Thread by @DasBrieger

Candyland is a masterpiece of game design that designers should be studying and dissecting as one of the best examples EVER of game design craft for specific audiences.

Candyland is such an enduring design we are still playing it (and it's reinterpretations) divorced from its original context.

I feel like I give this rant to someone in person once a year and since I spent 2020 inside I guess it gets to be the internet today.

This door was opened by Some Guy on Facebook Who Doesn't Think Candyland is A Game™ so... anyway... HERE WE GO

Candyland was invented in 1948 by retired schoolteacher Eleanor Abbott. Importantly, she designed the game during the height of the polio epidemic while surrounded by children in a polio ward.

To understand Candyland's design genius, we first need to know a bit about polio. Key points to know here:
- Polio was an enormous epidemic in the United States in the late 40's and early 50's
- Non-severe cases of polio presented with flu-like symptoms that lasted about 10 days

- Severe cases of polio resulted in paralysis, which could be take several forms.
- Importantly, you often didn't know if you or your child had paralytic polio until after nearly a week of infection

Given both the highly contagious nature of polio and the paralytic nature of severe cases (<1%), many hospitals at the time began to run dedicated polio wards, in which the patients were majority children.

Patients in these wards had a mixture of levels of illness, mobility, and health. It was in this environment the first iterations of Candyland are designed and tested. (picture – 1949 edition board)

Candyland is an accessible game with rules that require limited amounts of cognitive load from players to play and can be understood by a wide variety of ages: perfect for playing with sick children at a variety of energy levels.

It can be argued that like many modern games: Candyland is, at its heart, a power fantasy. In this case, the fantasy isn't "Building a Kingdom" or "Becoming Rich" but the freedom and mobility of taking a pleasant walk.

Divorcing Candyland from a context in which it addresses mobility is doing a disservice to the power that held for children convalescing from polio. Look at that 1949 board in detail — even the boy here is depicted wearing a leg brace.

Candyland receives flak sometimes in that it is a game whose outcome is "predetermined" by the shuffle of the cards. But even so, to a young child, Candyland is filled with wonder and surprise.

If you've seen the joy and excitement on a child's face when a shortcut is drawn or a parent suffers a setback, it's plain to see that FOR ITS AUDIENCE, Candyland is a game with fantastic emotional stakes and payoffs. (picture: 1984 Candyland board)

As the polio epidemic ends (thanks to vaccines — also an important part of this story), Milton Bradley begins to update the design of Candyland. We see the emergence of characters that inhabit the board and more of a sense of story.

This too is a fundamental part of why Candyland gains staying power — everything about the art, packaging, and theming of Candyland makes a promise about the type of experience for children that awaits... and then, importantly, it delivers that experience it promises.

I'm not sure when it was introduced to the line, but it was sometime after the 1978 edition, but in the early 80's the first thing Candyland buyers saw after opening the box was this insert that told a children's story. (Picture: 1984 box insert)

By the time we see the 2001 edition of the product, that insert takes up the whole of the box, ensuring that it captures 100% of your attention when the game is first opened.

It's easy as a designer working on modern hobby games to dismiss these innovations — but really dig in and see how these frame and elevate a children's game, how they communicate design goals.

Candyland was, and is, a masterpiece. Please come fight me if you think it's not a game. End of Thread.

This thread blew up while I was asleep. But uhh please don’t actually come fight me. I am soft.