Freeze, Armed Farm Animals!

I was over at my sister's house the other day. Her kids have more toys than any kid could ever begin to need, and yet I didn't recognise any of them. There were no board games, no rubber balls, no skipping ropes, no toy soldiers, no rubber darts to fire at dad's bald head; in fact nothing that a child might choke on or lose to an over-enthusiastic vaccum cleaner. Everything was big and flashy and electronic. Their toys were barely distinguishable from household appliances. Indeed, it took me several frustrating minutes to accept that I wasn't going to get a cup of fresh coffee from the latest video games console. But what struck me the most wasn't the thought of what had gone into the development of these toys, rather what had been taken out of them.

You see, every toy is a self-contained, do-all box of tricks that often comes with background story, complex narrative, and a predictably bloody ending. They aren't so much toys as graphic novels or interractive movies. They have a beginning, a middle and an end, and the opportunities to divert from this predetermined constitution are pretty limited to say the least: imagination and invention have been replaced by player-choice. That is, do you choose kung-fu or boxing skills? A tank or a helicopter? Butter or Margarine? Do you play alone or play with a friend? Do you finish the game or save it for another time? The choices are excessive and frustrating. It is worse than ordering at Starbucks. More to the point, they exclude the player - the child - because ultimately the choices are not endless. They are limited not by the boundries of a child's imagination but by the particular version of the game or the size in megabites of its memory. And because these games are so complete, so self-contained and self-supporting, the leap of imagination required to spontaneously combine elements of one game with another is redundant.

When I was about the age that my sister's children are now, my favourite toys and my favourite games were not necessarily the same. One did not depend upon the other. I had my soldiers, and I played war. I had a great farmyard set, a train set, a Mechano set, a fleet of Matchbox cars, Airfix models and, inexplicably, a monkey on a motorcycle, and nothing but nothing restricted the games I could play with each of these or combinations of any or all of them. My favourite game was one that featured the adventures of a fearless crime-fighting force, a special top-secret unit whose members were drawn from the army, the nation of Apache indians, and a local farm. There was nothing written down. The choices I was presented with were the choices I presented to myself. It was my game, and it was restricted only by my imagination. Although I do recall that every game seemed to climax in the pursuit and arrest of a particularly fiendish monkey on a motorcycle by a crack squad of cows and sheep, but that's not important right now.

At my sisters house it is the toys that invent the game. The sounds from the playroom are the artificial sounds of authentic gunfire. Stand at the door and you will hear cinematic-quality explosions and screams, the screach of real tyres and the howl of police sirens, dialogue straight from a Hollywood blockbuster…and I mean literally straight from a Hollywood blockbuster, word for word, often using the original actors. What you won't hear are the children, the breathless American accents that many of us affected to narrate our own games, the rat-tat-tat and the wheeeeeeeooowwwwwwmmm sound affects made by our own voices. And I really would be surprised if you were to hear anyone shouting: "Freeze, armed farm animals!"