“How to design games for kids” is a well-tread topic in the game industry (both industries, actually, digital and tabletop). There are two areas of this that seem to be unsolved problems that I’d like to move the needle on, though.
First is that kids grow up. Most games are designed for a specific developmental stage, and once the kid passes that stage, they outgrow the game. Is there a way to design games that will grow with a kid? I’m not just talking educational games with advanced content, or standard games with difficulty levels that get harder as the player advances in skill while keeping the same mechanics. I’m talking about a core game that starts off very simple, and then gets more mechanically sophisticated once the player can handle more advanced concepts. (On Facebook, I proposed Candyland Legacy that starts off like the traditional children’s game and then gets more complex mechanics and interesting choices added to it each year on the kid’s birthday or when the parent thinks the kid is ready, where the game might ultimately evolve into a heavy strategy game for 12+.)
Second is that many kids have siblings of varying age ranges. Since games are often designed for a specific developmental stage, any given game is either going to be too advanced for the younger kid or too boring for the older one. This is similar to balancing a game for players of wildly different skill levels, but different in that players don’t just have different game skills, but different life skills in general. Adding a handicapping system is one thing, but how would you do that when (for example) some players can read and some can’t?