An ongoing blog about every single episode of Bluey and the gaming (and life) lessons within

1.19 The Claw

When Bluey and Bingo lose money to a claw machine – a predatory gambling game aimed at children, which is a terrible evil – Dad decides to teach the girls that it’s never worth playing such games by becoming a claw machine. He hopes to teach the kids never to trust unfair games but they learn the lesson too well: they attack their dad when he pushes them too far. That is the right lesson: when a system stops being fun and starts preying on you, destroy that system and get your money back. And don’t play games that seem to just want to mess with you. 

A lot of what we’re talking about on this blog is based in politeness and respect. It is polite to play games you don’t love, and to see them through to the end. But in our drive to teach resilience and determination and skill acquisition, we often insist people stick to things far beyond when it is actually serving them or teaching them. The term “rage quit” has a mostly negative valence for the gamer who does it. But good puzzle games with well designed difficulty curves will avoid the rage quit. The player should always feel that despite how clever the puzzle setter is, they are being treated fairly and given the tools they need; that the setter cares about them and wants them to succeed. Children are natural game designers because they have an instinctual sense of what is – and what is not – fair. They need to temper that with allowing risk, as discussed in Shadowlands, but the core knowledge is in us all, from birth it seems. 

1.20 Markets

A sweet story about how money movement builds happiness evolves when Bluey takes her tooth fairy money to the markets. The gaming lesson here is play is better with friends: Bluey doesn’t want to ride the horse without Indi. So often we get so locked into how we are doing in a game and how we are enjoying it we forget that non solo games are designed to be shared, and to create a thing we could not experience alone. It’s not just about making sure everyone is engaged and having fun but using that spirit to build something between us. There is your fun and my fun but also our fun, a liminal, ephemeral experience in the moment, built on giving of ourselves. A game is a moment in time with others; it never existed before and will never exist again, and that’s amazing.

1.21 Blue Mountains and 1.22 Pool

In Pool, Dad forgets to bring things to the pool to help them have fun because he doesn’t want to do boring stuff that Mum does like remembering to bring things m. In Blue Mountains the family are telling stories as hand puppets and Bluey’s puppet chides Chili’s puppet for being boring in her caution – until a lack of caution puts Chili’s puppet in danger.

Facilitating fun play often requires a bit of caution and forethought and stuff like learning the rules, doing set up, passing out tokens, reminding people of the game state and of course, staying engaged. If you’re the person who has to be told its your turn all the time, or to hurry up, you probably aren’t doing the boring stuff of caring for others. And you should be. 

1.23 Shops

Good storytelling rises above the simplistic. Most children’s shows (and certainly some episode of bluey) have a simple linear plot: a character makes the wrong choice, they face unwanted consequences, they learn a lesson. Bluey is often more complicated, such as the audience being given more reasons to empathise with Blueys choice, or the choice being complicated and multi-sided. In this episode the surface plot is Bluey takes forever to start playing a game of pretend because she wants everyone to have a role to play and do it properly. Her friends will even take less desirable roles if it helps the game start. But Bluey is a perfectionist and Mackenzie gets frustrated and leaves. Bluey must find a way to keep everyone happy by balancing their needs.

The second side to the issue is that Mackenzie has no tolerance for Bluey’s needs. He starts too fast and keeps demanding everyone hurry up. I’ve met many a gamer who get anxious in rules explanations and just want to jump in and start and learn as they go – without thinking that other people find that anxiety-inducing. Many gamers hate it when people are on their phones because it feels like they aren’t engaged; those people often need their phones or they can’t stay engaged. I cannot play with slow players: I lose my engagement with the endless downtime. But it’s no good shouting at them to hurry up because if they can’t think things through they can’t feel in control. Incompatible goals are not really the exception in games; they are the rule. Even if we try to frame our desires positively and celebrate our differences (see the last instalment) we hit conflict. We might even hit an impasse. 

The only thing we can do to help is talk about it without complaining about it. Nobody likes to be complained about. Straight out of the gate Mackenzie is demanding Bluey play better, because he didn’t have fun last time. She naturally insists she will, because she’s trying to keep the peace. These folk are little kids: as adults we can do better. We should be able to express our needs in a way that isn’t negative and have them discussed in a positive way. We don’t have to make everything a game where your gain is my loss. You can play a little faster and I can bring my phone and nobody needs to feel like they are a drag – they’re just different.

It sounds like a nursery parable but since we don’t seem to have learned it, we just return to the nursery. Revision is always useful, especially of the basics. Thats part of why kids tv is so important to everyone. 

1.24 Wagonride

Bluey is bored with how long it takes to get to the monkeybars so she learns to play a different game to pass the time. Soon enough that game becomes more interesting. 

If we are in a game where downtime is killing us, we might be able to find other kinds of fun in the game: observing what others are doing, reading the rulebook, assisting others with their turns, or kibitzing if appropriate. If we get too engaged with activities outside the game we might end up playing something else which could be rude…but it’s also okay to just switch games at any time they aren’t serving us – if everyone agrees.

1.25 Taxi and 1.26 Beach 

Rather than stretch myself to wring tortured lessons out of every single episode, some we can just let slide and make a better blog for it. Taxi is just a hilarious farce. Beach is just a beautiful journey. But on the other hand, Taxi shows how the best shared storytelling involves being able to lose, and to be ready to add chaos. And Beach is about how it’s okay if not everyone plays together all the time. 

1.27 Pirates

Bluey and Bingo play a game of Pirates on a bumpy swing run by Bandit and narrated by Chili; little Missy isn’t quite ready for the scares. It’s right about here that Bluey takes off the not-kidding-around-gloves and starts punching way above its weight class. Like in Shops, you can imagine what a lesser show would have done with a plot about a little girl dog being brave and playing a scary game she’s only just able to tolerate. It would have stopped there. But here we also take a lot of time to remind everyone that Missy can make whatever choice she wants. She’s not being silly if she is scared. Meanwhile, Bandit is equally afraid: afraid to be dramatic and silly in the presence of other men. And like we said about Shops, this is part of why revision is important. We always need to keep relearning the oldest lessons. Sometimes we have to be very very brave and do very scary things. We tend to get lazy as adults and stop pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones, and then we let society and expectation shape those zones into very very narrow places. And toxic masculinity is incredibly strong and loves hiding in places like competitive games where we get to release even more of that famous male aggression, and never talk about how games make us feel and what we want from them. Which is exactly why ludic intelligence is the exception instead of the rule: men, particularly, use games to escape from the burden of having to work out all these big scary feelings. Or to socialise in a way that doesn’t emphasise things like vulnerability and connection.

Male nerds spend endless hours insisting that they are very grown up and their love of certain media or activities doesn’t make them childish. But maybe, like little Missy, it’s time we actually grew up and stopped hiding behind the lighthouse. I said it, Bluey said it: the little blue dog is not pulling any punches and calling all of us out.