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. (more…)

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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