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

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]

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.