For fifteen years, we have helped parents celebrate their children’s birthday parties. One question that pops up, not infrequently what is the best age for child to throw a party?

The correct answer to that should be, “at the age you believe your child will have fun…” having said that, we do put a lower limit on the ages with many markets wanting the children to be at least 6 years old. If I look at the historical sales data, I see that that average age for a GameTruck party falls at 10 years old, a range it has held for years. The vast majority of our customers fall between 8,and 11 years old. 

But if you want to know the perfect age for a GameTruck party, I will have to say that it is 10 years old. Now I know there are parents reading this might panic. Please don’t panic! You don’t have to wait until 10 to have a GameTruck party! We successfully entertain thousands upon thousands of children every year from as young as 6 and beyond.  You can check our 87% Net Promoter Score as proof our owns throw great parties for all ages.

However, if you are curious about the best age, the sweet spot, then read on.  I don’t think it is actually the child’s age that makes a difference as much as their grade. GameTruck parties really become popular in the third through sixth grade. And if there’s a sweet spot, it is that last year of elementary school.  For vast majority of kids in the US, this happens in the fifth grade when they are 10 years old.

Why the fifth grade?

Here in Arizona, most of our public schools operate in three waves. We have Elementary school which runs K-5th. Middle school runs 6^th– 8^th. Most of our high schools are four-year schools covering the 9^th through 12^th grades. The most variability happens at the elementary and middle school boundary, where some schools run K-6 with a two-year middle school, and others operate as I described.

The reason the last grades in elementary school are so enamored with GameTruck is partly cultural, and partly developmental.

Cultural Effects

When kids are in elementary school, parents want to expose their kids to as many sports (and activities) as possible. We did this with our kids.  They played soccer, they played tee-ball, and basketball, and even flag football. At a young age, – I mean like in Kindergarten – simply getting them to participate was a chore. Most of the time this an exercise in corralling rambunctious little balls of energy.

For many parents, team sports have become the de facto way to socialize and exercise their children. Elementary schools is when kids are more or less thrown in together, and friendships are made through a combination of trial and error and through spending time together.

As the kids grow and advance through the grades, however, there is typically a sport that captures the imagination for a majority of the community.  In South Tempe it was Little league. Everyone played little league whether they wanted to or not. Why little league? It is one of the only sports organized around schools.  Therefore, kids play with and against their friends.  Many other sports invite children from a much wider pool and you might compete with people you will never see again outside of that one game.

I know we had the feeling that if our kids did not play Little League, they would be left out. In different cities and different parts of the country other organizations have this kind of pull.  I know in Long Island they have a tremendous youth soccer league. North Scottsdale is dominated by flag football. The combination of community involvement, organization, participation, and municipal support with access to good facilities all play a role in elevating one sport to a focal point. 

These sports activities become a kind of “binding agent”, when coupled with school really create the social fabric for most of our children’s lives.  There is one curious thing about both school, and sports.  The kids are not in control.  Adults are.  So the most powerful force in a young child’s life in terms of forming friendships is managed by adults.  I believe that is significant and plays a party in why GameTruck parties have a special meaning for fifth graders.

Developmental Effects

It is not only school and sports (or other activities) that shape a child’s social life.  Children go through a process of socialization that starts with the parents and expands toward finding and identifying with a friend group.  I noticed that as my children gained an increase in mobility, they expressed more of their individual personalities. When they were infants confined to a bouncy chair, they strongly identified with my wife. In fact, they might cry sometimes when they could not see her. Infant-parent attachment is well researched and supports the idea that as children grow, they expand their identity with the primary caregiver, to include the family.  When they go to school, this next level of mobility leads to an expansion of identity that includes other children their age.  By the third and forth group, children are actively seeking out friends and connections, but the patterns are subtly different at 7 and 8.

I saw it when I coached Farm Baseball (7 & 8).  We also noticed a sharp divide when we worked with younger kids in our Bravous Esports programs. There is a noticeable difference between 7&8 and 9&10.  While there are many gifted gamers in the younger age brackets – socially, they are in a different space.  Most children in the 3^rd grade are just learning how to read which makes it hard for them to act independently. Yet they have a strong desire to, “do what the big kids are doing”. Their sights are focused on the older kids, but the older kids seem to be aware of those around them and the younger kids are like furniture, present, but not terribly relevant for social connection.  This could have to do with their capacity for grasping and processing more abstract concepts.

Let me give you a concrete example.  In Little League Farm (ages 7 & 8), we did not keep score and there were no winners or losers.  However, I could get the kids fired up by telling them when they were hitting, “We are down by one run!  Let’s get some hits.”  When the inning was over, the kids would ask, “How did we do?” I would tell them, “We are up by one run, you better get out there on defense and hold them.”  I could do this inning after inning, game after game.

By 9 years old, players were eligible for the “Minors”, where they kept score, teams could win or lose, and the kids pitched to each other.  (In farm they used a pitching machine).  Suddenly the kids had a very good sense of who was good, and how was not.  Everyone knew the score, one multiple levels.  

While the younger kids strove to act like the older kids, the “older kids”, were starting to discern and select their friends based upon criteria that was important to them, not the adults.  

GameTruck Party a Hand-Picked Team

One of the reasons GameTruck Parties are so ideal for kids in the  fifth grade, is that their birthday party is their chance to “pick their own team.” While we do everything we can to make sure everyone at a celebration plays (see No Lone Wolves ), the birthday child gets to pick the games they want to play and who they want to play with. For most of their lives, their teammates have been picked by adults. Kids have very little control over their environments and social groups – however with a GameTruck party, they get a chance to start to exercise social choice in a new way. 

Unlike other birthday party concepts that emphasis putting as many people as possible into the same space as possible to create as much energy as possible (doesn’t that just sound like a terrible idea in 2021?), those kinds of environments make the birthday child just another passenger in their own life. The adults are driving, and what happens, happens.

With a GameTruck party however, the coach identifies the birthday child and singles them out to play on the first screen.  They are then told they can play whatever they want with whoever they want. For many children, this is an enormous leap in self-determination. Kids understand that they can play what they want by themselves, but to choose the game that their closest friends get to play? At ten years old most children understand how truly special that is.

I personally believe this is one of the reasons so many children have told their parents, “this is the greatest party I have ever had.” Not simply because the games are great, not simply because the environment is cool. Children recognize the level of maturity and responsibility that is being entrusted to them by the adult Game Coaches. They get to choose what to play and who to play with, and that is a big deal. 

Everyone can have fun, but the experience is different for everyone.

When you entertain 10 million people, you see a lot of things. I am still convinced that video games offer something for literally everyone if done right.  I have come to believe that 10-year-olds attach a special significance to a GameTruck party. At the intersection of school, extracurricular activities, and their own personal development as individuals – they see a GameTruck party as a unique blend of entertainment and choice, of competition and camaraderie. Of all the ages that enjoy GameTruck, I do believe that 10-year-olds are in a unique position to get absolutely the most from the experience.

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Reference

1. Benoit, D. (2004). Infant-parent attachment: Definition, types, antecedents, measurement and outcome. Paediatrics & Child Health, 9(8), 541–545.
2. Social and Emotional Development: Ages 8-10. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2021, from https://www.kidcentraltn.com/development/8-10-years/social-and-emotional-development-ages-8-10.html

Jr, C. R., Ripken, B., & Lowe, S. (2006). Coaching Youth Baseball the Ripken Way (First edition). Human Kinetics.

Recently I wrote about the steps GameTruck is taking to address COVID-19, and to provide celebration options for families. This week I want to dig a little deeper into our newest offering, GameTruck @HOME. Specifically, I want to talk about GameTruck @HOME feature the Nintendo Switch.

What is GameTruck @HOME?

Believe it or not, GameTruck @HOME goes back to 2017. Nintendo launched the Switch on March 3, 2017 and thanks to a long-standing partnership with Nintendo, the team at GameTruck had early access to the console. The operations team, headed by Brandon Wiele, immediately saw the potential to create a new kind of video game party. While GameTruck has proven to be incredibly popular, the game trailer has one, at times glaring constraint. You can’t take it inside.

When GameTruck shows up, the game trailer is the event. However, we often get requests for GameTruck to be a part of a larger celebration. Integrating the game trailer into a largely indoor event often creates a disjointed experience as gamers have to go outside (typically into a parking lot) to play. Since the Nintendo Switch is completely self-contained, supports adhoc WIFI (more on that in a second), and every unit has its own screen we suddenly saw the opportunity to create a completely self-contained mobile video game event that could easily go inside.

This would be perfect for event planners and meeting professionals who wanted to add a little game play to their meetings, catered events, or conferences. We called that product Gameplex. With the rise of COVID-19 and the associated security limitations however, the team at GameTruck in partnership with our franchise owners launched GameTruck @HOME, a contactless party option that allows us to drop off a case of sanitized consoles and then pick them up. No direct human interaction necessary.

Yeah, but what is it?

GameTruck @Home is a turnkey celebration delivered to your home, that you can hold in your home, garage, or back yard. (You have the option to have the event managed for you by one of our professional game coaches).

We deliver 10 ready-to-play Nintendo Switches in a single convenient case to your doorstep. Nine of these units are configured for individual play, with the 10th unit suitable for individual play or being hooked up to a TV using the included docking station for some big screen action.

COVID, or no COVID, GameTruck @HOME does give players fundamentally a different experience than a game trailer.

What Makes the GameTruck @HOME Special

While it is somewhat obvious, it takes a second to realize that the video game experience with GameTruck @HOME is radically inclusive because every player gets their own system. What’s more, every system is loaded with every title which means, at any moment, groups of players can dynamically form new multiplayer groups, or flow from game to game without waiting for a copy of the game, or a specific screen to become available.

Want to play some Mario Kart? Bang. Everyone has that game.

Want to play Animal Crossing and visit each other’s islands? Everyone has that game.

What’s more all the challenge of creating accounts, swapping friend codes, it has all been done already. The units are ready to play.

What makes GameTruck @HOME special is what I call zero friction gaming. Everything you and your friends need to play together is at your fingertips.

Zero Friction Gaming

While there is no substitute for the GameTruck video game trailer and its awesome “wow factor”, GameTruck @HOME delivers a different kind of experience, one that is subtle, flexible, and exclusive. When anyone can play any game at any moment without waiting, your event becomes like a digital playground. They can curl up in the basement, sitting around in a circle playing safely – they can head outside and play on the porch. The gaming goes where the people go. This means there is no resistance to play. No waiting. You just play.

No Internet Required

One of the magic features of the Nintendo Switch, which even today many people do not know about, is that it supports a form of networking called “Adhoc Wireless”. Imagine the Internet is the post office. Typically, an application puts together a “packet” and sends it out via wireless to “the internet”. Special computer called Domain Name Servers act as a post office and route these packets to the other players consoles and computers.

What does this have to do with the Nintendo Switch? Adhoc wireless is like passing notes in school. The consoles can simply talk to each other directly. There is no need to go to the internet. There is no reason to contact a server. If everyone is in the same space, the machines will share with each other directly forming their own private network.

This means everyone gets their own console and Everyone can play together.

Just you and your friends gaming

When you look some of the games included with GameTruck @HOME like:

• Mario Kart 8
• Super Mario Party
• Animal Crossing
• Super Smash Bros Ultimate
• Splatoon 2

You can begin to see what an incredible experience adhoc gaming can be. There is no waiting for lobbies, no split screen, and no one outside your private group barging in.

No Mess, No Fuss, Just the Best

At the end of the day GameTruck @HOME benefits from more than 15 years of experience GameTruck owners have helping people play together. The unique experience of the Nintendo Switch, when everyone has their own system, designed to connect to each other and share creates a new kind of in person experience that in truth, harkens back to why I created GameTruck in the first place. I wanted to play the best games with my best friends. In 2005 during prototyping, we played Mario Kart Double Dash on the Nintendo GameCube and we thought it was the greatest thing ever. Everyone had their own system and their own screen. The trouble was you needed a living room to pull that off. So that is what I built, a traveling living room to hold the consoles and their TV’s.

Thanks to Nintendo the paradigm has shifted, and we can bring this amazing experience into your living room, into your home, your basement, your backyard. Anywhere you, your children, and their friends want to play. The flexibility, portability, and connectivity is truly remarkable.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, GameTruck is not about trucks, and trailers, or suitcases full of equipment. I formed GameTruck to help us celebrate the special occasions in our lives with our close family and friends.  I wanted to make it easy for people to play video games with their best friends when it mattered most. When we play together, we stay together.  Playing together is bonding together. They say neurons that fire together, wire together.  I believe that human connection follows a very similar path. As one our game coaches, Simon, said not long ago:

If you find something that makes you happy, reaching out to others to share that happiness makes for easy friendships.

And ultimately, that’s what GameTruck @HOME delivers. A chance to share happiness and make friends.

This past week I had someone reach out to me through my website scottnovis.com and ask a simple question. At least it seemed like a simple question. “I have a friend who is suffering from isolation. How could they make some friends online?” The question caught me by surprise. It just seems like everyone already knows how to do that… unless they are too young, or too old, or actually, like me never think to look online to make friends.

Since the whole core of my mission is to reduce loneliness through interactive gaming, I felt compelling to answer this question. So I turned to the experts, our professional coaches, commentators, and our entire staff. They had some great answers.

The Good Old Days

There is no doubt that the world has changed, and not in ways that seem obvious. Not long-ago video games were hosted on private or dedicated servers. In that world, gamers could find a game they liked, find a server they liked, and “hang around”. Eventually they would make connections by seeing the same people over and over again.

In the late 90’s Counterstrike had more people playing video games than watching the highest-rated TV show of the year… every night. There were literally thousands upon thousands of servers.

I remember being proud that ATV Off-road Fury 2 on the PlayStation hosting tens of thousands of gamers every night. Of course, this paled in comparison to the millions of gamers that logged on to play Counterstrike. When World of Warcraft launched in Nov 2004, the game was engineered to push people together into social groups. You had to run across the world, looking for quests, and the game funneled players of a similar skill level into areas of the map and rewarded them for working together.

In short, video games emulated the same kinds of techniques designers and architects have used to make offices a “social space”. 

According to Joseph Grenny of Vital Smarts:

What worked about the office was that it was a highly structured way of promoting unstructured interaction. It gave the illusion of agency to our spontaneous connection.

Basically, video games accomplished the same thing for 20 years by putting players together with a shared interest, and as Grenny put it, “letting them rub against each other like marbles in a jar”. And this worked. [[Yuval Noah Harari]] in his excellent book Sapiens makes the case that humans are wired to work in social groups. 

In the “old days”, all you had to do to make friends, is find a game you liked, hop on a server and hang out. Eventually, friendship would just sort of happen. [True story, I met Bill Amend, the creator of Foxtrot, by playing World of Warcraft in 2006]. 

So, what changed?

Safety, Scale, and the Cloud

More than half the people I spoke with talked about the close friends they made playing games like Halo 2 and Team Fortress 2. However, several things happened with video games and the way they are hosted online.

First, the publishers wanted control of the servers.  Therefore, the “dedicated” server model went away to be replaced with cloud computers. One enormous advantage came from this shift however.  Suddenly a global pool of players could be polled for a match. This is probably one of the single greatest features of Fortnite. As soon as one match ends (usually with you getting wiped out quickly) You can get into another game in seconds.  With Halo 2 it could take upwards of 5 minutes to find a match and start the game.  This was one of the reasons early on I did not include internet play.  People had no idea how much time they were spending waiting in lobbies.  5-10 minutes per game in a 120-minute party is a lot of time.  With local play players could jump into a match in seconds.  It is impressive Epic recreated this experience with an online game. 

The downside? You are faced with a nearly constant churn of players, what Nathan Ullyott, the director of Maricopa Parks and Recreation called the “infinite friend problem.” It is the exact opposite of marbles “rubbing each other”. You don’t like someone? There is zero incentive to work it out. Just move on. There’s an infinite number of people waiting to play.

The Child Online Privacy and Protection Act also had an impact on forming game communities.  Basically, it created a digital wall between underage players and everyone else. In principle this is an incredibly good thing, however the goal of making it safer for kids to play online by giving their parents more control, created systematic isolation for all players. Because match making is not happening at the local server level, the centralized match making systems try to make sure players who cannot possibly meet play together. It is safer yes, but also more isolating.

In the name of safety, advantages of scale, and the advent of cloud computing (where is that server by the way? Does anyone really know!?), the small communities that formed around online video games just a decade ago have changed drastically.

What replaced it?

But have no fear. Not all is lost. While the small server might not be the place where friends are made, gamers and developers have made adjustments and adaptations.  The two biggest ones being Twitch, and the rise of Discord. The idea of building community has moved from the publisher, to (hopefully) well-meaning streamers and fans of the games. I remember when my kids first started to watch people play Minecraft on YouTube. It was the fastest way to learn the rapidly changing complex game. When Twitch came around, and they could interact with content creators in real-time.  Communities started to form with the streamers at the center.  Like some kind of space age fan club mixed with gaming, many streamers decided to use Discord as their tool of choice for managing these enthusiastic communities.

Finding Friends Through Games 2021 Style

To be clear, it is still possible to make friends online through video games, but it is done a little differently.  While the tools and technology have changed, the intrinsic desire for humans to connect persists. Here is the current best practices I culled and combined after talking with my team.

The Steps

1. Find a game you are interested in. Your interests will make it easier for you to connect and share experiences with other players (side note, some very interesting games have very toxic communities that are not friendly toward new players – do your homework! DOTA II and League of Legends communities are notorious for being harsh on new players)
2. Spend some time developing enough skill to be willing to play with, or against others online.
3. Find a streamer, or someone on YouTube who you find interesting and posting and live streaming regularly. Many of these streamers put out a steady dose of tutorials and helper videos. This content should help you get a sense if you like them and what their community might be like.
4. Check out some Streams.  They don’t have to be the most famous or popular.  Find the ones that click with you.  You do not have to donate!  It is not at all necessary.
5. Look for a community discord.  You can even ask about it while they are streaming.
6. Follow the procedures on their discord to become part of the community.  Most streamers do not want a toxic community and Discord and Twitch also frown on “bad cultures”.  This means there are usually some steps you have to go through, like accepting the community rules.  You typically will get a little access to the discord at first – so you are not overwhelmed, and then over time they will open up more and more of the channels to you.
7. Invite some people to play, and be open to invitations to play.

There is one caveat about spending a lot of time watching streamers.  While most of them are entertaining and often honest and open, you can feel like you know a streamer much better than you would know any other kind of celebrity.  However, while you think you are getting to know them very well, the reality is that it is nearly impossible for them to get to know you. In fact, they probably don’t know you at all. There is a name for this kind of lopsided relationship. It is called a parasocial relationship. 

You are better off focusing your interactions with other members of the community rather than the streamer themselves. You want to focus on people you can actually play with, and who can get to know you. No matter how genuine a streamer is, they are still essentially performing and most do this as a business. That is both good and bad. Good in that they will work hard to make sure the community is consistent with their values, but bad in the sense that they have an extremely limited capacity to reciprocate any kind of meaningful friendship.

They can (and do) appreciate you, without knowing you.

For Younger Kids

Many parents pay attention to their child’s online gaming and wonder about making friends as well. When I asked about kids making friends online, two themes popped up from our Bravous Parents.  Pick the right game.  Watch who they communicate with.  Remember when I said you should play video games with your kids?  That’s another way to do both.  What games do our parents let their kids play?

I’m sure you will recognize the names:

1. Minecraft is still a mainstay and in general, has a nice community. The Java servers can allow more player to player chat (like the old dedicated servers of 15 years ago)
2. Animal Crossing Pocket Camp because it is easy to meet new people, but even if you don’t you don’t feel so alone playing. 
3. Roblox – is very popular and really good, but you do want to be careful. There can be some bad apples and immaturity.  Still, our young gamers made some friends here too.

Conclusion

When online gaming and chat became enormous it was inevitable that online friendships – and in fact true, real life friendships would form. Over time, as technology change, the social dynamic of the video game internet changed with it. Despite all the changes, our desire to connect and make friends can still be satisfied.  I saw this quote recently from the poet Jane Hirshfield. She said it about Zen but I think it applies equally well to making friends online:

• Everything changes
• Everything is connected
• Pay attention

If you find a game you are interested in, do some homework, find a community that shares your interest. With time, effort, and persistence chances are good you will find someone who shares your enthusiasm, and you might just make a new friend.

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Reference

1. Grenny, J., Grenny, J., & Grenny, J. (2020, November 30). No one is talking about the real problem with working from home. Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/90579969/no-one-is-talking-about-the-real-problem-with-working-from-home
2. Harari, Y. (n.d.). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
3. Ullyot Nathan, Director Nathan Ullyot discusses Maricopa Esports, https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=546552852616812

Jane Hirshfield, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jane-hirshfield