Valuable Games

At lunch, Mary Flanagan walked us through a very simplified version of the Values at Play process. Each table of participants picked one “Value” card and then identified existing games that highlight that particular value. (Ours was “Privacy” — we came up with such games as poker and just about every other card game). This warmup was to help flex our minds around the ubiquitous presence of values in games. Then we drew a second card naming an existing game which we were to mod to include the value from Card 1 (we drew “Monopoly”).

Some of the designs I found most interesting coming out of this very brief process (maybe 10 minutes) explored the tensions around each value (e.g. setting up incentives to defect from cooperation to build conflict over the value). We didn’t come to a proposal for modding Monopoly to address privacy, but we played with mechanisms where both protecting and revealing information would give the player strategic advantages. Perhaps each player has a secret goal that, if accomplished, would grant that player bonus points at the end.

I found the Values @ Play process fascinating and rich, and hope to be able to play with it at one of our upcoming meetings.

On a panel on “Journalism, Games, and Civic Engagement,” Asi Burak of Impact Games (Peacemaker) suggests the following tags for interactive media, which he distinguishes from “games”:

1. Editorial short-form — Ian Bogost’s “Persuasive Games” (I’m curious what Ian thinks of this tag)
2. Advocacy short-form — Darfur is Dying, Starbucks’ environment game
3. Long-form advocacy — Peacemaker, A Force More Powerful — goal is to come out with the realization, “It’s more complex than I thought”
4. Community interaction — World without Oil

Other possible terms: “Experiential storytelling,” “Interactive infographic”? One audience member points out that games usually have meaningful choice, a magic circle, a win state that some of these examples do not.

I’m not sure I would put A Force More Powerful in the “Advocacy” camp since its main focus is to teach strategy (not just demonstrate complexity), but as Asi points out, both that title and Peacemaker have a “bias for peace” built into the design. (In AFMP, demonstrations that go violent is a Bad Thing).

Another journalism game: Joellen Easton of American Public Media demonstrated Budget Hero, which allows players to set their own goals through selecting a “badge” (e.g. national security, universal health care). It’s particularly interesting to me that these goals (and thus, the underlying values) cannot all be met, which for me is a criterion for a “meaningful choice.”

APM is also finding that players of Budget Hero are significantly younger than consumers of other public media: 53% are 18-35.

Why a game: Player experiences tension between own assumptions and the facts built into the game (assuming vetted facts are correct) — Joellen. Limitations of traditional media that lack context, cause-effect — Asi.

Liveblogging Games for Change:

On the first panel this morning, Chris Crawford (Balance of Power) described his commitment to interpersonal games. (I was not aware of a game he created in the ’80s called “Gossip.”) Today he launched a new spin on Balance of Power in which states are represented as geopolitical “people” (I will post a link when I find it — the general site is StoryTron.).

The most interesting claim Chris made was that the market for “interactive storytelling” (a medium that is more relationship-based) will be 3x larger than the current games industry — that would be a $60B+ market. He observes that the existing industry is “creatively dead” or, synonymously, “marketing mature.”

When we first fired up Grand Theft Auto IV on Wednesday night, the gameplay experiences we demonstrated – running over pedestrians, being thrown out of your car, getting into a fistfight with random strangers – elicited gasps from our somewhat mixed audience of gamers and newbies. But I found it telling that, by the end of our conversation, even the newbies seemed to grasp the images for what they are: ragdoll physics played for gags. The short half-life of Euphoria illustrates Sam Gilbert’s chief complaint with the moral world of GTA4: “Through repetition, actions become meaningless… consequences are few and minor, and meaning and investment drips away.”

The next few posts are a reconstruction of the conversation our playtesters (Sam, Doris Rusch, Matthew Weise, together with Josh Diaz and Eric Robinson) had with the full group. (I should note that I (Gene Koo) have not played GTA4 yet to any serious extent, so I’m relying on y’all to correct my mistakes). I was particularly excited by the new folks at this gathering that included Helen Haste, Barry Fishman, and Scott Siedel, all of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Dave Peth of WGBH.

1. GTA4: character and avatar
2. GTA4: ruleplaying vs. roleplaying
3. GTA4: values at play
4. GTA4: choice and consequence
5. GTA4: reintegrating the divided self

Yesterday afternoon about 40 participants of the Berkman@10 conference met up to workshop a proposed WGBH transmedia TV show / online game. WGBH Project Director Blyth Lord set the scene with an overview of the project’s goals:

The series will show kids how to think more deeply and creatively about the world they live in, and to make choices based on what they discover.
We have three curricular objectives:

1. To develop in children an understanding of systems and the pathways to environmental sustainability
2. To model and encourage positive attitudes and scientific inquiry skills
3. To connect children to nature

With that set of goals in mind, the workshop broke up into small teams to tackle the project’s big questions. Our brainstorms after the break…

(Big props to Shenja van der Graaf and all the conference organizers at Berkman; Gary Goldberger of Fablevision; Josh Diaz, Eitan Glinert, Marleigh Norton, Peter Rauch, Doris Rusch, and Jaroslav Svelch of GAMBIT Game Labs; Sam Gilbert of the Goodplay Project; and especially Blyth Lord and Marisa Wolsky of WGBH for making this workshop possible!)

- Gene Koo

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

We’ll be running a very exciting workshop at the upcoming Berkman @ 10 Conference, where participants will have the opportunity to work on a proposed WGBH transmedia TV show / video game.

when

Friday, May 16
3:15-4:45 (This session will extend into coffee hour)

where

Langdell South

what you’ll do

After project leads from WGBH present the basic goals of the show, we will be breaking up into small teams to brainstorm game designs that will advance the presented goals. We’ll reconvene to hear these ideas and give each other feedback. We’ll then break up a second time to hash out the ideas further, and present our final suggestions.

who will be there

Our team of “valuable gamers” from MIT and Harvard will be facilitating the discussions, but more importantly, we’re looking forward to YOU joining in!

find out more

Latest information posted to our wiki.

I’m excited to announce that Berkman @ 10, the anniversary edition of the annual conference on Internet & Society (and anniversary of the Berkman Center itself!), will include a session on video games and moral thinking. I’m even more excited that during this session we’ll have the opportunity to workshop a potential new project from public television station WGBH — a children’s television show that will be set within a video game that will potentially have Web-based and standalone game counterparts. (More on this program to come).

Berkman @ 10
May 15-16
Games workshop: May 16, 3:15pm +
Register now

- Gene Koo

Sam Gilbert presented his take on Assassin’s Creed, to be posted separately. From there, the discussion blossomed (as always) into some very interesting and exciting directions. Here are some of the main points raised, although unfortunately without attribution (I can only type so fast!).

Killing citizens in Assassin’s Creed has some penalty, but the gameplay almost encourages you to kill innocent people who are really, really annoying. Perhaps intentional design decision to push reflection on why kill?

Putting the player in a murky moral area, making it up to the player to decide what it “means” lets the developers absolve themselves of moral responsibility. Or maybe it’s a good strategy in not inculcating values in a heavy-handed way. But “phony” murkiness — not really a choice (see Bioshock)

What incentives does the game offer — narrative, points, “style points” (XBox achievements)

Compare full-blown stealth games, e.g. Hitman, Thief. Hitman actually penalizes you for killing anyone other than your target. And it presents many game incentives to kill (annoying people). At the highest difficulty level, Thief ends the game (you lose) if you kill ANYONE. (Thief III moves away from that absolutism — only for non-combatants).

Could AC be rebalanced so that death is much more likely, it would have played much more as a stealth game. But the developers probably realized that stealth in this game was really boring.

Hitman: fun in not having fun, but in being “professional.”

AC doesn’t allow you to reload — can’t recreate your game, make choices. Or maybe it makes the choices much more weighty (similar to Bioshock making it difficult to revert to earlier point after learning about Little Sister rewards)

In good stealth games, violence is always a choice, and having that choice makes the stealth element much more valuable.

Games are running out of plot elements to explain why the player has no choice. Video games seem better at the illusion of choice rather than actually providing choice. Gives games a sense of tragedy: feeling that you should have choices but don’t.

To what extent is the world different because of your actions, that is, killing leads to outcomes.

Often games frame killing using one of two justifications: self-defense (kill or be killed) or utilitarianism (killing a monster for the greater good). But in the latter case rarely do you see outcomes. Why not have outcomes be opposite of your overall intent?

How about making moral choices in the spotlight of other people watching. (The discomfort of making choices in Mass Effect in front of a roommate: will he read my choices onto me as a person?)

Guilt as a massive motivation in games — is it underused? Find examples?

What about a mission to kill terrorists, but avoid civilians? (See September 12 as a rhetorical statement).

TO-DOs:

• Get in touch with developers of Tactical Iraqi.
• See upcoming HIMR’s articles on military games.
• See Serious Games’ military spinoff.
• Ask Judith Donath about military simulators.
• Compare games for PTSD therapy.

- Gene Koo

Our group is next meeting:

5:00 – 7:00 pm
Wednesday, 27 Feb 2008
Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Labs
5 Cambridge Center (Above Legal Sea Foods)
Suite #300
Kendall Square
Cambridge, MA

Sam Gilbert of the GoodPlay Project will present on Assassin’s Creed, and we will also discuss our possible role in the upcoming Berkman@10 Conference.

To find out more about future events, and to participate in ongoing discussion, please join our mailing list!

- Gene Koo