Game Developer Gives 7-Year-Old Best Birthday Present Ever

UPDATE Feb 24: CultOfMac covers this story and informs us Zias’ level will be added to iOS as well!

Being a gaming father I try to raise my kids with a healthy balance of analog and digital fun. To the surprise of me and Mrs Kool they don’t seem to care about digital games that much, and prefer paper, glue and scissors and playing outside over anything else.

But recently my son Zias discovered Edge. And that changed things.

He loves it. The game, the puzzles, the music, the levels, everything. He knows which music belongs to what level, what secret passages can be reached when traversing through the level a certain way and when his gaming time is over he tends to his lego and builds his own Edge levels. He is a little me ;)

At first it seemed he was starting some sort of addiction, but it became his top Lego creativity booster and his creations give joy to the whole family. He really thinks each level through, and not only have my wife and I played many of his levels, even his two youger sisters like to play them.

And soon you can too…

You could say that I know the feeling of doing more with a certain game :) So I wanted to give Zias something Edge-related for his birthday, as I knew it would make him a very happy little guy.

I sent a tweet to Edge creator Two Tribes where I asked if they had any promotional material such as a poster, flyer or business card perhaps. As Two Tribes is a Dutch game developer, I got a tweet back in Dutch from company founder Collin van Ginkel where he asked me to to send him an email.

Then he wrote me:

“Hi Martin,

I don’t have much marketing material except for some digital flyers. But I thought it would be nice if Zias could make a Lego level for us, which we would rebuild and put back in the actual game. The level will have his name and be put on Steam.

Not sure if this can be arranged, but would that be a nice present?

Cheers,

Collin”

I was amazed. That would be such a special gift. It’s really special for a game developer to step out and do something this extraordinary for a little soon-to-be-seven-years-old guy somewhere in the world.

The e-mails that followed led to their lead level designer Hessel Bonenkamp to create the following invite:

It translates to

“Hi Zias!

We made Edge.
Would you like to come over
And show us your coolest Lego level?
We’ll then put it in the real Edge.

Cheers from Two Tribes
in Amersfoort”

Which was written specifically so that a 7-year old can immediately understand what it’s all about. In fact, he even knows where Amersfoort is :)

The reason I write this, is that I think such a nice gesture from Two Tribes deserves a lot of credit.

The actual birthday is next Saturday, and me and Zias will go over to Two Tribes somewhere early in March. We usually get a custom printed cake for our kids’ birthdays too, so when I asked Zias what kind of print he wanted his answer was simple:

“Edge”

To be continued…

161

February 14th, 2012 -