Game Aims to Hook Youngsters on Joys of Jargon
Game maker Kermit Heartsong loves to let words like “synergy” roll off his tongue.
For years, he kept scrolls of such words stored in his computer--and then one day printed them out and assembled them into a board game he called Articulation. It was the beginning of a business, Word Origin Inc.
Today, Heartsong has 12 games on the market and 28 more set for distribution in March. But he sees his products as more than playthings or educational tools--they help children build their self-confidence while celebrating the joys of jargon.
Phrases like “boob tube” and “chill out” convince some youths this is a game they can play. Heartsong knew he had succeeded when he tried to introduce the family version of the game to a group of jaded Berkeley High School teens.
One athlete in particular showed no interest until Heartsong picked up a sports jargon card and asked for a definition. The student sat up straight and called out an answer.
“He’s into it. He’s engaged,” Heartsong said, laughing.
“They’re very playable,” said Craig Coffman, general manager at Gamescape, a San Francisco gaming retailer where Articulation sells out fast. “You don’t have to be an English major or a real big dictionary reader.”
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Heartsong, 36, had the children of San Francisco’s tougher neighborhoods in mind when he vowed to come up with a word game that was fun to play.
While serving as the director of a youth program, he would read the youngsters a word and ask them to spell it, define it and act it out.
“These kids were hungry,” he said. “They were hungry to learn.
“Their friends were kind of riding them because they were doing well,” he said. “I wanted to give them confidence that they’re doing the right thing.”
Heartsong, born and raised in the rough Bayview-Hunters Point area of San Francisco, knows about having to shun peer pressure.
His mother woke him up 1 1/2 hours before school, put him on three city buses and sent him to a Catholic school across town while the rest of his playmates attended public school.
“And I have the guilt to accompany it,” he said, laughing.
While he went off to the University of California at Davis to study electrical engineering, some of his friends drifted into drugs and crime.
“A lot of people I grew up with are--for one reason or another--not around anymore,” he said. “It was a tough neighborhood.”
He said his mother shielded him from the lures of the neighborhood by reading to him books like “Curious George” and the Dr. Seuss stories.
“I’d go to bed with a flashlight and a book in hand,” he recalled.
He credits Steve Phelps, one of his teachers, with helping his ambition grow. Phelps used to gather Heartsong and his friends into a green Volvo station wagon to take them camping, fishing and hiking.
“He said, ‘You can do better,’ ” Heartsong said. “He came in and gave us something to shoot for.
“I was fortunate,” Heartsong said. “This is why I believe in going back.”
After amassing 1,280 words for his first game and testing it out on friends and family, Heartsong pestered the makers of Trivial Pursuit for advice on how to market it.
He scraped together $45,000 for the first 1,000 games, which sold out within weeks of hitting the market in 1990.
“The most exciting moment was standing on the other side of the counter and seeing it in shrink wrap,” he said. “I stood there for five minutes, saying, ‘That’s my game!’ ”
In 1993, he introduced Word By Word and Articulation Jr./Sr., a family version of the original. Since then he’s produced PaGuzzles, Scrosswords and has licensed two strategy board games. His games range in price from $10 to $29.
With his PaGuzzles, Heartsong and his team have rewritten classic nursery rhymes like “The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe” and “The Three Little Pigs” to make them multicultural and less violent.
Heartsong offers children an incentive. They assemble the puzzle according to a picture key, and then send him a list of items he’s deliberately left off the puzzle pieces. They get a collector’s pin in return, and he draws from among their postcards for a grand prize winner.
His wildlife series PaGuzzles have an interesting twist. Among the animals featured on the picture key, some are missing from the puzzle because they’re extinct.
“Learning can be fun,” Heartsong said. “And entertainment can be enlightening.”
A percentage of profits from those puzzles will go to the Rainforest Action Network, and others to Project Read, Project Literacy, the Children’s Defense Fund and the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
Word Origin is expected to break even this year for the first time since its inception in 1990.
Heartsong has won the backing of Chicago-based Investors Circle, which supports socially responsible goods. That infusion of capital helped him open new offices in downtown San Francisco and to boost sales by 400% in 1997, Heartsong said.
Gamescape’s Coffman said he’s been waiting for Heartsong’s newest version of Articulation, Articulation Comedian, written by real-life funny men and women.
“I expect it to sell well,” he said. “The public seems to latch onto certain games, and that seems to be one of the games they choose.”
