Over holiday break I played Pico Park with my mom and brother.
For those who don't know, Pico Park is a platformer where 2-8 players work together to solve puzzles and reach the end of the level.
My mom is not really a gamer. But Pico Park looked welcoming enough, with its cute, low-fi graphics, so she agreed to play.
WASD is hard
Very quickly, we realized that WASD was a struggle for her. She kept looking down at the keyboard to track her fingers, and it was hard for her to briefly tap a key (for example, to nudge her character right or left). She lacked the motor skills and sensory awareness that my brother and I developed over years of playing video games.
Precise timing and multiple key presses were particularly challenging. Combining them was even worse. A core mechanic in Pico Park is to jump on top of other players. This requires you to press W and D at the same time, and also not overshoot the jump. Guess who kept overshooting the jump :')
Jumping on another player
What my mom kept doingWe eventually developed an algorithm for jumping on top of other players:
- Walk up right next to the player you want to jump on.
- Press W and D together, and let them go at the same time.
This allowed her to think of W and D as a single key, and focus on timing only.
After about half an hour, we had to stop. My mom's head was spinning from dying so many times and she was anxious from holding us back. She looked genuinely exhausted. To be honest, I was a bit tired too.
My mom's a dawg though fr
Later that day, my mom told me "I'd like to get good at this game." We sat down and grinded Pico Park for an hour, focusing on mechanics instead of level completions.
The next day, my bro joined again and this time, the three of us played for 3 hours straight. Don't get me wrong, my mom was still bad at the game, but this time it wasn't crippling. It actually made things more fun. Helping my mom make it to the end alive became its own puzzle, and completing a level felt so much more rewarding.
We beat around 20 levels in total. Good shit team.
Takeaways
It's so dang easy to over-project onto others.
When I think about Pico Park's challenges, my mind goes straight to the puzzle-solving and communication aspects. So I kind of assumed that it would be the same for my mom, and boy was I wrong. I didn't account for the fact that she doesn't use computer keyboards anywhere close to how I do.
Now I wonder how she navigates her phone and laptop. What other parts of her daily life do I have inaccurate assumptions about?
Watch people do things and you can learn a lot.
I just can't imagine learning about my mom's WASD struggles from a conversation.
Know your pre-requisites.
My mom went from burning out in 30 minutes to playing for 3 hours, with just a little bit of practice focused on the right fundamentals.