Year's 2 and 3 Games Art and Design Blog: Essay: Can Games Change the World?

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’.

Bibliography

Jane McGonigal, Video games can change the world. Available from:

http://blog.ted.com/2010/03/17/gaming_can_make/

(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:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_9251000/9251687.stm

(23/03/2012)

Jiyeon Lee (2011) South Korea Pulls plug on late-night adolescent online gamers. Available from:

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/22/world/asia/south-korea-gaming/index.html

(23/03/2012)

Carolyn Sun (2011) Online Cravings. Available from: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/16/south-korea-s-video-game-addiction.html