Valuable Games

NPR’s Open Mic featured a fascinating discussion between two of my personal heroes, Will Wright and E.O. Wilson. Their overlap, naturally, was in ants, which were a personal fascination of mine since very young. I remember with great fondness that my roommates bought me SimAnt as a gift during my freshman year of college (it was also one of the few games for Mac back then), and I played the heck out of it, even though it wasn’t a terribly deep game.

Wilson is typically far-sighted in seeing video games as pointing the way to better education. While he imagines this future teaching centered on virtual reality, I continue to believe the greatest hope for learning will be in teaching systems-thinking, something that Wright has excelled at doing.

For Wilson, the greatest unanswered question in biology is “the origin of altruistic social behavior.” I suspect this question is what drew me to my interest in ants as a child: how these animals work together as a social organism to accomplish incredible tasks. And again this is the kind of concept that’s best conveyed via a video game – complex interactions among many small parts, as well as the ability to switch perspectives to take the point of view of one of those parts. I’d love to see Wright take on this grand task that Wilson has laid out: can altruism be the basis of a fun, exciting, blockbuster game?

Read/listen to the story: Ant Lovers Unite! Will Wright and E.O. Wilson on Life and Games.

Interesting chat in last week’s Gamers with Jobs Conference Call instigated by a listener email on the “trend” towards moral choices in recent games (especially Infamous for PS3). The caller wondered if games should offer better rewards for “good” or “evil” choices, which generated a great discussion among the podcasters. Julian “Rabbit” Murdoch noted/complained that in games, “evil” is often the quick and easy path, while “good” often coincides with patience (and larger long-term rewards). His observation makes me wonder whether such gameplay implicates not so much morality (right vs wrong) than virtue – specifically, the virtue of patience. This particular approach to virtue is particularly interesting given that video games have a reputation as tools of twitchy, instant gratification.

In that same podcast, Rabbit also emphasizes that it makes more sense to tie the consequences of moral choices to story outcomes, much more so than game effects like upgraded weapons or skills, although the distinction can be blurry. (The example he gives is villagers giving you critical information in gratitude for helping the village). This division between gameplay and story illustrates the continuing incapacity of games to make stories into games, which I argue is because remains an absence of a social physics engine which would make such gameplay as fun as throwing objects around using existing physics engines.

At the dawn of the music game genre, Parappa the Rapper set standards for original art style and gameplay that today’s Guitar Hero cohort has yet to match. Here was a game that valued your creativity, awarding you points for not just mastering rhythmic patterns, but stringing them together in novel flows. Parappa took the feature that make arcade games so attractive, this remixing of set patterns, and married it to its natural partner, music.

The result was no less jazz than hip-hop, and by comparison today’s music games are Simon Says with plastic guitars. Music was meant to be made, not recited, after all. Rock Band lets you pretend to make music; Parappa pointed the way to game consoles as musical instruments. If anyone was to offer an alternative to the narrowing of the music game genre into karaoke with points, it would be the original Parappa team – developer Masaya Matsuura, artist Rodney Greenblatt, and studio NanaOn-Sha, with the long-awaited spiritual sequel Major Minor’s Majestic March.

Sadly, while MMMM retains the hand-drawn charm and nutty characters of Parappa, its gameplay goes in entirely the opposite direction, amounting to little more than keeping the beat with a Wiimote. Gone is the creative license to mete out freestyle flows; instead you’re reduced to a human metronome.

Even that small premise might offer some dose of fun – kids, after all, seem to have an innate ability to rock a hot beat. But MMMM’s rigid interface sucks the soul out of the rhythm. Sure, not everyone daydreams of being a drum major, but those who do probably don’t imagine themselves just pumping their fist up and down (a gesture uncomfortably in an unfortunate similar to an obsene gesture). And even such an activity as robotic as this might still offer a bit of amusement if it didn’t also demand such precision. Deviate from an exact up-down path and your band members split like groupies in a drug bust.

Like their peers in this generation, the creators of MMMM have lost the spirit of improvisation. (Wii Music lets you re-arrange public domain tunes, but the activity isn’t very natural, nor much of a game). Rock Band drum solos are about all you’ll find these days in terms of freestyle play in music games.

“Flow” – a state of selfless, almost meditative immersion – describes the most absorbing aspect of game-playing and music-making alike. Guitar Hero and Rock Band made this connection so successfuly that they have changed pop culture itself. But what of the pleasures of musical creativity? A few months ago I watched the Princeton Laptop Orchestra performing with synthesizers controlled by a modified joystick (a “joyful noise” indeed!). It didn’t sound like jazz, nor did it look like an arcade game, but it shared the improvisational qualities of both. In so doing, PLOP inherits from Parappa the possibility that game hardware can function as musical instruments. Sadly, the direct descendant of Parappa instead illustrates why, in games as much as in music, it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

The Obama administration is looking seriously into how games and virtual technologies can advance national policy priorities, from energy use to financial literacy to citizen diplomacy, announced White House Deputy CTO Beth Noveck at the United States Institute of Peace’s presentation, “Smart Tools for Smart Power: Simulations and Serious Games for Peacekeeping.” As one of the Obama administration’s lead personnel on government openness, Noveck focused on citizen collaboration and civic engagement, but as founder of the State of Play conferences at New York Law School, she also spoke to games and virtual worlds in their own right.

Some of the key areas that the Administration is exploring include:

• How might web-based games spur development or help to deepen the ties between the US and the Muslim world?
• Can games tackle major ed challenges – learning readiness, dropout rates, literacy, STEM
• Topical priorities: STEM, child obesity, adult basic skills, youth entrepreneurship, energy audits

As far as the power of games, Noveck mostly focused on virtual technologies, noting that “seeing oneself on the screen is critical… When we see ourselves – what does that mean for our ability to coordinate socially? What does it mean for decisionmaking and peacemaking?” She notes that it’s “amazing” to be able to sit in certain White House meetings where everyone is at least familiar with the concept of World of Warcraft. (No one asked if Obama himself is among them)

Weighing in on a long-standing argument in the “Serious Games” movement, Noveck noted that “serious games” should neither mean dull nor pedantic. She does state, as do many educators speaking to learning, that there ought to be many means of civic engagement as there are people who want to engage, so that there’s not just one single path to getting involved.

Noveck also spoke to strategies for how the government can undertake these initiatives, specifically, how to foster partnerships or other mechanisms (contests?) and how to measure impacts and outcomes. One recurring issue whenever White House technology is discussed is how the government can afford to take the risk of experimentation, especially given that gaming is considered highly risky (thus the need for the “serious games” appellation). One of the strategies is likely to foster “copycats” who improve upon the rudimentary experiments that the White House fosters, which Noveck says is already happening. At a minimum, there is hope that the CTO’s office can be a hub of innovation where civic-minded people and organizations can gather to share innovative ideas and make them happen — perhaps even, Noveck suggested in answer to a question, a “center for gaming.” (”Let’s talk,” she said to the questioner).

Related posts:

• Video Games and Democratic Participation
• My.BarackObama.com – 2008 Game of the Year

At this year’s Independent Game Conference – East, the Boston chapter of Games for Change ran a prototyping workshop with some 30 conference participants. The goal: brainstorm game concepts addressing one of the three issues targeted by our three participating nonprofits: Teach for America, Mercy Corps, and the Boston Foundation’s youth violence initiative. Participants generated a wide range of concepts ranging from learning puzzles to augmented reality and game design challenges. Just as interesting, goals ranged from educating players to fostering community to shaping real-world behaviors.

For our next act, Boston Games for Change will host a gamejam to move one or more of these basic concepts into a working prototype. In the meantime, we’ll be representing at the 6th Annual Games for Change Festival in New York, May 27-29. Register now!

As war becomes increasingly virtual, will it also become increasingly inhuman and thus inhumane? PW Singer lays out issues related to this question at TED, posted recently, in which he specifically cites Grand Theft Auto as evidence that “we do things in video games we wouldn’t do face-to-face.” He quotes one soldier who specifically says, “It’s like a video game.” Yet Singer also acknowledges that Predator Drone pilots apparently suffer higher rates of PTSD than their on-the-ground counterparts.

Will video game interfaces make what Singer terms “cubicle warriors” cold-blooded killers? Right now these remote-controlled robots largely borrow hardware interfaces from video games — see the image linked from this FOX News story or check out minute 10:30 in Singer’s talk. But what happens if and when they begin borrowing software interfaces from games as well? (The remote-control systems do already feature crosshair targets — but video games had first taken that from real guns.) Is an Ender’s Game scenario — when the soldier doesn’t even realize he is fighting a real battle — possible?

Interface design isn’t quite the same as “codelaw” — that is, embodying laws in code — but in some ways it’s even more powerful, and therefore more potentially insidious. Many of the examples of choice-shaping that Thaler and Sunstein cite in Nudge are, in fact, interface innovations. But if interfaces can dehumanize, can they also re-humanize? Video games are not known for their emotional range, but I agree with those who believe that’s a matter of historical accident, not destiny. If video games can evoke authentic emotion, can we infuse it into our military software interfaces? The fact that Predator drone pilots suffer PTSD suggests that a digital screen need not cripple our humanity.

(Thanks to colleague Ed Popko for flagging these to my attention!)

Boston is proud to be hosting this year’s Independent Games Conference-East, and the Boston chapter of Games for Change is running a special workshop, “Change the World with Games.” The workshop brings together NGO leaders and game developers to discuss and take action on games for social change:

Non-Profit Organizations could be using games to communicate their mission fast, far, and wide. This workshop aims to demonstrate the potential of games to inform and motivate a wide audience. Attendees will work in small groups, directly with NPOs, to design mission-based games. Representatives from three local NPOs will be on hand to explain their missions and participate in the brainstorming. Attendees will choose one of the three missions as the theme for their design challenge, and work collaboratively over 45 minutes to design and share ideas. Game design experience is not necessary. Creativity is!

Register for IGDC now.
Use these discount codes:

• VIP: IGCEVIP09 10% OFF
• IGDA: IGDAIGCE09 10% OFF
• STUDENT: IGCE09EDU 50% OFF

In this in-depth interview with Gamasutra (May 1), game developer Peter Molyneux explains how he approaches offering players deep moral choices:

PM: What’s fascinating about it is that when we thought about good and evil, it’s so tempting to say, “Well, good is saving lives, and evil is hurting lives and killing people.” But actually, I think where the real emotion comes is when you really start testing people.

If I said to you, “Your family is over there. What would you do to save them?” “Well, I would do anything.” “Really? Would you really do anything? Would you actually kill a thousand people to save your family? And what does that say about you?”

I think, finally, that decision made people think, because it forced them to think, “My goodness, my natural reaction is of course I’d save my family. Of course I would save the people I love.” But actually, when it comes down to it, would you? Would you sacrifice everything for that very selfish act of having what you want? There are a lot of philosophical questions that come up in your mind when you’re doing that.

David Nieborg had written an excellent review of Fable 2’s moral dimensions earlier.

A recent trip to Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art made me wonder how museums might curate video games and other digital media. The challenge is fitting an interactive and often social medium into the traditionally hands-off and reserved context of most art museums. As might be expected, the ICA resolves this tension by shunting most digital media off into a separate, youth-oriented space. (American museums seem to assume that adults like to stand aloof from art, which baffles me).

Hanging underneath the cantilevered body of the museum is the “Mediatheque,” a digital cockpit reminiscent of a WWII bomber ball turret. It currently houses some 16 Macs through which patrons can access digital exhibits and a refreshingly current social-tagging and discussion feature. But as the picture below of a girl multi-tasking on her mobile phone illustrates, culture is racing ahead faster than installations.

In some ways a gallery of video games would face similar challenges as a museum of film – truly appreciating a game may take hours. Aggressively curating the selection to highlight particular aspects of the game – art, sound, and most of all gameplay – can help solve this, but the curator then runs into serious software issues. Taking an “excerpt” out of a game is nothing at all like doing the same for film – how might the exhibit highlight only one of the later levels in Super Mario Bros., for example? Then there are the hardware challenges, especially for more recent games that cannot be played or emulated on the PC.

Assuming that the technical issues can be resolved, how might a good curator assemble the collection? Some of the easier organizing logics would be historical, perhaps starting as early as the “Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device.” One important segment might attempt to define “video game,” perhaps highlighting board games, sport, and film for comparison. Another angle might focus on video game assets such as art or audio; yet another would be to highlight major genres.

But most important of all, a proper video game exhibit must get to the heart of a game’s interactivity. The full art of video games surfaces when the act of engaging them reveals something about the human condition – whether it’s about yourself or your relationship to the world. Many of these might have to be small indie games, with an emphasis on “small.” Putting Super Mario Bros. next to Braid might demonstrate some of the conventions that the latter challenged, but won’t really help the player experience obsession (one of the major themes of Braid), at least not within an acceptable time frame. So a significant amount of “telling” will, I’m afraid, have to be done.

The picture of the girl on her mobile reminds us that any exhibit would do well to think beyond the four corners of the screen. As with the ICA’s innovative tagging system, it might even be possible to create an interactive exhibit that integrates the rest of the museum. (Museum as ARG, anyone?)

I would love to hear other ideas for how one might go about exhibiting video games qua video games. Thoughts?

(btw, Rochester’s Strong Museum of Play will soon be opening one of the largest video game exhibits in the world. I’m curious how they’re tackling the challenge.)

As President Obama recognized in his Open Government Directive, transparency is only the first step towards a more vibrant democracy. The bigger problem has always been fostering widespread participation. After all, one of the most vexing problems facing today’s government – regulatory capture of an agency by special interests – flourishes despite, or perhaps even because of, the openness of the administrative state. The rulemaking process is open to the citizenry, but the public just doesn’t care – at least not to the degree of special interests.

The response from civic society is to proliferate an alphabet soup of their own special interest groups, from the AARP to the NRA. These organizations serve two vital functions: (1) developing expertise and (2) aggregating collective interest, primarily through membership dues (money) as a proxy.

We’ve reached the limits of this corporate, civil-society-as-special-interest, system. New, digitally networked communities suggest a more fluid and inclusive model of public participation. And, I argue, video games are worth studying for their ability to help us overcome the twin problems of expertise and collective action.

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