A Happy Little Video Game. :-)

For those of you who are familiar with PBS, you know about the late Bob Ross and his show The Joy of Painting. Apparently the people in charge of his properties are developing a video game for PCs and the Nintendo platforms.

This concept is fascinating to me. Instead of teaching kids how to ACTUALLY paint, we're going to have a game so that they can VIRTUALLY paint. I suppose if it's a stepping stone to getting them away from the machine so that they can try it in real life, good. If it's just a way to meet kids where they are and leave it at that, we've missed a key point:

You can't hang a digital painting on the wall for everyone to see in perpetuity. Even if you could, it will always need batteries or some kind of power source. Let's hope that those who play and enjoy THIS video game will eventally want to step away from the controller and grab a paint brush.