BriceMorrison.com Life is a Game

Thanks to everyone who entered the design competition!  It received a good amount of submissions, the best of which will be covered in this post.

To review, the competition was to design a game that had peripheral benefit, a game that the player would view as a worthwhile experience outside of enjoying a piece of entertainment.  It was born out of a flurry of discussion surrounding two articles, Why a Game Designer Outgrew Video Games and Response to Outgrowing Games.  It’s great to see so many developers and gamers alike invested in the discussion, and I hope it is a topic that will live on long past the articles.

Debt in the City - A Simulation in the Causes of the Financial Crisis

Designed by Keith Carter and Sean Mare, Debt in the City is an impressive game concept that seeks to “educate the player about the content, size, extent, and impact of Debt Capital Markets (DCM) on companies and banks.”

In the current credit crisis and depression of the US economy, this is certainly a hot topic.  Many workers, homeowners, and citizens can’t exactly articulate what’s wrong with the economy; all they know is that “things are bad”.  The evening news seems to only communicate surface level education, reiterating how poorly the markets are performing, and not many people are CPAs or have MBAs to give them a firm grasp of the events unfolding.

The setting of Carter and Mare’s game is the boardroom of a large banking firm, and the player’s mission is to make deals with clients and businesses by lending them money in order to return a profit.  Accompanied by a key advisor, the player speaks to the clients and evaluates their business in an attempt to determine whether the level of risk for the client, or the percentage chance that they will default on the loan.  The player must also evaluate whether or not the deal will be easy to pitch to investors, the industry the company is in, and many other real-world factors which give clues to whether or not the deal is a likely profitable choice.

The game takes place over a number of years, with the player making several decisions every quarter.  As the player goes through the game, they will see the making riskier deals will often result in short term gain, but over the long term will result in low revenues.  The key advisor steps in at important moments to explain “ the impact on the market, investors, companies, the Player’s Bank, and the Competitor Banks.”

In terms of design, Debt in the City remind me a lot of Jim Gasperini’s Hidden Agenda, a game released in the 80’s where the player takes the helm of governing a newly liberated South American county.  The experience is a simplified decision-simulation of what it would actually be like to go through a certain experience, and the game teaches the player through the system rewarding some behaviors while punishing others.  Overall this was a very strong design that I believe would provide great lessons to the player after the game shuts down.

The Graveyard - Experiencing the Twilight of Life

Development team Tale of Tales brought my attention to their project The Graveyard, a game that was fully completed even before the design competition ran.  Already covered in numerous online outlets, the game is an artistic work which centers around an old woman who takes a stoll through a graveyard.  After making her way to the end of many rows of graves, with birds chirping and trees swaying, the woman has the option of sitting on a bench and singing a little tune about her deceased friends.

A very concise work, The Graveyard makes its main points through a simplified gameplay experience, setting, and ending.  Movement of the old woman is staggered and slow, conveying the difficulty of old age.  As I played I was frustrated at how difficult it was to get her to turn; deciding whether or not to simply turn left and try to walk down a row of graves was a big decision, because it was going to take me an inordinate amount of time to do so.  It’s not difficult to imagine that this is what it is actually like to be elderly; if your pencil falls off of your desk, then it will be a great effort to reach down and get it; it’s often easier just to find another pencil.  Things that were once simple become complicated and time consuming.

Design wise, The Graveyard is an experiential game; the game tries to emulate and convey how it would feel like to really be an old woman.  There isn’t that much to do on any given day, and even those activities which are available are very slow and tedious.  As many other friends have passed on, lost their minds, or become bedridden, the world feels lonely.  Most of what can be done is represented in the game, reminisce about old times and old friends, and think about one’s own coming death.  It is an interesting take on experiential gameplay, and I think the experience does in fact stay with the player after the game is completed.

Life Trainer - Applying RPG Mechanics to Life Improvement

Derek Rumpler and Mallory Hoffman submitted the game concept of Life Trainer, a combination of training games such as Brain Age and Wii Fit tied in with social networks.  The game is designed to be an online “resume” of your achievements in a variety of areas - exercise, intelligence training, studying, and so on.  All of the data is aggregated to a central site or online profile, allowing friends and family to hold you accountable.  Experience points are added and levels are increased as the player makes progress in different areas of his or her life.  Other players can log on at any time and look at their own progress or the progress of friends in chart modes a la many of Nintendo’s games.  All in all, the concept is a type of social network that seeks to create a standard for real world achievement.

Life Trainer is a great concept of how reward systems inherent in games could be used to encourage certain behavior outside of a game.  It would be interesting to prove out the kinds of social interactions that would occur; likely some users wouldn’t be comfortable showing their progress with their health to everyone, or comparing progress studying in classrooms.

A Big Thanks

Thanks so much to everyone who entered the competition!  Other submissions had to do with mental exercises, telling real world stories, and a variety of other approaches.  The systems within games and interactive media certainly do have the capabilities to influence outside lives.  I hope that many of these ideas one day come to fruitition, and we all look forward to a time when games are seen as more than toys for entertianment, but tools for a better life.