Design Contest Highlights Video Games With a Purpose

drew30319 writes "Game developers' website Gamasutra discusses a video game design contest with socially redeeming qualities — is this a productive role video games can play? Quoting: 'A unique game design competition aimed at teen violence prevention has announced its winners, revealing that Grace's Diary is taking home the top prize. The annual contest is sponsored by Jennifer Ann's Group, a non-profit organization focused on teen violence education and prevention since its founding in 2006. The "Life. Love. Game Design Contest" challenges entrants to design a game about the issue — without using violence itself.' The winning games are available to play online now."

Comments

Games are Interaction

[Anonymous Coward]

Like layers of an onion you can wrap them with the outermost being life itself.

Postal?

[markass530]

I thought we already had this in postal....

There's a problem with games "with a purpose."

[twidarkling]

Games already have a purpose. To be fun. They can have secondary purposes. Training reflexes, imparting information, yadda yadda yadda. However, games with a *message* often push the message at the expense of the primary purpose of enjoyment. After all, you're not going to keep playing a game if you're not having fun in some fashion. So while these all may be beautifully design games that really speak about the issue, how effective will they be generally?

Honestly, a situation like this is probably the *worst* to try and get across in a game. It's aimed at people in their mid-teens, it says. Okay, so those people should be old enough to have a talk with and explain the dangers of abusive relationships and such. And if you can't have a talk with them, how the bloody hell do you expect a game to work?

"Hey Suzie/Johnny, I know you completely disregard everything I ever tell you, but I want you to play this game and really pay attention to the message it's trying to tell you." Because they're really going to pay attention to a message from a video game given to them by the people they won't listen to in the first place (even IF the game's fun enough to get them past being preached at).

Re:There's a problem with games "with a purpose."

[TheSambassador]

So... video games can't have a message AND be fun at the same time? Moreso, you don't think that the "message" can EVER add enjoyment?

To me, your post sounds like "No violence, no fun." That's like saying the only movies worth watching are action flicks, and the only "emotion" you should ever use while watching movies is the "HOLY CRAP HOW AWESOME AND SWEET" one.

It's that attitude towards games (the one that denies the possibility of a "serious" use of games) that is holding the medium back.

Re:There's a problem with games "with a purpose."

[Ephemeriis]

Games already have a purpose. To be fun.

That's very true... And also true for most literature, and movies, and television, and plays, and board games... But that doesn't keep people from trying to convey useful messages or morals through those mediums. And it shouldn't keep people from trying to convey useful messages or morals through the medium of gaming either.

games with a *message* often push the message at the expense of the primary purpose of enjoyment.

Again, true. But also true of all the other mediums used to push a message.

Honestly, a situation like this is probably the *worst* to try and get across in a game. It's aimed at people in their mid-teens, it says. Okay, so those people should be old enough to have a talk with and explain the dangers of abusive relationships and such. And if you can't have a talk with them, how the bloody hell do you expect a game to work?

Folks don't generally respond well to being talked at. They don't typically see the message as applying to their current situation. They tend to get defensive, or assume that it can't happen to them, or that things really aren't that bad.

There's a reason why we tend to disregard what our parents tell us, and then go and make the same dumb mistakes they did. We learn best from first-hand experience.

A good book, or movie, or game can be involving enough to get past the usual defenses you erect when being talked-at. Can make you feel involved in the storyline and invested in the characters. Can actually get the message through to you when a speech might not.

Granted, you have to actually pick up the game/book/movie/whatever in the first place... And you're unlikely to be receptive if some concerned individual hands it to you and tells you to pay close attention to the message... But if you've got meaningful/useful content like this scattered through random, entertaining games - it might be helpful.

Aesop's Fables are a good example - they're full of morals and lessons... When they're used at the appropriate age, the kid just thinks they're fun stories about animals and whatnot. If you try to sit some brat of a kid down and teach them about morals by reading them a story at a later age, however, they aren't going to get much from your efforts.

To a certain degree we're already doing this (or at least attempting to) with other mediums.

We've got sitcoms and cartoons that try to present good rolemodels. Characters we wouldn't mind our children emulating. We try to throw good messages into the movies aimed at our children.

Why not try to do something similar with video games?

Re:There's a problem with games "with a purpose."

[twidarkling]

So... video games can't have a message AND be fun at the same time? Moreso, you don't think that the "message" can EVER add enjoyment?
 

No, but people who want to get a message out generally don't give a shit about the "fun" aspect. And no, I don't think giving a "message" can add enjoyment. I think you can have themes, but any person who goes in to designing a game with the frame of mind "I must tell people that X is bad" isn't going to also go in to it with the frame of mind that "I must make this something people want to play." They usually believe that the strength of their message is enough to make whatever they make compelling. And yes, the same problem applies to movies. If you're going in with an anti-violence message, then everything is flat and preachy. Characters only act how they are in order to reinforce the message. "Oh no, I shot a guy, and now my life is horrible! Why ever must we live in such a violent world!" You need to have compelling characters and a good plot in a good movie, just like in a good game, but the added burden on a game is also mechanics. If you're not going in focused on FUN, then you're going to sacrifice something in order to make that message shine through. Since making a fun game is hard, and you think your message is important (that's why you're *making* the game, after all), you'll half-ass that. And if you don't, if you instead make a fun game, you run the risk of shoehorning in the preachy bits and making them grating and even MORE apparently preachy. No, it's best to just make a game with a theme and let gamers discover for themselves what is trying to be said.

To me, your post sounds like "No violence, no fun."

I'm not even going to dignify that.

Re:There's a problem with games "with a purpose."

[twidarkling]

Granted, you have to actually pick up the game/book/movie/whatever in the first place... And you're unlikely to be receptive if some concerned individual hands it to you and tells you to pay close attention to the message... But if you've got meaningful/useful content like this scattered through random, entertaining games - it might be helpful.

This! This is how I think it would be done best. Don't make it the focus, and don't concentrate it. I could see that being a great success. If it was pervasive without being invasive. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to work in to most non-FPS games nowadays even. Random side quests, moral choice systems, all those kinds of mechanics are tailor-made for adding meaning, depth, and themes to games. There's no need to make adding a message the focus of a game, when you could instead sucker-punch a person. Heck, here's an idea for a horror game that would fit in with the anti-abusive message these games want:

You're dealing with a supernatural horror that's killing people in brutal ways, and you're slowly losing your sanity. Your one link keeping you going during your investigation is your old friend, recently entered in to a relationship. Calling or visiting your friend boosts your sanity. However, if you don't pay close attention to how your friend is acting, they're slowly cut off from you by their abusive significant other. If you don't manage to convince them to leave, at some point during the game, they're killed by the SO/cut off from you completely, and you lose the biggest and best way to recover sanity, and you make the game world much lonelier, and take a shot directly at the gamer, too. Then you're not shoving it in the gamer's face, but they're going to learn about the signs of an abusive relationship, the possible consequences, etc.

Re:There's a problem with games "with a purpose."

[Anonymous Coward]

video games can't have a message AND be fun at the same time?

The GP didn't say that. What he *did* say was that being fun was the primary purpose of the game.

The morality squad frequently has the misconception that the goal of Hollywood is to serve up sex, violence, and moral depravity. It's not. Hollywood's goal is to be entertaining, and it's relatively agnostic about how it gets there. Turns out, as hairless apes, humans are easily entertained by sex, violence, and moral depravity. That's immaterial to Hollywood though, as it's simply concerned with being entertaining, whatever path that takes.

There is, however, a industry that specifically has a goal to serve up sex, violence, and moral depravity -- Pornos. But no one would classify pornos as entertaining, unless you put euphemism quotes around "entertaining". Whereas Hollywood serves up stories with scenes of sex, pornos serve up scenes of sex loosely connected by story. Pornos are widely derided as abysmal, and the only reasons to watch them are A) to get a cheap thrill from depictions of sex or B) for their camp value. This is because the main goal of pornos is the sex, with the non-euphemistic entertainment being secondary.

People who want to serve up "stories with a purpose", they usually fall into the same trap. Instead of giving us a compelling story with scenes of moral meaning, they give us scenes of moral meaning loosely connected by story. Effectively, they're morality pornos. Heck, there's usually atrocious acting and stereotypical, overdone mood music too. The only reasons to watch them is A) you agree with the message, and get a cheap thrill from moral proselytizing or B) for their camp value. However, you're worse off, because unlike pornos, your intended audience (the unbelievers) aren't the ones who are looking for option A.

It's a universal rule: "You get what you design for". You always have to make tradeoffs, and anytime your primary goal is in conflict with something else, that something else will suffer. If your design goal is showing sex, that's what you'll get, with plot and characterization suffering for it. If your design goal is passing on a moral message, that's what you get, likely at the expense of plot, characterization and entertainment value.

That's not to say that it can't be done. However, the people doing it have to realize entertainment is job one. This may mean that the moral message may be a little more subtle that they want. But ultimately, people watch movies/play games to be entertained. If you fail at that, it doesn't matter how well you did anything else, as a non-entertaining movie/game is a bad movie/game, regardless of whatever redeeming social value it has.

Re:There's a problem with games "with a purpose."

[sourcerror]

"If you're going in with an anti-violence message, then everything is flat and preachy. Characters only act how they are in order to reinforce the message. "Oh no, I shot a guy, and now my life is horrible! Why ever must we live in such a violent world!" "
Like Tarantino?

Re:There's a problem with games "with a purpose."

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going in with an anti-violence message, then everything is flat and preachy

Yeah, American History X is so flat and preachy it's like the pope directed it.

Re:There's a problem with games "with a purpose."

[Anonymous Coward]

One can have multiple priorities, and synergistic interactions of those elements are essential to a successful game. But, the more priorities you have, the less you can focus on any of them, and you can't force synergy without adaptation. Most games already focuses on fun gameplay, story, realism, art, and re-playability. Few games even handle all those competently.

Now you want to add a message, and rationale for that message as a top priority. But you have to be adaptable so everything works together. In this case, the message is already set, so everything else is adjusted (and weakened) to accommodated it. Less freedom in game design makes for worse games.

OTOH, that's not to say that games with a message/purpose are not fun. America's Army is a game with a purpose. IIRC it was also fairly successful. My point is that it wasn't simultaneously the most fun game of all time, the most realistic, with the best story, and the most artistic. Something had to give.

Conversely, Tetris is a non-violent game, but it's not about non-violence. If tetris had tried to show why violence is wrong, it would have been a worse game. Mario, in comparison, is a violent game that isn't about violence. If the game designers had pushed the idea that the best way to solve your problems is to stomp your enemies, it would have been a worse game. Custer's Revenge would have been quite different if it tried to have a message about women's rights amidst war. But I doubt that would have made the game any better.

Re:There's a problem with games "with a purpose."

[shentino]

Roman gladiator arenas wouldn't get half the attendance they did if nobody got hurt or bloodied.

Re:There's a problem with games "with a purpose."

[Yvanhoe]

That's very true... And also true for most literature, and movies, and television, and plays, and board games... But that doesn't keep people from trying to convey useful messages or morals through those mediums. And it shouldn't keep people from trying to convey useful messages or morals through the medium of gaming either.

It reminds me of a writing advice : forget about your message. Focus on making a good text, a good story and, if you have an ounce of talent, your own vision of the world we be embedded in your work.

I think it can apply to game design as well.

Re:There's a problem with games "with a purpose."

[Jesus_666]

moral choice systems

Careful, though. I haven't yet seen any moral choice system that worked, except for those where any putcome is presented free of judgement. For instance, the KOTOR games allow various choices which lead you to the light or dark side of the force. Either path is presented as appropriate, though. The system works.

And then you get stinkers like BioShock where you get to choose between being Jesus Christ and Adolf Hitler. No, there is no in-between; you're either an inhumanly virtuous paragon of all that is good or you're evil incarnate. This is how moral systems are usually implemented: There's pure good and there's evil.

The closest we've come to a working judgemental system is Fallout where you gain notoriety if you do a lot of bad deeds. But again it's a perfectly valid path that makes the game only mildly more difficult and opens up new avenues.


Your second paragraph is a much better approach than "we hold the player's actions to an arbitrary set of rules and declare him evil if he doesn't follow them". It shows that you went into this thinking about how to turn a real-life problem into a compelling gameplay element instead of how to turn the problem into a game's focus.

Re:There's a problem with games "with a purpose."

[DSwitz]

This is great advice for a writer, but the problem with game design is that there are many people working on the same text and story. So there are many different visions of the world working on a single video game, and it's difficult to get a team to have a unified sense of meaning. Possible, but definitely difficult.

Re:There's a problem with games "with a purpose."

[Anonymous Coward]

Need I remind you about the "very special episode" phenomenon? I doesn't work on TV either. The public message of the day is shoved down our throats, and we usually don't appreciate it.

What about foldit

[goombah99]

Fold proteins to cure disease and outscore your opponent.

Re:What about foldit

[Anonymous Coward]

Foldit is fun?

(I'm sure it's fun for some people. Hell, even Bingo is fun for some people. But I have a hard time calling FoldIt a "game")

Re:What about foldit

[skids]

Honestly I tried that thing and found I was exerting more mental energy trying to figure out how to actually get the stupid backbones to go where I mouse them, than a i was being clever about the important stuff. Really very frustrating. Needs UI improvements.

Re:What about foldit

[goombah99]

It's under continuous development and refinement. The project its self is divided into two logical compartments. Half the team is studying how best to implement the algorithm and the other half is studying how users interact and how to improve that.

We have a word for things with a purpose: work

[noidentity]

How is it a game if it's played for some value beyond having fun? I'd call that work, or edutainment.

Re:We have a word for things with a purpose: work

[Keill]

There is NO equivalent of game for 'work' (i.e. productive) - in fact games other than those meant for 'play' (non-productive), are usually called 'serious' games or something similar - (Tom Clancy used that in Airborne for example).

Games are merely something we DO in a structured competitive environment. The nature of what we do, the competition, or the structure involved DOES NOT MATTER. (Hence the use of 'game' during the first world war). For this reason, until someone comes up with an exact equivalent for 'work' games can be 'serious' too, and therefore 'fun' does not matter for games in general.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DarrenTomlyn/3291/

(Not gotten round to the post about games yet - (next one!) (Competition/competitions and games)).

Re:We have a word for things with a purpose: work

[Ihmhi]

There is NO equivalent of game for 'work'

I see you've never played EVE...

Re:We have a word for things with a purpose: work

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be wrong in assuming that, as I have played Eve Online, (and would like to play it again - just not on my current (mobile wireless) internet connection), and I certainly consider it to be a game, though whether or not it's productive doesn't matter. (And yes, I know it was probably a joke ;) ).

Work and play are the labels given to things we do that are either productive or non-productive. The problems we currently have with them, are with the purely subjective applications of what they represent, but such is the nature of humanity, and therefore the purpose of language itself.

The word game represents something more specific that we do, and as such can fall under either work or play, or both. The problem with the word game, is the because we use the word play to describe what we do within, people automatically think a game has to be non-productive.

Unfortunately, as I've pointed out, since there is no equivalent to the word game, or what it represents in work, (being productive), the word game has had a use for describing similar productive activities for a while. Because of this, until the English Language gains an equivalent word for work, the word game will be used for both work and play, and so any attempt to limit it to either will be inconsistent with it's use.

Not actually a game

[SoapBox17]

I "played" the winning "game" for about 5 minutes. I think I "played" all the way through. Outside of the few bad grammatical errors, this was not entertaining at all. It's not even a game. It is a mildly interactive narrative. You are in this girl's room, and you can click on things in the room and she will talk about them. ("Oh, that's a picture of my friends..."). There's a print out of a violence prevention website she talks about. The main "goal" seems to be the cell phone you click it you'll learn a boring sob-story about a friend of hers with an abusive boyfriend. Then the credits roll. This does not qualify as a game. It would not teach anyone anything.

If would take an extra 5-10 minutes to add a "choose your own adventure" to this and actually provide a mild form of entertainment where you get to decide what happens, and maybe in one version you convince the friend to get help or something. This fails on so many levels. But I guess, if anyone ever wants to win a game design contest, anyone could win this if they were able to put in more than 30 minutes of effort into the "design." (I admit the art was decent, that's really the only redeeming quality.)

Re:Not actually a game

[The Mysterious Dr. X]

Yeah, that's what I was wondering. Is there no way to "win," then? I played through once and found only Grace's print-out of the JenniferAnn.org website. Found nothing else, called Natalie, "lost."
I played again, but this time when I clicked the picture, there was a dialogue that hadn't played before about Natalie's clothes. I clicked around to make sure there wasn't anything else, so then I called her, thinking "This is it! Now I have evidence!"

But sadly, no. The conversation went no differently. As far as I can tell, there is no way to change the outcome. Natalie will always hang up on you and stay with abusive Ken and "his crews."

I did, however, learn that wearing more clothes and wristbands may be a sign of violent relationships, but not enough of one to discuss. I suppose if I were really dealing with this, the JenniferAnn.org link would be helpful, but in what way would it be better than the link without the game itself?

Re:Not actually a game

[SendBot]

agreed - I just finished playing the winning game and found it extremely anti-climactic. The point of that game is to learn that insecure girls put up with abusive boys and there's absolutely nothing I can do to help. Even though I found the prevention poster in my room with a hotline number AND ADDED IT TO MY MEMOS, I couldn't talk about that on the phone with her. Gee, compared to talking about how the party went or telling her that her boyfriend sucks (both of which will get her to hang up on you and never talk to you again), it seems like MAYBE I'D WANT TO ACTUALLY SAY SOMETHING HELPFUL.

Is the point of this game to educate boys that girls would rather talk in circles and not get problems solved even when they have the solution right there? I can relate to that.

Re:Not actually a game

[The_mad_linguist]

There's what, four things that fit on the memo? Should be your first clue.
-Poster (computer -> bookshelf)
-Style Changed (tennis racket-> Photo)
-Cell phone (click on cell phone and then decide not to call)
-Party (sign on floor next to chair)

Here's the conversation solution
1)Talk about the party
2) Tell her ken might be dangerous
3) Talk about her cell phone
4) Use website

That said, I think having multiple object examinations cue off each other without indication is somewhat bad design.

Re:Not actually a game

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a way to "win" in this game.
1] Click on a poster on the floor
2] Click on the papers on the shelf
3] Click on the photograph
4] Click on the phone and choose not yet

After all that, now call her.

Always choose options that points out problems with the various incidents. (Never give up or choose an option that says anything bad about her boyfriend).

Re:Not actually a game

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember something like this, called Rockett's Adventures. Don't ask why I played them years ago.

Re:Not actually a game

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this modded insightful? Dude didn't actually play the whole game, so saying you can't win it is a little stupid.

"OH HAY GUYZ MARIO IZN'T A REAL GAME CAUSE BOWZER KILLS YOU IN THE FIRST DUNGEON IF YOU JUMP ON HIM"

Re:Not actually a game

[tecnico.hitos]

I have played through all of them. Every single one is undeniably preachy and cleary centered around the theme. Their mistake is not being more subtle, because few people would go out of their way for playing a preachy game. People actually involved in a abusive relationship would probably actively avoid it, by of the abuser. Even if they were trying to escape, they would probably seek help, not play games. The only way it could help someone is by making the friends of the victims aware, but even then they would have to choose to play a game about it, which is somewhat unlikely to happen.

The winning one, "Grace's Diary", in a very short visual novel with nice aesthetics(IMO) abou a girl trying to prove to that her friend that she is in an abusive relationship and to convince her to seek help. It isn't very interactive, but visual novels don't tend to be.

The second one, "A Decision of Paramount Importance", is kind of interesting. It's about a victim of a previous abusive relationship investigating his new boyfriend's house to figure out whether he is a good guy before they have a dinner. Then she gets to choose whether she stays with him or leaves him. Some elements are randomly choosen, like names, background, weather and the boyfriend's behavior. I think it's nice that the boyfriend isn't always abusive, but it doesn't go beyond that. He is either perfect or a complete jerk and almost every single object in the house will indicate which one he is exactly.

The last two ones have little merit. Either the preachiness was the primary judging value or there weren't any other entries, because they are badly designed, unpolished, amateurish and uninteresting.

Jellia's Friends is a top-down exploration game with shabby art in which a jellybean princess, victim of an abusive relationship, goes to seek her friends. Avoiding the animal enemies is annoying because they are fast and sometimes move unpredictably. Every single dialogue is so artificially preachy it seems to be something taken out of a pamphlet.
The villain is black. How politically correct of them /nitpick

Knowledge can be your bulletproof vest is a generic plataformer with graphics made out of letters in which you have to collect the letters of the 10 signs of stuff or whatever. Boring, annoying and badly animated.
The game incentives you to fall on pits to get letters. Is that the right thing to incite abuse victims to do? /nitpick

Re:Not actually a game

[Ihmhi]

Yeah, that was barely a "game" at all. I don't know what these guys were thinking. Someone should beat some sense into them.

Re:Not actually a game

[The_mad_linguist]

To be fair, everyone knows that licorice jelly beans are by far the most evil kind.

Re:Not actually a game

[SendBot]

Someone should beat some sense into them.

And then a concerned friend should call them and ask who beat that sense in to them, only to be met with "...", "...", "it was nothing, I walked into a door. Good thing Ken was here to help me up."

Jella's Friends

[scaryjohn]

Jella's Friends deserves a couple points for using a more-or-less correct 16-color VGA palette.

Gender Bias

[brainfsck]

Interesting that the top 3 winning games portray women as victims of male aggression, while studies report that teenage girls are more likely to inflict physical violence on boys than the converse:

a consistent but counterintuitive finding is that female adolescents inflict more physical violence than male adolescents, with female perpetration rates ranging from 28% to 33% in contrast to male perpetration rates ranging from 11% to 20% (Foshee, 1996; Malik et al, 1997; O’Keefe, 1997).

(source)

Re:Gender Bias

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Whoa! Thats wicked interesting, and indeed super counterintuitive. Good point.

Re:Gender Bias

[icebraining]

Yeah, but "physical violence" is very wide. As they say, it "can range from incidents of emotional and verbal abuse to rape and murder", and "compared to boys, girls are more likely to sustain injuries and require medical treatment as a result of dating violence".

Re:Gender Bias

[gravos]

It may be bias, but it's also very archetypal. The "female in need of rescue" is a powerful story element that has been used for thousands of years.

Re:Gender Bias

[Jedi Alec]

Yup, when boys rough somebody up, there's gonna be bruises and maybe some broken bones.

When girls do it, there's gonna be a bigass yet invisible tear right through your soul which will never quite heal.

Ah, the fairer sex, don't you love them? :)

I nominate GTA

[nroets]

I nominate Grand Theft Auto. It's so addictive. It causes a large percentage of teenage males to lock them selves up in their dorm rooms and basements. Like prison only cheaper.

And when they do eventually emerge, they're muscles are to weak to attack anyone.

Abusive men are easy to spot

[falckon]

The moral of the second game seems to be that if you (and this is an encouraged practice) dig through a potential date's belongings while they are busy preparing dinner for you, you will find all the necessary evidence to pass judgment upon them in a couple minutes. In fact, you really don't need to dig much further than the first piece of evidence because if they are a bad person, everything in their house will point to it! The situation is completely black and white, and hence the logical extension is that if you find yourself in such a relationship you aren't very smart because the signs were everywhere.