Like probably many of you I have kids, they're clever and they totally get sucked into the non-creative game platforms on their phones, the web and basically anything with a screen.
Eye candy galore, zero creativity from their end, just consumption. They're utterly chanceless against the army of psychologists that is engineering their dopamine addiction. Like most other parents, this doesn't sit right with me so I've decided to at least try to do something about.
I'm working on the most minimalist gaming platform that I can imagine, think 'KIM-1' but for computer games. The catch: you will have to build it yourself if you want one. All of the designs and any of the code that is required to build it will be open, there are a number of things that I'm toying with that I'd like some feedback on:
- do you think it should come with some pre-built games or rather not?
- how much would something like this be allowed to cost? The BOM is probably around $200 or so, and it clearly isn't able to compete with commercial stuff out there, but it also isn't meant to be.
- are you aware of any other efforts like this one?
- do you think it is worth making them as kits or maybe even as pre-built units?
- The unit will be a case with the display and the computer built in and two wired joysticks with minimal functionality (u/d/l/r/click), power is via a USB adapter.
- I'm toying with the idea of distributing software on paper alone, to get kids to type in their programs and to fix them rather than to be able to click a few buttons and have a running game, do you thin that would fly?
Possible platforms: Arduino R4, Raspberry Pi, which one would you pick and why?
Any other feedback that you've got that you think might be useful?
I don't have software, pictures or CAD stuff ready to go yet but that will happen early next year.
thank you all for reading and responding,
Jacques