Though the lead designer of Disney’s Toontown Online and author of The Art of Game Design: A Book of lenses, Jesse Schell only recently caught the attention of the wider games industry with a talk at DICE 2010 on the increasing influence of game design on reality—but he caught the attention of his audience at the Social and Online Game Summit at GDC 2010 by playing a harmonica.

Designing games for parents and kids to play together online was a smaller topic for Schell than his DICE session—one he was able to sum up within ten bullet points—but it was one that similarly struck at the ways in which game design is an unavoidable force within the dynamics of daily life.  Schell argued convincingly that it can offer families a positive way to interact with each other in the limited time they have together.

Schell began that designing a game for “families” rather than simply kids is something that designers have to actively decide upon and structure their development around. This begins as early as planning the theme of your game.

“Find a theme of some kind that both kids and parents can care about. There are lots of themes that just one or the other like, and there are some shared genres enjoyed by all—pirates for example—but you can take it a step higher and find the certain themes which are especially important for families.”

Schell used the story of Toontown Online as an example. Pitting the townsfolk of Toontown against an army of robot executives that are trying to turn the city into a gray office park, it “presented the theme of the tension between work and play.”

“That’s very important to families now,” he said. “Parents work longer hours than ever, and kids have more homework.”

Another example was drawn from Pixie Hollow, another Disney MMO. “Over the last twenty years the distance children are allowed to go from home has been reduced a great deal; children don’t go outside anymore. In Pixie Hollow we hoped to let children connect with nature, even if only through digital means.”

To offer this, Pixie Hollow offers lush, natural locations, but also a pixie character who asks players to perform tasks related to the real word, such as finding a pine cone or naming local trees. “Not only can kids connect with nature, it also gives parents and kids something to talk about if they are out together.”

These kinds of shared experiences could also offer opportunities for parents to teach, and for children to learn, Schell continued. “It doesn’t have to be strictly ‘educational.’ It can also be things like understanding jokes. We gave the robots in Toontown Online funny names that only parents would get, like ‘The Ambulance Chaser.’ Kids don’t get it, but children are aspirational; they want to know what their parents know. They explain the joke and it’s a meaningful connection. You have to consider these possibilities when designing your game—create situations where kids are over their heads, even when it’s something minor like that.”

To ease this design process, Schell noted that immersion could be quickened by being aware of established family roles. A veteran of game design for Disney’s interactive theme park rides, Schell used the example of Disney’s Pirates of the Carribean ride, where they found that moms tend to “hang back” behind the rest of the family, and placed the helm of the ship (and best visibility) behind the guns.

“Mom is used to driving these jerks around anyway,” he joked, “and she can see the enemies faster and tell the kids to where to shoot. Everyone is used to taking orders from mom.”

But using established roles could be used in even simpler ways. “Online billing is very hard to work out for family titles. Kids don’t have credit cards, parents are often unfamiliar with things like Paypal. Consider Webkins—the role of purchasing a stuffed animal for a child is one parents know well.”

Just as developers must consider family roles, gender roles must also be considered to create a family orientated experience, Shell argued. “Mom views dad differently from how dad views mom, and that’s different from how a brother views his sister; and how does a son playing with a father differ from playing with his mother?”

“There are twelve points of view when it comes to gender. Can your game support them all?" he asked.

However, designing for a family is ultimately not about meeting the needs of each individual in the family, but designing to meet the needs of the family unit. “Design to let the family connect with each other. Modern families are very busy; their overlap time is so, so small and very precious. The connection between parent and child is the strongest emotional force we know if you can find ways to reach that, you have done something very special.”

In closing, Schell read a blog post from a mother who plays Pixie Hollow with her daughter describing her daughter’s birthday, in which they spent hours working together on making a birthday cake to match one in the game, but ended up with a “mess.”

“Close to tears, I thought I’d ruined her birthday,” Schell read, “But she said she loved it because she knew how had I’d worked on it. You don’t have to be perfect all the time. Then I did cry.”

Schell concluded, “That moment wasn’t something we created in the game. But if you design for parents and children together, you can help create these moments.”