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Comment by kromem | Hacker News Reader

Conversely, in an age before TV or Internet, the longer the game could keep kids occupied the better, no?

We might even imagine that anthropologically given the role of keeping kids occupied there were other games that were more fun but of a shorter duration which died out because parents instead pushed for teaching their kids the cultural equivalent of Monopoly.

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Kids will typically play dreidel once in their life and then refuse to play it again "it's boring".

Instead the fun part is trick shots - spin it upside down, longest spin, start the spin high in the air and throw it still spinning, how many can you keep spinning simultaneously, spin a dreidel into the other player's dreidel. Things like that.

I dunno if I'd agree. If you asked a group of kids to play "see who can find the first prime greater than 2^201" then, per your criteria, that sounds great on paper but the kids will promptly discover the game sucks worse than massaging grandma's feet, quit playing, and never believe your game recommendations again. On the other hand, if a game is short but fun then it's likely it'll be played more than a single time per sitting on top of still be played in future sittings. The only key additional filter I can think of that is the game needs to not be so repetitive it is only fun the first time you play it.

After that it doesn't much matter if it takes 5 minutes and you play 10 times of 50 minutes and you play once - it just matters you had enough fun to entice you to keep playing instead of trying to find something else to do. How much fun that requires likely varies greatly by era though.

Dreidel games don't last very long without valued 'currency' like chocolate.

You're correct there's no intrinsic motivation, which is why the game has extrinsic motivators.

My head-cannon for Dreidel was that it invented by very bored people waiting out a siege during the Maccabean Revolt. That would explain the length of the game. Apparently it’s not nearly that old.

in case anyone is curious the game is derivative of teetotum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teetotum

Monopoly doesn’t take forever if you play by the rules.

https://bowilliams.com/2007/03/you-have-won-second-prize-in-...

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