Take the Nostalgia Away. What Do You Get?

[Kriven]

I'm not sure if that's a lack of analytical abilities, or a lack of feld experience in life (or a topic of interest). Handing a kid a piece of media is comparable to handing me a piece of media focused on mathematics. I don't really understand the math going on, and I likely never will, but that doesn't mean I'm not analyzing the media to the best of my abilities. I might even come out with a different point of view from people who are already familiar with that subject matter, one which might be valuable to future content creation because it isn't just perpetuating the same know-how in the same ways with the same people.

Actually, I think children are hyper-analytical. They absorb data and information like sponges, and while they might not know how to analyze the way the game was created (looking at physics engines, why the creator chose this visual approach, etc.), they do analyze the environment they've been given with an absurd attention to detail, which is why a child will have a blast tumbling around Hyrule Field while a more goal-oriented or interaction-oriented older player will feel it's too barren.

Myself (and I see this in my brother, and a lot of younger kids in the single-digit age group), I always had to know "Why?" If you talk to parents, they'll groan all about the "Why?" game. Well, the same works for media, particularly games which the kid is free to explore as he sees fit. And at that age, I was really interested in how Goombas came to life, or how Mario could have been delivered to residents of the Mushroom Kingdom despite having come from Brooklyn, or why Donkey Kong was kidnapping Pauline. Even outside of video games I had to know the hows and whys, and my Grampy (grandfather) was always telling me about horror movies, because he's a glorious, morbid man. Anyways, I was also asking about how Chucky kept coming back after each story, or what Jason looked like under his mask (my Grampy's simple answer was: "He's a monster"), and I was always analyzing and collecting this information and looking at it for coherence. It was a beautiful and magical thing, and I know I wasn't alone in that "Why" period.

I guess in short: kids analyze things. They just analyze different things and in different ways from most adults. Also: I'm an adult and I still miss a lot of innuendo just because it's off my radar, particularly if it involves common slang unaffiliated with the context (if someone comment on the size of Ichigo's "sword", I'd get it because context). But that ties back into my first paragraph and now I'm rambling.