GDC 09: The Role of Games in Personal and Social Change

At the Game Developers’ Conference last week, I attended the “Stretching Beyond Entertainment: The Role of Games in Personal and Social Change” panel, which was a relatively open discussion with Peter Molyneux, Will Wright, Bing Gordon, Ed Fries, and Lorne Lanning.

The discussion focused on how games and the greater entertainment industry can be a true boon to society, rather than what many perceive as throwaway pop-entertainment.  All media, as Will Wright noted, tend toward the “trashy” in their infancies.  By that point, all the industry needs to do to raise the standard of its content is pull itself up by its bootstraps.

The first step toward a higher role is developing new kinds of gameplay by getting out of the already-tried interactions.  We are seeing a shift toward completely new gameplay mechanics with the runaway success of the Nintendo Wii, and the emergence some true innovation in the iPhone game market.  Lots of people that had previously written off video games (Hi, Mom!) are giving them a second look due to these new approaches.  Also, many new titles are really reconsidering the meaning of what a game is.  One of the other interesting talks I saw last week was Keita Takahashi discussing his new game Noby Noby Boy.  Keita asserted that a game is anything you can play with, and that we shouldn’t try to get bogged down in all the tired old mechanics we’ve already developed.  Will Wright stressed that coming up with new game mechanics is important not only because it creates new experiences for a particular game, but because it advances the medium of games in general.

While developing new mechanics is important to advancing the medium, the game industry could also look into developing games that are more meaningful to society.  We (as designers, engineers, artists) spend our time coming up with ways to make interactive simulations more fun.  Whether simulating boxing, football, flying a plane, or even running a crime syndicate, we develop gameplay around (and in some cases, despite of) the central content.  In other words, the content at the center of a game is arbitrary; it only serves as a core around which to develop gameplay mechanics.  For this reason, there’s no reason we can’t buck trends further and try to develop games that have a more meaningful impact for society.

Bing Gordon insisted that he’d rather his children learn from video games, rather than “in the jail that we call school.”  Though he may be a little bit biased (being the former Chief Creative Officer of Electronic Arts), I think his words contain some truth.  There’s no reason we can’t educate through games, just as there’s no reason we can’t make a game about flower petals blowing through a field.

To echo another point Bing made, maybe we should ask what games can do for society, rather than what society can do for games.

-David C.