Damon Tabb

When he was but a mere five years old, Damon Tabb designed his first game, a massively multiplayer experience grounded in the burgeoning principles of kinesthetic and social-experiential learning, which…

Okay, hold on a sec… wait a minute… STOP!

Thank you. Now, I know it looks more professional to talk about oneself in the 3rd person, and to amplify everything you’ve done to make yourself appear superhuman, but I… I can’t do it, at least not with a clear conscience:

Yes, it’s true that I designed my first game when I was five. It was pretty fun, too, at least for the “target” age group. I called it, One, Two, Where’s My Shoe?, and it actually was “massively multiplayer,” at least in that the more friends you got to play, the more fun it was. You could play it indoors or out, although it was quickly banned from my house for reasons that will soon become apparent:

To play, everyone took off one shoe and lined up facing in the same direction. All at once, we tossed our shoes over our heads behind us as far as we could and shouted “One, two, where’s my shoe?” It was then a mad race to find your shoe first. Tripping and pushing other players while running to find your shoe was not only allowed, it was compulsory. The rules quickly devolved to include a penalty for being last: faster players would pelt the slowest player with their shoes. Cheaters, those who intentionally threw their shoe a short distance, or who turned too early, were dealt with in the way that only other 5-year-olds can: a solid beatdown, after which everyone got up, miraculously never really hurt, and we all played again. How’s that for some good, old-fashioned kinesthetic learning?

Of course, played indoors, this led to any number of broken lamps, mirrors, and other household items, so it was banned almost as soon as the beta was released. Even playing outdoors was eventually frowned upon when kids started arriving home sans shoe. It wasn’t their fault, though. It turned out, the neighborhood dogs really loved the game, too. Have you ever tried to catch a Springer-Spaniel, jacked up on M&Ms and freedom, once it had a death grip on one of your Buster Browns? I didn’t think so.

So, to make a long story short, in spite of its popularity with the target demographic, it’s for these reasons I believe, that One, Two, Where’s My Shoe? never really caught on with parents or went “viral.”

I was devastated.

Okay, I wasn’t really. I was five. I cried for a few minutes when my parents told me “No more where’s your shoe, EVER!” (I think the sternness with which where’s my shoe? was outlawed directly correlated to how much it cost my parents to replace my friends’ lost shoes), and then I probably went and built a giant spaceship from my insanely large Lego set, which, no joke, took up a refrigerator box in my room. (I still miss those.)

However, the following week’s incremental release, The Get-Out-Of-Our-Way Game! just wasn’t as fun as where’s my shoe?, not by a mile. Looking back now, I see that this was due, at least in part, to the fact that get out of our way was derivative. I’d tried fervently, for a minute at least, to address the problems of where’s my shoe, and came to the realization that if I took the whole “shoe” thing out of the equation and changed the name, parents might be more accepting of it, even though the rest of the game remained pretty much the same, essentially an excuse to run around and knock each other over.

However, my attempts at rebranding were not as successful as I’d hoped. I tried tapping the social network at the local sandbox, but the kids were too afraid to play under threat of being grounded. Recognizing that the true problem lay not with my friends, who would play if they were allowed to, but with their parents, I attempted to drum up some positive PR by asking mom and dad to tell my friends’ parents about the new improved, much safer, where’s my shoe? But, it seemed that no amount of damage control could erase its controversial past. I had to eventually acknowledge that, while the game had a good run for a couple of weeks, it was over. The herd had moved on.

I’ll probably never know for certain how formative this whole experience was for me. Have I spent years of my life unknowingly trying to recapture the fulfillment I experienced at witnessing my friends’ enjoyment playing something I created? Or do I just miss the carefree delight of launching my shoe into low Earth orbit with a bunch of like-minded trouble-makers and the inevitable madness that ensued? I wonder… Anyone want to play and find out?

Disclaimer: Kids shoes are small and lightweight. Grownup shoes aren’t. You were warned.