-suffering and watched her most of the time. There were a few games she was able to interact with, but she's basically too young to enjoy non-tablet games (although she loves Patatap on the iPad). She liked the fountain near the Culver hotel. There weren't any changing tables in any of the restrooms, except for one in the women's restroom in the IndieXchange venue. She didn't mind having a few diaper changes next to her stroller. Luckily we were able to find a babysitter for night games!

If we can't go next year I want to do my best to replicate the experience at home. I think a party where everyone brings a laptop/phone/tablet with an indie game on it they want to share could be really fun. 

This ended up being more of a newsy post. I took photos of my notes and I want to write more about the panels I went to! I definitely have things to say about them.

One thing I've been thinking about is that sometimes I feel like I have to play ALL the games before I start trying to make (another) one. It's like I'm worried that someone else will have already made a game like the one I want to make, and I'll be rude to have made something so similar. But like the games advice presentation was saying, there's value in making games that have already been made. They help you learn about how to make games. I need to worry less about making something original and ground-breaking and more about actually making something. 

Animal Crossing integrates features into its landscape

Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is coming out at the end of September and I've been getting excited about it, so I went back to my New Leaf town. I decided to make things how I want them! I admit that when I first started playing I was really into collecting furniture, bugs, fish, and bells. But now that I've done that I'm much more interested in the personalization aspect of the game. You can design cute little shirts and dresses! What's not to like? And I think Happy Home Designer will make it easier to make things "just so." 

The in-game integration of many play aspects is one of AC:NL's strongest design features. Instead of having a pop-up or extra window, there's a place or person you can go to in order to explore other game features. It makes it so the UI can be simpler; instead of having a special menu that you have to go to to enable a feature, there's a place within the game you go to instead. Here's some examples from the game:

• Achievements: When you earn a medal, a special walrus shows up in your town. When you talk to him, he presents you with the medal you earned. It's much less invasive than a corner pop-up! 
• To visit another player's town, you go to a train station (how cute is that?). You can also "open" your town for visitors.
• To play multiplayer games you go to a special island. 
• To visit another player's "dream town" (a snapshot of the town that anyone can visit/mess up at any time without any consequences), you go to a dream spa-like place. 
• Making "pro" designs and their QR codes can only be done at the clothing shop. 
• Moving furniture, adding patterns to the ground, digging holes, and other "editing" aspects are done with your avatar (like Minecraft), not an "editing" menu. Sometimes this is really frustrating. I suspect it makes it easier for children and people who don't play lots of other games to figure out how to manipulate things quickly.
• Ordering furniture and managing your money are done through special kiosks. 

Nintendo games are really good at using in-game locations for game features; I know Fantasy Life and Pokemon Black/White have similar places you go to do multiplayer stuff. It only works with games that have persistent locations or towns where it makes sense for some building or feature to be standardized. Sometimes I think AC:NL goes a little too far with it, especially with the inventory management (you can only access your large inventory from lockers/shelves in your house, and there's no way to auto sort, and there aren't very many inventory slots). But it's an extreme example I think we can all learn from. 

Now I have some other thoughts and a bunch of screenshots from the game... view them here after the break!

BoRT: Videogames as a comfort during breastfeeding

I mentioned in my last post that I feel like the "how videogames changed my life"-type personal essays help legitimize my time spent playing videogames. Now I'll write my own personal story about it as part of the latest Blogs of the Round Table. "Did you ever find yourself in a better place or positive position as a result of play?"

About two months ago I had a baby whom I'll call Piper. I did use Lumines to cope with some of the pain of childbirth, but at some point I couldn't really concentrate on anything besides the experience of pushing an infant out of my uterus. The birth went fine, and after a week in the NICU with some apnea, we were able to come home with our baby. I had tons of support learning to breastfeed in the hospital, but after I got home, feeding all the time was starting to drain (ha) me. I found ways to watch TV while I fed Piper, but I also wanted to play videogames. 

My desire to multitask while breastfeeding was actually a really good thing. It helped me to improve my breastfeeding posture so that I was slouching back instead of leaning over to feed Piper. It made me learn how to cradle Piper in the crook of my arm instead of clinging her to my breast with two hands. And it also helped me relax during breastfeeding instead of worrying about if she was eating enough or if she was latched on correctly. I was able to play the third Ace Attorney game, which is playable one-handed and easily interrupted. Playing games also helped me to feel like I was more than a milk machine--I was a milk machine AND someone who could connect small logical leaps in a videogame! 

As lovely as videogames are, I feel like I could have made similar progress in my life with other media. What if reading a book two-handed while breastfeeding had been my goal? Or talking on the phone? Maybe I'm giving videogames too much credit here?
 

How to make Checkers boring

Yesterday on Pinterest I came across a blog post about how to use traditional board games in "untraditional ways" to "make learning fun." I am all for educational games, but the ideas in the post made me cringe.

The first idea was to write subtraction problems on a checkers board, and then have students say the answer to the problem to move to that square. This sounds like a glorified worksheet to me! Checkers teaches good skills already, like strategy and sportsmanship. The other repurposes were similar--have students say the answer to a math fact before going to a dot in Twister or putting down a piece in Connect Four. I saw another, similar post on a different blog that had kids reading sight words in order to play Break the Ice. This kind of modification makes games less fun, because it introduces tasks that are irrelevant to game mechanics. How about using games that involve math facts or words directly, instead of inserting them into otherwise perfectly good games? We go to educational games to get away from the worksheets and flashcards. When a game uses math or reading relevantly, it helps motivate children to learn those skills (I anticipate that this academic article discusses that, but I can't access the PDF. This one looks really good too. U_U). It's not going to hurt a child to drill them on math facts as part of a game, but I think it isn't as enjoyable as it could be.

I had some ideas of games that would use educational material more relevantly:

Math fact games

• Subtraction War: Like regular War (the card game), except each turn players turn over two cards each. They must subtract the lesser from the greater card (or the second from the first if you're using negative numbers too), and whoever has the greatest difference gets all the cards. Maybe that's too difficult? You can take out the face cards or just assign them all a value, like 10.
• Prime Climb / Primo: This is an upcoming board game that is kind of like Sorry in that you can oust your opponents' pieces from the board, but instead of rolling two D6s, you roll two D10s. Also, the board is numbered from 1-100. You add, subtract (and multiply/divide if you like) the numbers you rolled from the numbers your pawns are on to move them. This one might be too difficult for lower graders... but maybe not?
• Dice games like Farkle can be modified to practice addition and subtraction. Here's a great PDF with different card and dice games to practice math facts. 

Language and reading games

• For sight words, a game like Spot It! only with words seems like it would be pretty fun and effective. They sell a basic English version. Admittedly, this one isn't something you could replicate exactly at home--the algorithm for making a set of cards with multiple images and having one thing always matching between two is actually rather complex. 
• A matching/memory game using sight words. I wonder if some kind of speed matching would work too, or if that would just stress kids out. 
• A maze game with images/objects in the floor and written instructions which refer to those objects. 
• More games for language development on Sublime Speech. 

It seems like almost any game is going to be getting kids to think about things in a different way (unless it's too easy), but some games address school curriculum needs better than others. 

Designing games for 5-year-olds

Many five-year-olds can't read. They have smaller hands and attention spans. They hate dying. We know these things, but I think designing games for the kindergarten age group is more about making deathless constant action games. Children at this age are content to explore even if they aren't "winning." They play their favorite levels over and over. Because of these tendencies, I believe in some ways it's harder to design for small children and difficult to predict what they will like about video games.

about two years older than this. But still, tiny hands!

I have been babysitting a 5-year-old, whom I'll call Pepper, and he plays video games about half the time, sometimes with me. I'll use his experience to back up my suggestions for designing games for five-year-olds,  which can probably extend to 4 to 6-year-olds.

1. Have custom avatars: Kids want to pretend they are in the game, and they want to have an avatar that looks cool, preferably that they can change at will. Pepper's favorite part of Little Big Planet is selecting the "random costume" button and saving them, and decorating his pod. He was reluctant to play Kirby's Epic Yarn because Kirby is pink ("I want to be a guy" "He is a guy").

2. There doesn't have to be a big bad boss, it's good enough to just have a fantasy world to explore. Pepper's favorite LBP levels involve driving, roller-coaster riding, and pretending to swim with the sharks. The cantina in Lego Star Wars, where you can just run around attacking anyone at random, is also a favorite. I'm bored by roller coaster levels ("I'm just pressing down R1 this whole time..."), but he thinks they are fun. I think other kids are similarly motivated by fantasy in the video games they play.

3. Make it really easy. Kids this age can learn to do things more complicated than jumping, but they don't have a very high frustration tolerance. Many of the puzzles in Lego Star Wars are too hard for him to figure out without my help. Not just puzzles, but basic controls should be simple. I feel like the wii is a little nicer for this, but when you add in the nunchuck there are still lots of buttons, which might explain the popularity of ipad games with this group. Having the buttons doesn't mean you need to use them; point-and-click PC games are also really fun.

4. Potty jokes are hilarious, but it should also be exciting (but not actually dangerous)! Things like playing house, pretending to cook, eat, and sleep, come naturally to pretend play without a video game, so it feels natural in a game setting. That said, there should be something attention-catching about a game for this age group--something they already like, like monster trucks, dinosaurs, trains, roller coasters, Mario, sharks, jungles, etc. They want the feeling that the game is dangerous, but they don't want to die in the game (so, some kind of fire-y background is great).

It's easy for adult gamers to keep insisting that video games should be taken seriously and want more serious games, but I think it's also important to remember kids in video games. THEY LOVE THEM.

Academic Interlude: Multimedia Storytelling and Language Learning

For this academic interlude, I summarize a research article about multimedia storytelling and then discuss how I'd like to see more user-generated stories in games. I'm still playing around with formatting--I want you to be able to read about the study if you want to, but if you don't, I'd like you to be able to read the discussion on its own and have it make sense.

[Study Background] "Applying a Multimedia Storytelling Website in Foreign Language Learning," by Wenli Tsou, Wichung Wang, and Yenjun Tzeng, looks at how using a storytelling website can help Taiwanese children learn English. The background section references research that found that stories effective with children include "repetitive phrases, unique words, and enticing description." These aspects of a story encourage children to retell parts of the story. Kids like hearing and telling stories, basically.

[Study Nitty-Gritty] The researchers gave two Taiwanese classes storytelling-based English teaching. One group had the teacher trying using visual aids with the story, while the other group had Storytelling Website stories instead of storybooks (it's not clear of the children each had their own computer, or if the story was projected while the teacher read it). Afterwards the children took tests on reading comprehension, sentence complexity, and general language proficiency. In evaluating comprehension, the researchers looked at beginning statement ("once upon a time"), characters, theme, plot, resolution, and sequence. If I understand correctly, the experimental group also used the website to recreate the stories they had heard. I'm not sure how old the students were or how long they got to play around with the website, which is information I would like to have.

[Study Results; My Whining] Both groups understood the stories pretty well, but the children who interacted with the website had better overall language proficiency and sentence complexity. I think it's safe to say that telling a story in a foreign language helps you to understand the language better--which is why I don't understand why we didn't make up more stories in my Japanese classes. We used Japanese the Written Language, which, while excellent in building off of previous vocab, had genuinely terrible practice reading sentences. I would have loved to have a story, especially one with pictures. I think I even made a few, when I wasn't writing some form letter for homework.

this guy took this screen shot, I am not awesome enough, it is from Sleep is Death

[Game Discussion] Multimedia storytelling is good for learning a language, and I think it's good for exercising imagination. I can think of a few games that encourage user-generated storytelling: the Neverwinter Nights mod-maker, Sleep is Death, LittleBigPlanet (to an extent), and whatever that mac program was that let you make your own storybooks (a cross between clipart and paint). I love the level creation in LittleBigPlanet, but... it only allows very simple stories. I would love to see a program/game that lets users tell stories in a friendly way. It could be for children, or for authors who think with images rather than just words, or for foreign language students. It could include archetypes in the character set to get things going. I think it would encourage gamers to be creative not just in their gameplay, but also in the way they use language.

[Call to Action] Should I just go play Sleep is Death and get this storytelling kick over with, or do you think there's room for more picture-book type storytelling in video games? Also tangentially: fanfiction is so easy to make, there is already a world and characters, maybe a storytelling game could capitalize on that?

Video Games as Therapy: Ludotherapy?

I recently stumbled upon a new website, How Games Saved My Life. Today they (well, Ashly), published my story about how Persona 3 helped (is helping, I'm still playing) me think of social links as something I can make in my real life. Reading the other posts on the blog, I'm struck by this paradigm-shifting, anxiety-neutralizing power of video games. I think there's a lot of untapped potential here!

I did a little research, and I found out that at least one therapist has used video games in his therapy (I'm relieved, since it seems like a no-brainer). A dissertation by Kevin Boyd Hull entitled "Computer/Video Games as a Play Therapy Tool in Reducing Emotional Disturbances in Children" found that video games are an effective play therapy in helping children who suffer from emotional problems. I dug up the PDF and found this charming interchange about Transformers:

Therapist: So the Decepticons are bad guys? 

John: Yes, they are the bad ones trying to take over the world because they want to live here. Like, their planet is dying so they came here. 

Therapist: What makes them bad? 

John: They want to hurt humans and the Transformers want to help the humans. 

Therapist: Do you ever feel like you are battling Decepticons in real life? 

John: Yeah, like the people that make fun of me at school.  

Therapist: So, they feel like the Decepticons?  

John: Yeah, sometimes I hate them. 

 Another child discusses his experience with playing Runescape:

Therapist: Now, Marco, we’ve talked a little bit about how we are going to use the games, and I know that you know you are here because of the sadness issue,  but I was wondering if you could share what life is like for you in regards to the sadness. 

Marco: It is like a sense of futility. 

Therapist: Futility?

Marco: Yes, futility. That nothing that I do is going to matter. I mean, you know, you do well in school, then you pass to the next grade. And on and on. Finally you graduate and then you find a job. Then it’s the same thing over and over. Futility. 

Therapist: You’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. So is this where the not going to school comes in? 

Marco: Exactly. It just gets to the point for me to where I don’t want to pretend anymore and it just seems pointless to go.  

Therapist: Yet the game brings you joy, a sense of purpose. 

Marco: Yes, smiley face. (This is his way of saying that he is experiencing happiness). It is the one place that I feel a sense of purpose.  

Therapist: What is happiness for you, and when was the last time you felt happy? 

Marco: Happiness for me is the absence of worry. When I was small, like, early  elementary school I remember feeling happy. It was like going to school and getting good grades made me feel like I had some sense of purpose. Now, there is none. 

Therapist: Now, I’m noticing as we play the game here that you have things that you must accomplish, what are they called again, quests? 

Marco: Yes, quests. You gain enough items and then embark on the quests and it’s a  challenge to see if you can complete the quests.  

Therapist: I’m thinking that life is sort of like that, you know, that you have things that you must accomplish at this stage and then you move on to the next thing. Life is like a quest. 

Marco: I suppose it is, yes it is

It's interesting to see how in the context of therapy, the games are used as metaphors for real-life conflicts. The games provide a medium where these conflicts can be satisfyingly resolved, which I think is responsible for diffusing some frustration in players (if it's a good game!). I hope more therapists can use video games to talk to children about their problems, and in the meantime, it looks like video games can be pretty good self-medication.

P.S. Take a minute to check out Dream with Portals, a collection of remixed and extended Portal 2 tracks that helped this guy overcome insomnia.

The Developmental Stages of Video-game playing

I brought along DDR and Super Smash Bros Brawl to my family reunion and I was surprised by how interested my young cousins were. I also noticed that some of them really wanted to play, but they didn't do very well. So, here are the developmental stages of video-game playing, as defined by me and based on my observations of children playing SSBB. They occur in adults rapidly when learning a new game, but in kids it gets pretty obvious. Before the exploration stage, you can give a child a dummy controller and they will be perfectly content to watch and pretend to play. They honestly don't know the difference.

1. Exploration (ages 3-5ish): The player recognizes that he/she controls an avatar on the screen, can distinguish this avatar from others. Concept of the game may be limited to "cool I can move around." In SSBB, girls in this stage placed utmost importance on who their character was (i.e., Princess Peach or Zelda) and how it was colored.

2. Competition (6-12ish): The player knows when she is winning or losing, and wants to win. In SSBB, this manifests itself as directed attack behavior,  revenge on winning players, and a desire to know the rules and how to get better. Most gameplay happens at this level until the player has some expertise.

3. Challenge (12 and up-ish): The players still wants to win, but wants a challenge--simply winning isn't fun enough. My older brother gave himself a 125% handicap to make it fun to play with younger children. My sister-in-law likes playing against three computers on their hardest mode. It's the potential for challenge that can keep people playing (like the 3-heart-no-sword Ocarina of Time challenge). I'm fascinated by the ways people make games harder for themselves to make them more entertaining. I'm also impressed with how good SSBB was with kids who were in different stages of gaming.

I don't tend to get to the challenge stage in many games. I think I've feebly attempted to collect all the pokemon (back with blue when it was feasible), and I've tried for 100% completion in some Little Big Planet levels. Have you done any crazy things to make games more challenging?

Where Have All the Children Gone?

Thanks to my sister for letting me guest post here!  As a mother of three who still makes some time for video games, I thought I'd post about kids in video games, not kids consuming video games (which is a much more popular topic).

Some (totally random!) kids playing video games

Children make up 20% of the U.S. population, and account for almost 16% of gamers.  Without them, there could be no future for the human race.  Everyone has been a child at some point.  But in most games, they don't even exist. 

It's pretty common to talk about sexism in the video game industry.  But what about the fact that almost every video game character is between 18 and 30?  Kids make up a big portion of video game players, but how often can they play a main character their age, even in games aimed at kids?  While I'm not suggesting that we need kid avatars for Halo or Dragon Age, childhood is a large area of the human experience that has been virtually ignored in video games.


In some games, there are no children at all, and while part of that is because of the types of stories that easily translate into games, part of that is due to technical and legal difficulties.  Oblivion, for example, is detailed enough to have geologically-appropriate terrain for the entire world, and each of the hundreds of characters has their own schedule for each hour of each day of the week, but there are no children in the world.  Assassin's Creed has meticulously recreated historical cities with thousands of people populating them -- but no children.

What's missing from this picture?

Part of the reason for this is technological -- adding children means more 3D models and game resources, which do use time and money.  Part of it may be ethical or legal -- in open-world games like Oblivion, where you can kill characters in the world if you want, some would undoubtedly attack children, which is one taboo that still holds a lot of weight in our society.  As one designer for Fallout 3 says about their decision not to allow killing children in their game, "It wouldn't have been socially responsible". 

Kids have their own town in Fallout 3

As gamers are more and more likely to be parents themselves (53% of gamers are between ages 18 and 49), they are more likely to appreciate settings that deal with children and parenting.  Fallout 3, a postapocalyptic open-world game, does have some children (who are unkillable).  They even have their own little kids-only village, which is a neat idea, but ultimately unrealistic.  How do new kids (babies?) get to this village?  Would the teenagers really allow themselves to be kicked out on becoming adults?  There are some great issues about children that could have been addressed in other parts of the game, too -- how does nuclear fallout affect people's decisions to have children?  If infertility is a large problem, perhaps the culture surrounding children would change -- would people value children more, either because of their rarity, or as another gun to defend against the monsters?  What happens to the culture of childhood?  While the game explores some interesting questions about science and sacrifice and revolution and karma, sociological and familial issues are still largely a wasteland.

Children, when they appear in games, usually occupy stereotypical roles, such as the Crying Little Kid or Heartwarming Orphan, with little to set them apart and make them a living character.  But surely in kid's games there are sometimes realistic kid characters, right?  The truth is, even in kids' games, they usually play as robots, anthropomorphic animals, teenagers, or adults. 

Do kids identify with these guys?  Maybe . . .

The only child main characters (under 14) I could think of were in Pokemon games, Gau & Relm from FFVI, and Sora from Kingdom Hearts (Wikipedia has little else to add).  But Sora is a great example of a child main character who is not merely a story prop or stereotype.  He has relationships and problems similar to other school-aged children, but with the added responsibility of trying to remember his past, save worlds, and survive.  His struggles are not just physical (beat the bad guys!), but emotional and psychological as well. 

It's okay, Sora, we all feel a little emo sometimes...

Sometimes we forget what it's like to be a kid.  It would be hard to do well -- to capture the learning and naivete and the sincerity and intensity of being a child.  But I think accurately portraying children would help video games feel more realistic and be more true, as well as having stories that mean more to both children and adults.