Monday, November 27, 2017

Why Did The Chicken Crossy The Road?



While proofreaders everywhere are cringing at the title of this month’s blog post, the truth is that seemingly erroneous letter “y” was quite intentional. In recent weeks my boys and I have begun playing a video game called Crossy Road, and it may mark a seminal moment in my relationship with my sons.

As reported in this blog back in April, the video games that my two sons play are not ones that I am very good at, or particularly enjoy. (Click here if you’re interested in reading that blog post.) (Click here if you would rather see an image of a chimpanzee holding three balloons.) I will play their PS4 games every once in a rare while, but it usually doesn’t take very long before my ineptitude frustrates both me and them and I abandon the game to instead play a rowdy Scrabble match against my computer. When it comes to the gaming world, my sons and I have not found common ground.

But then, a little over a week ago, Crossy Road entered our lives. I came home from work one night to my sons excitedly wanting to tell me about a game they both downloaded to their Kindles. This game, they told me, featured a chicken trying to cross a road without getting hit by cars and leaping over logs to cross a river without drowning.

“Oh. So it’s basically Frogger with a chicken instead of a frog,” I said.

“I guess,” my older son said.

“Show me the game,” I said, quite intrigued, since I was a huge Frogger enthusiast as a youth.

So my son started playing the game and I couldn’t help but chuckle. Everything old does become new again. This was, indeed, Frogger with a chicken; but whereas the frog in Frogger had to cross 12 lanes of road and river before landing in a box, the road in Crossy Road goes on forever. There is no box at the end of the road—you just keep on traveling until you get squashed. Also, while the main character is a chicken, you can accrue points to earn new characters like a fox, a cat, a penguin, or dozens more. My favorite is a character named Crazy ‘Ol Ben, which is a guy with a white beard and a cane, who makes “old codger” type sounds as he crosses the road. But, all those features aside, the game is essentially Frogger.

I wanted in.

I quickly went into my room and grabbed my Kindle. I have had this device for about two years, but really only use it for Scrabble and Wikipedia. Indeed, I download apps onto it so infrequently that it took me a few minutes to remember how to do it; but after fumbling around for a bit, I was the proud new owner of Crossy Road.

I walked into my older son’s room, where both he and his younger brother were playing the new game. I sat down with them and started playing, as well—each of us on our own device. Even though it was a totally different interface and I hadn’t played Frogger in decades, the skills I had acquired all those years ago quickly came back to me and I was soon dodging traffic like a champ. Stunningly, in less than 30 minutes I had surpassed both my kids’ high scores. Equally as stunning was the fact that neither of them seemed to mind that I bested them—they just seemed stoked that I was eagerly playing a video game with them. And I was equally as stoked that we finally found common video game ground.

So, to answer the original question…


Why did the chicken crossy the road? To help a dad bondy with his sons.