Are games persuasive? Can Games Change the world? These are
the questions I aim to address and explore in this essay, looking at how
video-games persuade (and to what degree) in addition to the development of
games as a medium that transcends purely entertainment.
The Power of a Video Game as a persuasive tool
Video games as a medium often carry a stigma as being toys
or pieces of entertainment in the media currently, even in the eyes of the
publishers themselves:
‘Konami states, "At
the end of the day, it's just a game."’(B, Ashcroft, 2009)
But
yet the very concept of a game is something that carries a significant power.
In a TED lecture Jane McGonigal argues that games have both the power and persuasion
to overcome great real world obstacles, using Greek historian Herodotus’s tale
of Lydia as an example. The King of Lydia utilised the potency and persuasion
of dice games to survive a kingdom-wide famine:
“…And they would be so
immersed in playing the dice games because games are so engaging, and immerse
us in such satisfying blissful productivity, they would ignore the fact they
had no food to eat.” (McGonical, J. TED 2010)
Now at first the idea that games
have the persuasive ability to allow humans to defy hunger would seem ludicrous
but games theorist Johan Huizinga explains that in playing a game the player
surrenders themselves to the rules and social etiquette of the game, forming a
‘magic circle’ containing all of the players in the process (Zimmerman and Salen, 2003). This in
itself is not unlike the audience’s suspension of disbelief in the established
mediums of television and film.
However unlike those two mediums,
Video Games have a much greater potency to engage their audiences – with Adrian
Hon, the chief creative officer of SixToStart discussing the use of invisible
psychological devices in video-games to keep the player hooked. He stated that it was based on research that
had been carried out in the 1950’s where rats that had been trained to feed
themselves via a button would resort to pressing the button obsessively if the
food was instead delivered randomly: “People
discovered that this works on humans as well. If you give people a lever or
button to press and give them random rewards, they will press it all the time.”
(Rowe, R. 2010)
This experiment has been actually
utilised in many different video games as a core mechanic, like ‘looting’ – a
process in that the player will open a chest or (from which it gained its
title) looting a defeated enemy corpse for spoils. These spoils are often
randomly generated and exploring dungeons in order to loot or complete quests
are the basis of many hugely successful Role Playing Games including The Elder Scrolls Series (Bethesda,
2011) and World of Warcraft
(Blizzard).
Now despite these psychological
tools being used in the pursuit of persuading the player to stay in the world,
some could argue that games are too powerful in this regard, with the emergence
of gaming addiction becoming a serious concern – especially in South Korea
where around eight percent of the population between the ages of nine to thirty
nine suffer from internet addiction (Lee,
J. 2011). The degree of this issue has led to many steps being taking by
the Korean government, such as the creation of dedicated programs for treating
gaming addiction in over a hundred hospitals while games companies such as
NCsoft finance private counselling centres and hotlines (S,Caroline. 2011). The largest of these actions included the
passing of the Shutdown Law, which blocks children under the age of sixteen
from playing during the period from Midnight to 6AM (Caoli, E. 2011). So from
this the question no longer remains ‘can video games change the world?’ for
they already have.
However while the change in Korea
was born from the raw power of games being channelled into the entertainment
sector, what of harnessing the persuasive power of games to achieve other
things? Is the medium constricted to purely entertainment or does it have the
potential to influence sectors not before considered and change the world in a
positive way?
Branching Out – Games as
Documentary
In 2009, Konami announced the release of a
war title: Six Days in Fallujah (Atomic
Games, 2009). The game itself was conceived from the developer ‘Atomic’
working on Military tactical programs, before being asked by returning veterans
to make their experience in Fallujah a game (Fox
News, 2011). The game was described as a ‘"game-amentary" (M, Fahey. 2011) and in numerous interviews the
developer stated their focus was on realistic depiction of the events that
would in no way glorify the experience, but inform. However upon the games
announcement controversy erupted due to the nature of what the game was
documenting:
'It's much too soon to start making video games
about a war that's still going on, and an extremely flippant response to one of
the most important events in modern history. 'It's particularly insensitive
given what happened in Fallujah, and I will certainly oppose the release of
this game’ - Tim Collins
OBE (Daily Mail, 2009)
The result of this controversy led to Konami
removing their backing for the game shortly after its announcement ultimately
meaning the game was not released (Stuart,
K. 2009).
Other smaller non mainstream titles have explored
sensitive historical events in the past through video games as a form of
documentary, with one such example being Scottish developer Traffic
Management’s ‘JFK Reloaded’ (Traffic
Management, 2004). The game was described by the developer as an ‘interactive
forensic experience’ that would disprove any conspiracy theories surrounding
the death of JFK by recreating the events of the day according to the Warren
commission report – rewarding the player for the most accurate three shots to
those actually taken. The most accurate player was to be rewarded money of up
to one hundred thousand dollars, in return for a small fee for the games
purchase. The game, like Six Days in Fallujah was not met without controversy due
to the nature of what it was ‘documenting’, with David Smith a spokesmen for
David Kennedy branding the game as ‘Despicable’ (The Guardian, 2004).
Despite both games
featuring extensive amounts of research and sourcing of external advisors to
give the games a high level of historical accuracy -with a ten man team taking 7
months to research before developing JFK Reloaded (The Guardian, 2004), these
titles have suffered from a barrage of arguments that remove this underlying
credibility.
One of these general arguments is that as pieces of an entertainment based industry,
Video games are not mature enough to be considered as a serious attempt at
educating audiences or conveying tough messages through documentary. This
stigma is heavily tied to the media’s representation of the medium itself –
with two quotations used in this essay already both acting as evidence to compliment
this theory. For example in his statement of opposition to Six Days in
Fallujah’s release, Tim Collins describes the act of making it a game as a
‘flippant response’ (Daily Mail, 2009). This is condemning not the topic of the
game but rather the choice of video game as a medium over film or written
documentary forms. When it was considered that in the development of the title,
Atomic Games utilized over 70 different sources of information from civilians,
soldiers and even insurgents -with the latter sparking even more controversy (Wikipedia, 2009), it is clear
that the title would have had a depth of research on par or beyond that which
would go into the creation of a credible television documentary.
Now while the preconceptions about games are often tied into the way that
the media presents them, at points these are utilized by the industry
themselves:
Anthony
Crout, Vice President of Konami Marketing: "We're not trying to make a
social commentary. We're not pro-war. We're not trying to make people feel
uncomfortable. We just want to bring a compelling entertainment experience. At
the end of the day, it's just a game” (Stuart, K. 2009)
As shown by the persuasive power of games
and the level of detail a current videogame can deliver, it could be said that
videogames might have the ability to deliver a meaningful documentary
experience beyond that of film or television due to its ability to place the
player into the world itself. However for a member of the industry like Konami
to publically submit to the idea that a game does not have any weight or depth
to deliver that particular level of experience is counterproductive to giving
the medium the credibility to be viewed in such a way.
Although this does not necessarily mean
that there isn’t any merit to stating the importance that the videogame is a
game at heart for this perhaps is the major hurdle for the medium to seriously branch
into being a form of documentary; with
Six Day’s in Fallujah’s creative director Juan Benito stating:
“I
think realism is a very important part of the game but a term we use more often
is authenticity. That means that we recreate the essential elements of the
experience and we leave out those which are non-essential. We are a video-game
and we need to be accessible as such and provide gameplay so we make some
concessions to that.” – (Gamespot, 2009)
Documentary is defined as: “based on or re-creating an
actual event, era, life story, etc., that purports to be factually accurate and
contains no fictional elements” (Dictionary.Com). However
in the dilution of events through removal of those which are deemed
‘non-essential’ in order to make the gameplay more accessible to the audience,
the game then acts more akin to a social commentary than documentary.
Emergence of Indie: Games with a message
While AAA titles such as Six Days in
Fallujah need to ultimately repay the money which was invested by appealing to a
large audience, a number of smaller free Indie titles have begun to experiment
in a number of areas because they do not suffer from similar restraints to that
of their more expensive to produce counterparts.
The result of this is the emergence of
niche titles that experiment with gameplay mechanics or the very idea of play
itself in order to deliver a message – be this for educational, political or
other. There are many examples of this, such as the Newsgame ‘September
12: A Toy World’. The opening tagline is
simply “This is not a game. You can’t win and you can’t lose.” The ‘gameplay’
is a simple dilemma. There are terrorists wandering around a city. The player
can fire at these. By firing the player may kill a terrorist but will catch
civilians in the process. The mourning of these leads to civilians becoming
terrorists. If a gamer approaches the
game there is only one ending in that the city will be full of terrorists – but
as it states ‘This is not a game’. This is but one of the interesting examples
of games that are utilizing the very idea of play to engage with their
audiences – not for entertainment purposes but to spark discussions relevant to
today’s politics in a way relevant to today’s audience.
In
Summary…
The initial questions raised in this essay
were Can Video Games Change the World? And Are they Persuasive? I think by
having looked at the immersive nature of a game it is only natural that they
persuade us – with Jane McGonigal summarizing one such reason perfectly:
“The problem with
collaborative online environments like world of warcraft is that it’s so
satisfying to be on the verge of an epic win all the time that we decide to
spend all our time in these game worlds.” (TED. 2011)
And from this ultimately lies their power to change the
world. But to have asked such simple questions in this essay underlines that
perhaps because of the preconceived notions that games are simply just ‘games’
means that their potential is overlooked by the masses. Maybe the question that
needs to be asked is simply: “Are Video
Games given the respect and credibility to be recognised as a persuasive tool
that can change the world?” The answer to which, at this current time at least,
can be found once again in the word and response ‘Flippant’.
Jane McGonigal, Video games can
change the world. Available from:
(Accessed 28/04/2012)
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game
Design Fundamentals (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003)
Raphael Row (2010). Can video gaming cross from innocent fun to
addiction? Available from:
(23/03/2012)
Jiyeon
Lee (2011) South Korea Pulls plug on
late-night adolescent online gamers. Available from:
(23/03/2012)
(23/03/2012)
Eric Caoili
(2011), South Korea’s Shutdown Law Goes
into Effect. Available from:
(Accessed 27/04/2012)
Fox News (2011) Six Days in Fallujah News interview.
Available from:
(Accessed 28/04/2012)
Fahey, M (2009)The fate of Six Days In Fallujah. Available
from:
(Accessed 28/04/2012)
Guardian (2004) JFK
Shooting game ‘despicable’. Available from:
(Accessed 28/04/2012)
Gamespot (2009) Six
days in Fallujah interview. Available from:
(Accessed 28/04/2012)
Stuart, K (2009) Konami
pulls Six Days in Fallujah. Available from:
(Accessed 28/04/2012)
Wikipedia (2012).Six
Days in Fallujah Overview. Available from:
(Accessed 28/04/2012)
September 12, A toy world (Newsgame
2003)
JFK Reloaded (Traffic Management, 2004
Six Days in Fallujah (Atomic
Games, 2009)
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