by Imogen from London, England, Wants to Know About Friv2 Games
Dear Santa,
My name is Imogen and I am ten years old. I live in London, England, which my teacher says is one of the greatest cities in the world, and which I believe because it has the British Museum, the Tate Modern, and also a very good Nando’s near our flat.
Dear Imogen, your teacher is correct about London, and your addition of the Nando’s is the most honest piece of urban geography I have received in any letter this year. A city’s quality cannot be measured by its museums alone. The North Pole has neither a British Museum nor a Nando’s, which is a gap in our cultural offering that the elves have raised in three separate staff meetings and which I have not yet resolved to anyone’s satisfaction.
Santa, I need to talk to you about Friv2 games. Specifically, I need to explain to you what they are, because my nan says you are very old and might not know about the internet, which I told her was rude, but she said Father Christmas has been delivering presents since before electricity and therefore she stands by her concern.
Please tell your nan that I am familiar with the internet and have been monitoring it closely since its invention, largely because approximately forty percent of modern Christmas wish lists now arrive via digital channels and the other sixty percent arrive handwritten in fonts that only a man who has been deciphering children’s handwriting for several centuries could parse. I am also aware of Friv2. I have opinions. We will get to those.
Friv2 games are free browser games that you play on a computer or tablet at school when you have technically finished your work but actually finished it four minutes ago and there are still twenty-three minutes of lesson left and your teacher is busy with something else and you have made a series of very fast quiet decisions. They have titles like Fireboy and Watergirl and Age of War and they require no downloading whatsoever, which is important because the school computers take eleven minutes to download anything and by then the lesson is nearly over anyway.
I understand the operational context perfectly. Twenty-three minutes, a finished worksheet, a distracted teacher, and a browser window that can be minimised in approximately one third of a second. The North Pole elves have a similar system during slow periods in October, which I am not meant to acknowledge publicly but which anyone who has managed a large seasonal workforce will recognise as an inevitable feature of institutional life. Friv2 games require no installation, which in an educational IT environment managed by a server that was last updated during the Blair administration is not a small advantage.
Santa, my questions are as follows.
First, have you heard of Fireboy and Watergirl? Because it is a game where a boy made of fire and a girl made of water have to work together to get through a maze, which my teacher would call a metaphor for teamwork and which I call extremely stressful because my friend Aisha always plays Watergirl and she goes the wrong way and then I fall in the water and die, which cannot happen to a boy made of fire but apparently it can in the Forest Temple level which is deeply unfair.
I am familiar with Fireboy and Watergirl. It is, as you correctly identify, a cooperation game built on the foundational principle that two people with fundamentally opposite natures must nevertheless work together or both perish, which is either a metaphor for teamwork, a metaphor for marriage, or a metaphor for the annual North Pole budget meeting with Mrs. Claus, depending on the year. Regarding Aisha going the wrong way: she is not going the wrong way. She has a different theory about the correct way. These are not the same thing, and learning to tell the difference is one of the more useful skills a ten-year-old can develop.
Second, what do you think about Age of War, which is a game where you build an army through different historical periods and attack the other side? My dad says this is educational because it teaches you about history. My mum says it teaches you to solve problems by throwing increasingly large weapons at them, which she says explains a lot about my dad.
Your mother has identified something that several centuries of Christmas Eve experience have confirmed: most conflicts, from the Stone Age to the present day, could have been resolved earlier with better communication and fewer catapults. Age of War is entertaining and does contain genuine historical progression, which is more than can be said for most things a ten-year-old will do between the end of the worksheet and the bell. Your dad is correct that it is educational. Your mum is correct about everything else.
Third, there is a game called Money Movers where you have to break two brothers out of prison, and I want to know if this is on the naughty list. Because I have played it quite a lot and the brothers are nice and they did not seem to deserve prison and also I am very good at it now which I feel I should mention in case skill counts for something.
Money Movers has been reviewed by the North Pole’s content assessment team, which consists of me and two elves who take these matters very seriously and then argue about them for longer than is strictly necessary. Our finding is that guiding two fictional brothers through a fictional prison escape in a browser game does not constitute a naughty list offence, particularly as the brothers in question appear to be fundamentally decent people caught in difficult circumstances, which is a narrative the North Pole has always had sympathy for. Skill does count for something. Noted on the record.
Fourth, why do schools block games websites? Because my school has blocked approximately everything interesting on the internet and I can only access things that are educational, which is a word the school IT department uses to mean grey and slow. My teacher says the internet at school is for learning. The internet at home is also supposed to be for learning but it is mainly for Friv2 and YouTube videos of dogs being surprised by cucumbers, and I feel this is a more balanced approach.
School networks block games websites because someone in an office somewhere decided that children who are bored will inevitably discover something worse than Friv2, which is statistically true but also somewhat uncharitable to Fireboy and Watergirl, who are simply trying to get through a temple. The North Pole has reviewed the evidence and reached the following position: supervised access to harmless browser games during genuinely free time is not the educational catastrophe it has been framed as. Dogs being surprised by cucumbers, for the record, is also fine. Joy is not a distraction from learning. It is frequently a prerequisite for it.
Fifth, can you bring me a laptop that is fast enough to run Friv2 without the loading circle going round and round for forty-five seconds every time I click something? The family computer is very old and my dad says it has the processing power of a determined hamster, which I think means it is slow. The hamster, for the record, is called Derek and he is faster than the computer, which I have tested.
A faster computer is on the list and is a reasonable request. I will note, however, that the loading circle going round for forty-five seconds is not entirely the computer’s fault. Friv2 games are lightweight by design, which means your family computer’s processing power, while clearly humbling, is not the only variable. Your internet connection, which in many parts of London is managed by a provider operating infrastructure that has also seen better decades, may share the blame. Derek the hamster, having outperformed the hardware in a timed trial, deserves an extra treat. This has nothing to do with Christmas. It is simply correct.
I also have some follow-up questions.
Do the elves play games in the workshop?
There is a workshop tablet that is technically for production scheduling. It is also used for Fireboy and Watergirl during breaks, which I know because Prancer walked past a window in November and filed a report. The elves said they were testing touchscreen interfaces for quality control purposes. I accepted this explanation because it was October and I needed everyone focused and sometimes leadership requires knowing which battles to have.
Could Santa beat Fireboy and Watergirl on the Forest Temple level?
I completed the Forest Temple level in 2019 with no assistance and a respectable completion time. I was playing both characters simultaneously using a controller splitter, which the elves said was cheating and which I maintain is simply efficient resource allocation. We have agreed to disagree.
What games would the reindeer play if they could use a computer?
Dasher would play racing games and screenshot his own high scores. Dancer would play rhythm games and be insufferable about it. Prancer would open a strategy game, read the tutorial for two hours, and then write a memo about optimal opening moves rather than actually playing. Rudolph would stream himself playing and expect everyone to watch. Comet would play something quietly and be quite good and never mention it. Blitzen would play Age of War, skip to the modern era immediately, and then complain the early levels were not challenging enough.
Is there a naughty list for websites?
Yes. It is maintained separately from the children’s list and is considerably longer. Friv2 is not on it. Several other websites are, and their operators are well aware, and they have received communications from the North Pole that they have chosen not to make public. We consider this an ongoing matter.
Thank you for reading my letter, Santa. My mum checked the spelling. She said it was very long for a letter about games. I told her the questions required length. She said that was very me, which I am taking as a compliment.
Tell your mum it is absolutely a compliment. A child who asks thorough questions about the ethics of prison-escape browser games, the processing limitations of elderly family computers, and the school IT department’s relationship with joy is not wasting anyone’s time. She is practising thinking carefully, arguing clearly, and advocating for herself — which are skills that will serve her considerably better in life than the Forest Temple level, though that will also come in useful if Aisha ever goes the right way. Merry Christmas, Imogen. May your loading circles be brief, your worksheets finish early, and your teacher remain usefully distracted for exactly as long as you need.
Merry Christmas, Santa.
Your friend,
Imogen Clara Osei-Mensah
London, England
P.S. If you are bringing the laptop, please make sure it has a good trackpad because the one on the family computer sticks and I once accidentally declared war on France in Age of War when I meant to click something else entirely. France won. It was humiliating.
The trackpad situation has been escalated to the relevant department with full notes. Accidentally declaring war on France due to a faulty peripheral is not a naughty list event. It is, however, a very London thing to have happen, and I mean that with the warmest possible respect.
