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

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?

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.)