Eleanor Abbot's Candy Land is in most cases the first boardgame to which children in the United States are exposed. As a result, it constitutes a touchstone, a referent which we almost all consider when contemplating the nature of the ars ludorum, and its evolution and recomplication in our own interactive, nay hyperactive, era.
There are those who criticize Candy Land as being jejune and ultimately futile, since the nature of its rules construct and the (non-existent) emergent complexity it supports is utterly unsusceptible to any sort of rational analysis, or indeed, choice of player strategy.
