BriceMorrison.com Exploring Interactive (Non)Entertainment

Though it’s been out for a few months, I only recently downloaded Capcom’s Megaman 9, an anomaly among other recent game releases. It is the latest offering in the classic Megaman series, whose heyday was in the late 80’s and early 90’s. But while other sequels of cherished franchises do everything in their power to take advantage of the newest technology available, going places that the old games were not capable of going, Megaman 9 has done the opposite. Instead of targeting a new generation of players, Capcom has sought now adult players of the old games by painstakingly emulating every graphical restriction, sound channel limit, and level design choice as it would have occurred on the original Nintendo Entertainment System, and the result is an entirely new game that appears as though it belongs in the 1980’s.

The magic of the title therefore is not what is new and fresh, but rather a walk down memory lane for those of us who struggled alongside Megaman during a more innocent time in our lives. Fans of the Megaman series, including myself, have felt bright smiles appear on our faces as the game transports us back to our childhood. Capcom did everything they could to make sure that the game was a faithful sequel, so that if you could go back in time and release it amidst the other Megaman games, no one would notice anything strange. (more…)

Since my Response to Outgrowing Games article only just ran today, I’ve decided to extend the competition through to next Sunday.  That should give everyone enough time to think of an idea, recover from Thanksgiving meal, and send in an entry.

The response has been wonderful so far; I’ve enjoyed reading and playing the entries.  Send in your submission here.

Hello everyone.  I’ve posted a week long design challenge for any developers interested in games for more than entertainment.  Be sure to check it out here.  Best of luck!

My article on Why I Outgrew Video Games has received considerable press coverage from Gamasutra, Slashdot, Kotaku, and other online news outlets.  The discussion generated around the article has been very thought provoking; many readers sympathized, claiming that they too have been forced to leave games behind as other more important aspects of life crept in during their 30’s and 40’s, unable to justify the time sacrifice for pure entertainment.  Many more readers had some very intelligent contentions.  I’d like to further fuel the discussion by responding to some of the great points raised by readers:

You say that as you grew up, you found no adult parallels to Super Mario.  What about games with deeper themes, such as Shadow of the Colossus or Bioshock?

Shadow of the Colossus and Bioshock are both magnificent games.  The reason that they don’t quite reach the goal of being life enriching experiences is that they are still designed from the ground up with the primary purpose of being entertainment.  Yes, the compelling stories, settings, and characters in both games may provide some tangential learning of the concepts of mindless pursuit of a selfish motive (Shadow) or the perversion of humanist beliefs (Bioshock), and these are not to be downplayed.  However, games as a medium could offer much more if the original intent was to express an idea.  It’s the difference between a fictional movie that causes viewers to consider the real world parallels and a real life documentary.  Both eventually get to the purpose of causing the audience to grapple with the concept, but one goes through entertainment on its way, and the other seeks to make its point first and be entertaining second.

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Edge Online recently covered a video by Daniel Floyd discussing the concept of “Tangential Learning” in games.  Floyd begins by discussing the general failure of “Edutainment” games, which are usually focused entirely on teaching a topic to the player and end up being incredibly boring.  On the other hand you have entertainment based games, which offer almost no learning value, despite being enjoyable and the major market drivers. (more…)