Informatics: Improving the World Through Videogames

As entertaining as they are, I’ve long seen videogames as a unique medium with which to create interactive works of art. Most similarly to films, everything comes into play with videogames—graphic art and design, music and sound, storytelling, voice/gestural acting, and more. Lately my view of videogames has expanded even further whereby I believe they have the potential to improve society.

For instance, Jane McGonigal (Reality is Broken) sees videogames as an incredibly powerful tool in activating inherent desires. In her studies, she has laid out four reasons for why people play games: the ability to have satisfying work with a clear goal and sense of purpose, the opportunity for growth and betterment with timely and propitious feedback for accomplishments, interaction with peers where teamwork and trust is rewarded, and a sense of greater purpose, real meaning, or community, where individual actions contribute to a larger and more meaningful resolve. McGonigal believes that by understanding these motivations videogames can be used to help our society do more fulfilling work with more meaningful payoffs. If that idea seems a bit unrealistic, take a look at this: Games that Launch Companies, Games that Heal: Q&A with Jane McGonigal.

There are still more examples of real world applications of informatics (defined by Indiana University’s School of Informatics and Computing as “the art, science and human dimensions of information technology). Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy has been used to help soldiers recover from post-traumatic stress disorder. The simulation technology allows therapists to safely expose patients to potentially traumatic-event experiences slowly and progressively. In doing this patients are allowed to more effectively interpret emotionally arousing stimuli and overcome some of the challenges or fear responses of PTSD.

And then there is of course exergaming, which may have been the unintentional result of games like Dance Dance Revolution. After the Wii was released developers took quickly to the idea of producing games that encourage exercise or movement. Lending to its success, parents appreciate the games as much as their children and many have purchased the Wii specifically to use exergames games such as Wii Fit.

Videogame art and design is one of my passions, but I do believe that some games are more helpful to society or more meaningful than others. I want to put my time and effort into something that will positively contribute to the community and improve the world as we know it.

Casual Games Guiding the Industry

Over the past decade, the videogame industry has made some tremendous strides that have enveloped it into our mainstream media and culture like never before. What used to be the typical vision of a pasty-faced, pimply, four-eyed nerd is now merely an out of touch stereotype; today's videogamers are everywhere and anyone.

For a while, in the late 90s, games had been focusing on better graphics and more visceral experiences. It was a natural progression as technology advanced, and many gamers were excited about “next-gen” titles that boasted life-like ultra-realism. One game in particular that is emblematic of this period is Crysis, a first person shooter whose major hook was its advanced graphics engine. Upon the game’s release it gained exceedingly high praise from most reviewers, but the bias of such reviews is questionable, not only because most of the reviewers’ largest advertisers is Crysis’ publisher, EA, but also because the game proved to ultimately have no lasting effect. Some reviewers saw past the graphics and understood the game for what it turned out to be, with one reviewer saying “Crysis is like the gal that guys love to look at, only her Mensa score complements her measurements” (Elliott, 2007). Overall it is a well made game and delivered on its promise of graphic realism, but it lacked memorable gameplay and served as an eye opener for the industry that graphics are not all that is important in making a great videogame. As next-gen games began reaching their peak, others in the industry had already strayed away from this to create games with more ease of access which would spur an unprecedented change in the industry.

Casual games allow people to jump into them and play without having to spend too much time learning controls or following an elaborate plot, and the Wii and mobile devices brought casual games to the masses like no other platforms had before them. The Wii’s remote, which was largely underestimated at the time, allowed for people not used to playing games to pick up a controller and use it more intuitively than a standard console controller, where the characters in the game easily match the natural movements performed by the player. The Wii therefore brought into the fold a demographic that wouldn't otherwise play videogames. Mobile phones have also helped bring casual games to a larger audience. Now, when someone who normally wouldn't consider himself a gamer finds himself waiting for a bus or business meeting, he might download a game onto his phone to pass the time. No longer do people have to sit at home hooked up to a video game console to be gamers. Mobile games have existed for a while, but they're a lot more established now and have become a big market.

Because of the casual players the Wii brought into the industry, other platforms that feature more involved games and that require a higher level of player commitment, such as the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, have begun to lose momentum. For a while, the PC platform was thought to lose popularity, but, with casual gamers putting the Wii console in the lead, it is not unreasonable to predict the hardcore gamers moving from consoles to the PC, where multiplayer games have gained the most popularity with intense online shooters such as Call of Duty: Black Ops and MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft (Noer, 2008).

While the industry had largely been dominated by experienced hardcore gamers, it's now time to welcome causal gamers with open arms and understand how this demographic is advancing the industry.

Resources:

1. Noer, M. (2008). The Future of Videogames. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/08/future-video-games-tech-future07-cx_mn_de_0211game.html
2. Elliott, S. (2007) Crysis. Retrieved from http://www.1up.com/reviews/crysis