Doing What Games Do Best

Games can be a valid way to represent human values, but designers that wish to use games in this way should take full advantage of the unique properties that games provide. Perhaps the most important property that games can offer an expressive designer involves the manner in which a game can be constructed such that the underlying mechanics lead the player to explore and understand human values in simulated form, a concept particularly important in relation to the promotion of humanitarianism through “serious games.”

Not generally intrinsic to other media, this form of expression has been championed by game designer and critic, Greg Costikyan, who identifies the effective use of mechanics as the most important and powerful way in which a game can express a point. An interesting example on which Costikyan has written and also discussed during the 2008 RPI Game Symposium is ICED, a game that aims to promote the humanitarian value of freedom of immigration by preaching against deportation. In his review of ICED, Costikyan notes that the core mechanics of the game do not relate at all to the ideas or problems embodied by the immigration system, but that the game instead pairs an irrelevant, “unbeatable game of Pac-Man“ with purely didactic aesthetics, and for this reason, is fairly ineffective in persuading or educating the player. Costikyan’s point is that in order to truly take advantage of a game as a medium in advancing a particular value, the designer must provide the player some interaction with a system of rules that directly models that value’s importance in society.

Looking at the research of Flanagan, Belman, Nissenbaum, and Diamond, an example of this principle at work can be seen in observation and analysis of “twinking,” or the voluntary action through which a high level character in an MMORPG such as World of Warcraft donates powerful equipment to a lower level character. The researchers cite this common phenomenon as a clear example of generosity within a game, and note that twinking occurs as the result of the mechanics of the game and the manner in which the social system operates. In other words, World of Warcraft provides a system of rules through which players engage in social activity, and players that adhere to the values of generosity and cooperation with others are frequently rewarded with improved social standing within the game community. The game does not directly preach these values to the player, but instead allows the player to explore the social system freely while promoting and validating generous behavior through reward.

Perhaps it is ironic that in regard to expressing the importance of a particular human value, games such as ICED, which display intentional and, in the words of Costikyan, “heavy-handed” messages to the player, are not nearly as effective as games such as World of Warcraft, which aim not to preach or persuade, but rather to entertain. Clearly the problem is that in creating a game specifically to promote a set of values, some designers forget the most important aspect of the game itself, namely the rules that govern the player’s behavior and overall experience. If the pure mechanics do not represent the intended message, then there is no reason to create a game in the first place.

Costikyan, Greg. ICED (I Can End Deportation): Deport the Developers?

Mary Flanagan, Helen Nissenbaum, Jim Diamond, and Jonathan Belman. A Method for Discovering Values in Digital Games. Full paper presented at Situated Play DiGRA ’07 (Tokyo, JP September 24-28, 2007)