People of all ages play games on computer devices in order to connect with others, to work, to learn and to pass the time. "Likes" and "retweets" are forms of digital game play in social networks. High scores, levels, and badges are shared with friends and colleagues. Once confined to consoles and arcades, video games have infiltrated embodied life in augmented experiences, such as Pokemon Go, and virtual reality games that give us new bodies and spaces in which to play.
This chapter focuses on the social impact and effects of digital technology on the ancient pastime of game-playing. To cover everything about digital games would take more than a short chapter. Here, the attempt is to give you a peek inside a growing field by exploring the evolution of video games and the ways contemporary game designers are using digital technology in new and exciting ways, including the possibilities for games applied to address social issues.
The study of games has existed for some time, and is not confined to video games. In 1961, games scholar Roger Caillois described the variety of games and game-playing in human history: games with rules, games without rules, competitive games, games based on chance, imitation games and games based on disorientation or vertigo. (Man, Play and Games, 1961) How many of these categories of human game-play have been affected by digital technology and binary code? Of course, all of them. Computers work effieciently with all the elements of game play: specific instructions, chance operations, user interaction, processing inputs and delivering outputs of data, not to mention simulating immersive experiences.
A "video" game, technically, is a game involving a video signal transmitted to a cathode ray tube that creates a rasterized image on a screen. Games on a high-definition computer monitor or handheld display are therefore not exactly "video games" but computer or electronic games. However, it is now quite common to use the term "video game" for any game that runs on computer hardware, that involves interaction and that outputs to a visual display.
The first video games in the 1950s were for training or instructional purposes, for AI research and to demonstrate new computer software to the public. The first computer game designed for entertainment was created in 1961. It was called Spacewar!
"Conceived by Steve Russell, Martin Graetz, and Wayne Wiitanen in 1961 and programmed primarily by Russell, Saunders, Graetz, Samson, and Dan Edwards in the first half of 1962, Spacewar! was inspired by the science fiction stories of E. E. Smith and depicted a duel between two spaceships, each controlled by a player using a custom built control box. Immensely popular among students at MIT, Spacewar! spread to the West Coast later in the year when Russell took a job at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), where it enjoyed similar success. The program subsequently migrated to other locations around the country through the efforts of both former MIT students and DEC itself, more so after cathode ray tube (CRT) terminals started becoming more common at the end of the 1960s." - from wikipedia
"Available in limited quantities in late 1972, Pong began reaching the market in quantity in March 1973, after which it ignited a new craze for ball-and-paddle video games in the coin-operated amusement industry. The success of Pong did not result in the displacement of traditional arcade amusements like pinball, but did lay the foundation for a successful video arcade game industry." - from wikipedia
"Starting with Pac Man in 1980, which sold 96,000 units in the United States, a new wave of games appeared that focused on identifiable characters and alternate mechanics such as navigating a maze or traversing a series of platforms."" - from wikipedia
"Super Mario Bros. was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and is the first side-scrolling 2D platform game to feature Mario. It established many core Mario gameplay concepts. The brothers Mario and Luigi live in the Mushroom Kingdom, where they must rescue Princess Toadstool (later called Princess Peach) from Bowser. The game consists of eight worlds, each with four sub-levels. Though the worlds differ in themes, the fourth sub-level is always a fortress or castle that ends with a fight against Bowser (or one of his minions disguised as him). The game was immensely successful, and is one of the best-selling video games of all time."" - from wikipedia
"SimCity, later renamed SimCity Classic, is a city-building simulation video game, first released in 1989, and designed by Will Wright for the Macintosh computer.... Until the release of The Sims in 2000, the SimCity series was the best-selling line of computer games made by Maxis. SimCity spawned a series of Sim games." - from wikipedia
"Tetris is a tile-matching puzzle video game, originally designed and programmed by Russian game designer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the Soviet Union in Moscow. Tetris was the first entertainment software to be exported from the Soviet Union to the US, where it was published by Spectrum HoloByte for Commodore 64 and IBM PC.... The game (or one of its many variants) is available for nearly every video game console and computer operating system."- from wikipedia
"Quake is a first-person shooter video game, developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive in 1996. It is the first game in the Quake series. In the game, players must find their way through various maze-like, medieval environments while battling a variety of monsters using a wide array of weapons." - from wikipedia
"British video game developer DMA Design began the series Grand Theft Auto in 1997. As of 2014, it has eleven stand-alone games and four expansion packs. The third chronological title, Grand Theft Auto III,released in 2001, is considered a landmark title, as it brought the series to a 3D setting and more immersive experience. Subsequent titles would follow and build upon the concept established in Grand Theft Auto III, and receive significant acclaim. They subsequently influenced many other open world action games, and led to the label Grand Theft Auto clone on similar games." - from wikipedia
"World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. The game takes place within the Warcraft world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard's previous Warcraft release, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.[4] Blizzard Entertainment announced World of Warcraft on September 2, 2001.[5] The game was released on November 23, 2004, on the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise." - from wikipedia
"Angry Birds is a video game franchise created by Finnish company Rovio Entertainment in 2009. The series focuses on multi-colored birds who try to save their eggs from green-colored pigs, their enemies. In January 2014 there had been over two billion downloads across all platforms, including both regular and special editions. As of July 2015, the series’ games have been downloaded more than three billion times collectively, making it the most downloaded freemium game series of all time." - from wikipedia
"Wii Sports is a 2006 sports video game developed and published by Nintendo as a launch title for the Wii video game console...The game is a collection of five sports simulations, designed to demonstrate the motion-sensing capabilities of the Wii Remote to new players. The five sports included are tennis, baseball, bowling, golf, and boxing. Players use the Wii Remote to mimic actions performed in real-life sports, such as swinging a tennis racket. The rules for each game are simplified to make them more accessible to new players. The game also features training and fitness modes that monitor players' progress in the sports."- from wikipedia
"Ingress is a location-based, augmented-reality mobile game developed by Niantic, a company spun off from Google. The game was first released for Android devices on November 15, 2012, and later for iOS on July 14, 2014. The game has a science fiction back story with a continuous open narrative. Ingress is also considered to be a location-based exergame."- from wikipedia
"Pokémon Go is a free-to-play, location-based augmented reality game developed by Niantic for iOS and Android devices. The game was the result of a collaboration between Niantic and Nintendo, by way of The Pokémon Company, and was initially released in selected countries in July 2016. The game utilizes the player's mobile device's GPS ability to locate, capture, battle, and train virtual creatures, called Pokémon, which appear on the screen as if they were at the same real-world location as the player. The game features a freemium business model and supports in-app purchases for additional in-game items."- from wikipedia
"I Expect You To Die is a virtual reality puzzle game that places you in the well-polished shoes of an elite secret agent. You must attempt to survive deadly situations in immersive, dangerous locales."" - from product website
There are numerous ways to break down video games into parts, including space, time, rules, operations etc. For simplicity’s sake, we will adopt Darran Jamieson's four elements or layers of a game: challenge, choice, changes, and chance. Read Jamieson's two part blog post for an elaboration on these elements:
In short, Jamieson breaks the elements of games down into four key elements:
Challenge: A game is not a toy. With a toy, you have the potential for somewhat aimless play—when you pick up a set of Lego bricks, there is not a set objective. You build and act out stories as you please. Games have objectives and goals. There is an object that you have to complete and/or master.
For illustrative purposes, let’s take the game Tetris. The challenge of the game is complete solid horizontal lines with falling blocks of four cubes. Completing a line results in the blocks in that row to disappear. When the blocks pile to the top of the screen, the game ends.
Choice: The choice is something that we can do. In theory, the better we are at a game, the better the choices we make will be. Some choices are long and slow, such as a choice you would make on a chess board. Other choices are rapid, such as hitting the “A” button to cause your character to jump at the appropriate time.
In Tetris, you have several choices available. You can control the speed of the block as it falls down the screen. You can rotate it clockwise, and you can rotate it counter-clockwise. One of the appeals of Tetris is the easy to learn and simple choices that you make while playing it.
Change: The change provides the differing content. Rather than doing the same thing, the game provides different levels, speeds, patterns, etc… Many times, players find it hard to stop playing when they are close to advancing to a new level, and to experiencing a new change. For the game No Man’s Sky, the game makers promised 18 quintillion planets (generated through an algorithm), though users of the game complain that there is not enough variance in the game’s play, and the game play suffers from monotony.
In Tetris, the change comes mainly from the speed the blocks fall. As the levels increase, the user has less time to make decisions, inevitably leading to costly mistakes.
Chance: This is as you would expect—games usually have some element of randomness. A game such as chess has next to none, whereas a game such as Frogger can have moments that are randomly easier or more difficult.
The element of chance in Tetris comes from the order of the blocks that fall. You have likely experienced the agony of waiting for the one piece you need to knock out three rows, only to never have it appear. To play the game well, you must adapt to the randomness of the blocks that fall, and set up a variety of contingency plans.
How would you break your favorite video game down into these for elements?
"There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play." - James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
Gamification involves using game design and game elements in everyday activities. First-graders receive stickers when they behave well, which can accumulate into something such as getting to watch a video at the end of the week. Shoppers at a grocery store earn “Reward Points.” A person’s favorite coffee place has a punch card that they complete every time they purchase a cup of coffee. Games have infiltrated many aspects of people’s lives, whether they realize it or not. While gamification is not new, the advent of digital gamification through mobile apps that track data, such as health markers and learning progress, has made the idea and its potential personal and social benefits intriguing to designers and developers.
“Gamification” is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts." Sebastian Deterding
Scott Nicholson explains gamification by commenting on Deterding's definition
Educators use digital gamification in the classroom to help students work on skills or to simulate complex problems. Badges or achievement levels with online learning platforms, such as Khan Academy, can supplement classroom work by making subjects intrinsically more rewarding and personalized. In large lecture classes, student can use clicker apps on their phone to answer questions posed by their professors. They receive instant feedback about the quality of their answers, as well as information detailing how they compare to others in the class.
Game designer Nicky Case creates games that tackle issues such as inadvertent segregation or the difficulties of coming out to one’s family. Beyond reading a book or hearing a talk, games allow people to embody a variety of experiences, and gain a deeper, more visceral understanding of a topic. An adaptation of John Conway's 1970 computer game,The Game of Life, Case’s Polygons is an interactive game with simple rules, but it is used to start a discussion about how bigotry works from small, seemingly harmless choices.
In John Conway's The Game of Life (1970), there is no winner or loser. The computer is programmed to simply play a game with itself indefinitely following these four rules:
The Game of Life demonstrates an emergent system, one that grows in complexity on its own, and introduces the idea that perhaps life itself evolved into complexity through a few simple game rules. In Case’s Polygons, these simple rules are employed to illustrate how segregation actually works in the real world.
For this exercise, consider some aspect of your life that you want to work on-- it can be weight loss, making the Dean’s list, finding companionship, watching every season of the Bachelor, eating every hamburger within a mile radius of your house… anything. The question you should address is: How will can you benefit in this goal by using digital gamification?
Congratulations- you are now a game creator!
All text by Will Luers and Michael Rabby
All images and video are in the public domain or labled for non-commercial use.
VideogameGenresA practical guide to meaningful gamification: http://gseweb.gse.buffalo.edu/org/game/html5.html
Museum of Play video game time line: http://www.museumofplay.org/about/icheg/video-game-history/timeline
Caillois, R. (1961). Man, play, and games. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.
Carse, J.P. (1986). Finite and infinite games. Detriot, MI: The Free Press.
Gee, J.P. (2003). What video games have to teach is about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Koster, R. (2005). A theory of fun for game design. Scottsdale, AZ: Paraglyph Press.
Walther, B.K. (2003). Playing and gaming: Reflections and classifications. Game Studies, 3: http://www.gamestudies.org/0301/walther/