As schools are letting out around the country, and temperatures continue to climb, parents are looking for ways to keep their kids and their friends entertained this summer. Here are three tips from a decade and a half of summer party fun.

Tip 1: Set-up in the Garage

GameTruck is climate controlled so it can host the kids. By setting up a folding table, some chairs, and a cooler full of drinks, the kids rarely if ever need to go into the house. This keeps your doors closed while the air-conditioning is on.

Kid can cool off in the truck while playing with friends, run out and grab a drink or a snack and then head back into the truck.

When the party is over, they can do cake and presents and voila, you have just had a successful party and no one was in your house!

Tip 2: Party After Dark

It can get hot during the day, but when the sun goes down, and the night breeze cools everything off, GameTruck is a great option. Outdoor screens make it even more fun as they now can shine their colors the brightest creating a dance party outside and a competition fiesta inside the truck. With no school the next day, virtually any day of the week can be a great night to hold a party. You can even kick off a slumber party with a GameTruck evening event.

Tip 3: Have An Unbirthday

Summer is a great time of the year to celebrate those birthdays that fall right on, or in the shadow of other holidays.

Pick a date and have an “un-birthday” a chance to get together with friends. You can even theme it, challenging the kids to a kind of cosplay – think Halloween in July with prizes for the best costume. 

You might even pick the theme around what you know the kids will have the most fun dressing up as (Star Wars, Madden, Smash, Minecraft).

The more invested the kids the more memorable the experience. 

Conclusion and Takeaways

Along with the heat, long days, and time out of school, summer brings a chance to think about things differently. Always make sure you have plenty of water and drinks for the kids. In Arizona we always had ice towels in a cooler for our kids and I hung up a 5-gallon orange drink cooler on the fence with bungies and put a 1-gallon solid block of ice inside. I filled the rest with water at the water store. Kids could pull a splash of ice-cold water whenever they wanted without getting their mouths on it. It lasted nearly all day. 

The great thing about summer is that you can have parties you could never have in the winter, at times you might not think about having a celebration. 

Do you have a novel summer idea? Did you have one you want to share with others? Let me know! I’d love to hear from you.

When I read Robert Bly’s book, Iron John, I was stunned by the observation he makes about modern male relationships. I have mentioned this before.

Contemporary business life allows competitive relationships only, in which the major emotions are anxiety, tension, loneliness, rivalry, and fear. 

While boys experience a natural pressure and desire for competition, they are not alone in this societal pressure to “win”. I personally believe we can do a better job of educating our children that there are more kinds of relationships than only competitive ones. As parents, what can we do about it? I believe video games can help.

Why do I believe this? Two words: Co Op games.

These are games where players are challenged to work together to achieve a common goal or objective. These are games where players have to work together, as if they were on the same team. This latest generation of games go way beyond the Halo co-op mode where two players are essentially playing the same game side by side. In this genre of games, the cooperation is integral to the overall game experience. In short, you can’t really play the game without someone else. Single player just doesn’t make sense

Game play is important for the social and emotional development of all humans.[1] What’s more, play is where we discover the boundaries of our capability and the edge of where our individuality intersects with others and society.[2] We all know the expression, It’s not whether you win or lose, it is how you play the game. And in our modern, “win at all costs” culture where winning has become “the only thing”, we lose sight of the META game, the game above that game. This is not only to win, but to play so that you will be invited to play again with others.[3]

Using multiple player cooperative games, a chance for gamers to learn how to play together in ways besides direct head to head competition. I like these games because they are ideal games for parents to play with their kids or together as a family. In the footnote there is a great article by the website Gamerant that lists 12 awesome games[4], my personal favorites are:

1. Snipper Clips
2. Tools Up!
3. Overcooked 2

Only Snippers Clips is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch, but the other two games are available on practically whatever gaming system you already own including: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and MS Windows.

Snipper Clips

Exclusive to the Nintendo Switch, Snipper clips is a brilliant puzzle-based game that stimulates creative thinking. It contains all the polish and fun you expect from a Nintendo first party title. In a nutshell, players play as two (three or four) paper shapes that match the shape of their Nintendo JoyCon controller. To solve puzzles, they often must “snip” or “clip” each other, changing their shape to fit a pattern displayed on the screen. Players work together, solving these puzzles. Puzzles can also include physics objects like bouncing balls and climbing on top of each other to reach different parts of the level map. I find the game is best played on a big screen TV on the couch. I played it for hours with my daughter when it first came out. It was great time we spent together, and I used it to talk about game and puzzle design. I also took a back seat to let her guide me and give me directions in solving the puzzles. I used those times to share with her what would make it easier for me to follow her directions. Giving more young women a chance to successfully lead men in collaborative and cooperative tasks is also an area where we could help our children build a better future.

Tools Up!

This zany independent game by The Knights of Unity and published All In Games has a bit of jiggly humor and multiplayer messy fun. With this game you play a bouncy handyperson who must move around a house in a limited amount of time to remodel, repair, and revamp apartments and homes. What makes this game a little different is that you can easily make mistakes that you have to clean up which can cost you time. Don’t clean up that spilled paint? And you find your character slipping and sliding around the floor like a slap stick character from a black and white movie. The controls can take some getting used to (I often found myself pressing pick up when I meant interact, and interact when I mean to pick up), but after a found of the training rounds this kind of trivial learning curve goes away. What really makes this game interesting to me are the PLANS. You can hold them up and the game will show you what the level is supposed to look like. Then you have to go about doing it. Again, assigning roles, communicating, and forgiving each other for making mistakes is the name of the game.

Overcooked 2

My favorite of this genre has to be Overcooked 2. I first saw this game at the Nintendo booth at E3. I thought, a cooking game? Seriously. And the answer is YES, seriously. The nature of this game is that everyone plays a chef in a fast paced kitchen. Any chef can do any task, but no chef can do every task. You must work together to complete orders in a timely fashion. The progression is simple and the replay value for each level is nearly additive in itself. In fact, we use Overcooked 2 as part of a leadership and development program we call Culture Kitchen. There is nothing quite like seeing people work together in real time to understand the obstacles that get in the way of working together. What’s more, if you haven’t heard a room full of adults laughing out loud together at the same time while they work together, you are missing out.

Conclusions Takeaways

What I like best about these kinds of games is that they inspire you to beat your own score, not someone else’s. Though successive rounds you can learn to work together better, communicate more effectively, and explore the types of relationships that go beyond competitive, they go to collaboration and cooperation. These games make you feel good when you set a record because everyone did it together. These games all fall on the affordable end of the spectrum with Snipper Clips costing $41.08, Tools Up! has a free demo but costs $19.99 on Steam and Overcooked comes in at a very reasonable $24.99 on most platforms at the time of this writing (with Overcooked All You Can Eat – the complete library worth it for $39.99). I would encourage you to check out this genre of game and sit down with your family and give it a go. It’s amazing what you can learn about, and from each other when you work together. 

—

References

1. Jun, P. & M.D. (2019, May 23). The Importance Of Play: An Interview with Dr. Jaak Panksepp » Brain World. Brain World. https://brainworldmagazine.com/the-importance-of-play-an-interview-with-dr-jaak-panksepp/
2. Warren Farrell, P., & John Gray, P. (2018). The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It. BenBella Books.
3. Peterson, J. B. (2021). Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. Portfolio.

https://gamerant.com/great-multitasking-games-like-overcooked/

One of the most disappointing things we have to do is to tell parents, and therefore their kids “No”. As more and more states come out the Pandemic, demand for private, clean, safe, in-person gatherings at your home have never been higher. In most markets, GameTruck is running at full capacity, and many owners are adding staff and capacity as fast as possible to meet the demand.

However, I wanted to share a few things you might consider to make it easier for your to get the party your child dreams of having.

Don’t Wait, Lock In Your Date

Many parents, as a response to uncertainty, have been waiting until the last minute (within days) to make the decision to host a party only to find out that supply is already gone. Pre-COVID advanced planners were booking 2-3 weeks out. Todays successful party planners are now looking out a minimum of 4 weeks and some are looking ahead six to 8 weeks. We totally understand that working with uncertainty naturally makes people more cautious. However, let’s look at the top three reasons parents wait, we believe there are solutions to these.

What if We Have to Cancel (because someone got sick)?

The GameTruck cancellation and reschedule policies are robust and designed to reduce stress not add to it. The risk of not getting your desired party date and time are starting to outweigh the risks of waiting until you have all the information. The parents that are getting their parties booked on the dates and times they want are leveraging these good faith policies to help mitigate uncertainty and risk. Which is worse? Waiting until you know and then finding out no teams and equipment are available because they are sold out, or booking early and then having to make a change at a later date?

I Can’t Make a Decision Until I See the Schedule

Sports schedules often drive the planning for many families. This is always a hard one because no one wants to schedule an event in the middle of a game or tournament. One of the ways we have seen parents manage this is to talk to the coach about booking the event BEFORE or AFTER practice. GameTruck has been to many ball fields, soccer stadiums, and basketball courts around the country. Surprising the kids with a party after a practice can be hugely popular. Since most practices happen during the week, this taps into time slots and days where demand is not so high and avoids some possible conflicts with game schedules. Regardless, you may find a pattern in your league. In Tempe for example, we rarely if ever scheduled a game on a Friday night or a Sunday. If you’re child’s favorite sport has a pattern like that, you can make a calculated risk and book an event when there has never been any historical practice, but if there is a surprise, you can reschedule the event to be after a practice. The goal here is to decouple the event planning for needing the full schedule in all its detail.

How Will I know if People Will Come?

Of all the concerns this one is perhaps the easiest to allay. In Fifteen years of operating GameTruck our experience is that the kids always want to play. Very often the reality is that too many kids show up, as in kids who were not invited but might have managed to tag along (brothers, sisters, neighbors). GameTruck events draw out the gamer in all of us. 

Consider an Alternative Activity

Sometimes the biggest challenge to getting something that will make us happy is not knowing what else might do just as well or better. GameTruck is a fifteen year old brand that is enormously popular. We are blessed that so many thousands of people every day think of us when it comes to hosting their child’s birthday. However, the real point of a GameTruck party is not video games, although there is plenty of that! GameTruck is really about delivering recognition and celebration in fun engaging ways. We believe friendships are made and maintained shoulder to shoulder. The joy of sharing your interests with people who care about you is at the core of what makes our events so powerful and popular. Did you notice that I did not mention equipment? When people think of GameTruck, of course they think of the GameTrailer, but did you know we also offer GameTruck @Home in many markets? The GameTruck @Home option allows you to have a video game party without the truck and trailer. What many parents don’t realize is that the Net Promoter Score for GameTruck@Home parties is higher than for game theater parties. I wrote an entire article explaining why. GameTruck @Home is successful alternative to the trailer. In a similar manner, Gelly Ball is proving to be a popular option when the better known LaserTag option is unavailable. The action based outdoor target game is proving to be enormously popular in its own right, and a great alternative to LaserTag. 

4 Tips Summary

Unprecedented demand has pushed out the event books for GameTruck from 1-2 weeks to nearly six weeks long. Here are four strategies to getting an alternative event.

1. Don’t wait, lock in your date. 
2. Remember you can reschedule
3. Decouple your plans from their sports schedule
4. Consider an alternate event activity

The bottom line is that sometimes, especially when we are feeling a lot of stress, we start to experience tunnel vision becoming fixated on the one solution we must have. However, if you take a step back, and look at what is causing the uncertainty, you can often find strategies to calm the situation down and move forward with a good plan.

The bottom line is that we would love to host your party, however as demand has increased, it is making it nearly impossible for us to honor last second bookings. Both you (and we!) will have a much better experience if you can find ways to book in advance, choose dates and times that have more availability, and find a way to decouple needing the sports schedule to plan your party. Finally, consider some of our alternative offerings. It is possible that any one of these strategies, or some combination of them can unlock the chances for you get the party you want.