Games & why they matter
Jumping right off of inspirational people, I don’t know where I would be without video games. Pokemon was hyper prominent in my childhood and I genuinely believe that people should be forced to take game design classes just like political science or chemistry. You may notice a tag line I repeat like a middle aged, Mid Western Dad, “If you incentivize the wrong things you will get the wrong behavior.”
A shocking revelation, I’m sure. But what frightens me is how often this winds up holding true in business and personal life. Keeping the dad theme, it might behoove you to tell a child “Keep your room clean and you get a chocolate bar.” This might work well until one day garbage comes exploding out of their closet. Similarly, think about systems with measurements like on-boarding new clients, or breaking a sales cap. This leads to people looking for loopholes that fill the narrative without actually contributing to the overall game/goal or worse, neglecting current metrics/clients.
While this is the less business-y neighborhood of the site, it goes without saying that analytical and contextual strategy is very important for business and personal life. I’m not the only one who thinks so. First of all the games industry rakes in multiples of the film industry in terms of revenue. Designers in many walks of life are looking to “game-ify” everything from health and information to loyalty points. Think like leader boards, rewards and those rings you need to fill on your smart watch.
Games should help you hone a fine critical thinking muscle. To be an old man yelling at clouds for a moment, they used to do this very well. Technically speaking the “gacha games”, online gambling and other live grind service models do hone a critical muscle for those that can recognize them.
Now-a-days, gameplay loops are so well refined and designed to be addictive that they hijack people’s better judgement. To be fair this was a thing when I was a kid too. I think anyone in their thirties can vaguely remember one friend who had to throw out Harvest Moon or some other game like it because Mom or Dad got so addicted to the daily chores and sense of fulfillment that they were fighting the kids for screen time and hiding memory cards. This obviously doesn’t even touch the (lack of) ethics around games targeting children with access to mommy&daddy’s Apple Pay. History repeats and rhymes, instead of teen smoking, V-Bucks and micro-transactions now target teenagers and hapless young adults into making poor financial decisions to revel in “virtual assets”.
It’s hard to come to grips with being on the “other side” of an argument as you get older. My parents warded off criticism about my involvement with the Game Boy in a variety of ways. Today, I find myself on the side of people arguing that screens, games and apps should be as far away from children as possible until they have honed critical thinking. It reflects the way the world & media has changed. I owned my little cartridge of Pokemon Red Version. There were no micro-transactions on the Game Boy. Game developers were pivoting from stealing quarters from children into immersive and expansive experiences that players would explore and return to over and over again. No one was trying to start a dating site in Halo lobbies. [Real interesting read for you here if you don’t know]
If you haven’t played a lot of games then you probably didn’t make it this far into the article but I highly implore everyone to learn a bit about game design and even try playing some, even if it means going to a beercade and reliving the days of Galaga and Punch Out.
I also highly recommend the channel Second Wind. The Semi-Ramblomatic series by Yahtzee Croshaw and the crew has some incredible insight into the logic, philosophy and principles of game design. Further he doesn’t hide behind, around or underneath fair and poignant criticism of media and the industry; even games he considers to be very good. Not that he nitpicks but rather advocates fair criticism and constant critical evaluation even when you are ready and willing to relinquish those faculties out of enjoyment of a game or story. ** Notice that he uses some very colorful NSFW language from time to time** My reccomended videos also include the following core topics-