Re: How to best collaborate with games and junior tasks
On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 1:52 PM, Markus Koschany <apo@gambaru.de> wrote:
> Hi Per!
>
> On 18.08.2014 23:38, Per Andersson wrote:
> [...]
>
>> There might also be a slight difference in taxonomy, e.g.
>> where should multiplayer network games that run on console
>> be placed junior-net or junior-text (or both)?
>
> I'm well aware of debian-junior. Thanks for bringing this topic up for
> discussion. Actually I have already tried to avoid duplicating your
> effort and left out a few games on purpose because I thought that people
> who are looking for games for children will most likely find debian-junior.
If one of the purposes of the games blend is to collect all games in
Debian I think they should be listed in games metapackages as well.
Maybe just include junior-* for completeness? What happens with
recursive or circular dependencies between metapackages, if that
was the case?
> There are some tasks in debian-games that are rather big and seem rather
> unspecific on first glance, e.g. arcade or the puzzle task. In fact
> those tasks contain all games someone would probably find in some Debian
> or FreeDesktop menu under the same name. So those tasks are for people
> who want simply all games from one specific category.
>
> »games-tetris« and the not yet released »games-mindesweeper« are a
> subset of »games-puzzle« and more interesting for people who are looking
> for a specific type of game.
Good to know.
> Now let me get back to your question. If a game is suitable for network
> gaming and also a console game, it makes perfectly sense to include it
> in both tasks in my opinion. The question is rather whether parents
> really choose games for their children based on features like single- or
> multiplayer mode or rather because they think that they are suitable for
> 3-6 year old or 7-12 year old children or if they involve action (and
> possibly violence) or if they challenge their children's ability to
> solve a logic task.
>
> [...]
>
>> Any bright ideas on how we can join in an effort to cooperate
>> between junior-games and games tasks?
>>
>> In some areas it is quite easy, e.g. junior-puzzle could depend
>> on games-tetris, instead of listing a subset of the tetris games
>> manually.
>>
>> In contrast, games-puzzle probably lists to many puzzle games
>> to be relevant for junior-puzzle.
I think having some junior-games tasks depending on subsets of
games tasks, like games-tetris.
>>
>> Ideas (and help) welcome!
>
> 1.
>
> We could develop special tasks for children and maintain those packages
> within the Debian Games Blend and you could simply depend on those
> packages. The downside is that they won't show up in your web sentinel
> for now as Andreas has already pointed out.
Package resolution of metapackages seems to be solveable.
I see little point in having them in games tasks repository instead of
junior tasks repository directly though.
> 2.
>
> We could concentrate on debian-junior and overhaul the games tasks.
> Personally I think that debian-junior should contain tasks like
> junior-games-teenager or junior-games-small-children. Then you could
> create metapackages with games from different categories dedicated to
> certain peer groups. Probably I would drop -net, -gl or arcade in favor
> of those tasks.
This is very thin ice IMHO. Firstly, all kids are different and age is only a
number; recommending software based on age is naive and to figure out
another measure to put kids in is probably a scientific fields on its own.
Secondly, I think this imposes way too much guidance or control or what
you want to call it; Who shall decide what is suitable for other kids? Based
on what?
I think it is a lot better describing the actual games (technically, game
mechanics, content wise) and to let parents or other care takers to explore
and help find suitable software for their kids.
> To sum up my trail of thought here: I believe debian-games should focus
> on game types and technical aspects of game development whereas
> debian-junior should consider social aspects as well. I'm happy to help
> you with creating such packages be it for debian-games or debian-junior.
Recommending software based on social aspects is hard. I don't think
that will happen any time soon.
Help is still very welcome! An easy way is to keep a look on the commits
to the debian-junior packaging repository, reviewing those if there is
anything to comment.
--
Per
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