Why Games Will Save The World
I was tapped by Juuso over at GameProducer.net for the "Blog Apocalypse" meme. It was started by UrbanMonk, who is donating to charity based upon the participation. Now there's a reason to do participate in the meme!

Anyway, it goes like this: We're gonna pretend the entire Blogosphere is coming to an end! (Undoubtably because of attacking cows). You have the opportunity to make one last post. A chance to summarize your blog, leave people with one last gem, whatever. What do you say?

For me, it's a question of why bother discussing computer games (particularly indie games). Why have I been talking about something that is considered by many to be just a huge waste of time?

I think it's because games may save the world.

Not in pixelized Space Invaders style, singlehandedly defending the world against immediate destruction or anything like that. But I think they have the potential to be a force for positive change - directly, or indirectly.

Games have been with us for as far back as we can speculate. Sometimes they might have been silly. Sometimes they were deadly serious. The footraces or spear-throwing games of ancient tribesmen could very well mean life or death not only for them, but for their entire tribe. Games have brought people together, taught them to work together. Even today, psychologists and educators use very specific kinds of roleplaying games to train and help people explore possibilities.

Coupled now with the most powerful communications medium since the invention of the printing press, for use in a tool that marries several traditional media together into a massive whole, and you have something far more powerful, insidious, and revolutionary than anything J. D. Salinger could ever devise. And with the indie game revolution, the power to create these experiences is once again shifting from the oversized design committees down to the home offices of individuals and small teams, with their own agendas, personalities and desires to express themselves.

Do games have a transformative power? A power for good? A power to change the world? Here are some experiences (mostly my own) where I think they already have shown this, albeit in very small ways:

I Guess We Shouldn't Have Called It the Star Wars Program
It wasn't a computer game, but in college I got pulled into a boardgame called Supremacy. It was a very slow game of international superpowers, a relic of the cold-war era that was in its last days when we played it. I was the country that broke the treaty against nuclear weapons, and I found that most of the players were only too happy to violate the agreement as well once I'd run the initial risk. They helped make my country - the Confederacy of South America - very rich as they bought my weapons as quickly as I could manufacture them (until they gained the ability to manufacture nukes themselves). I found myself - with no desire to enter a conflict whatsoever - sucked into a costly build-up of of forces along the border against the United States of America - a situation that could not be remedied without a very carefully staged agreement with the U.S. player. And I remember feeling the dread and certain knowledge that the end-game was nigh when one player started developing an incredibly unstabling technology - a purely defensive weapon, anti-missile satellites. How quickly we all ganged up on this player!

I learned more about international politics that one afternoon than I think an entire semester's course would have taught me.

Beware the Brit In The Sun...
I remember - in the early 90's - reading about combat flight sim fans in the U.K. and Germany who had used a program to fake their systems into believing the Internet was their own private LAN. As few games were Internet-playable back then, but a handful supported LAN play. In this case, these players were fans of a World War II era flight simulator. This international community decided to take advantage of these tools to host a major online reenactment of the Battle of Britain. But there was a trick to it. This time, the German players were defending the British Isles, and the UK players were coming in with bombers and Bf-109's to prepare for Operation Sealion.

Thou Hast Lost An Eighth!
I didn't finish Ultima IV until long after its initial release. I was in college at this point (I'd just barely finished Ultima VII, and wanted MORE ULTIMA, and went back to this classic). At one point, I found myself confronted with two options - to be honest, or to be humble. Either choice would help one virtue but ding another. While I was of course thinking about which one I needed the most points in when I answered the question - pure power-gaming - I remember wondering to myself just for a moment. Which IS more important? Humility or honesty? What are my personal values? And am I living them as well as I could?

This Is What It Sounds Like When Zombies Cry
After a particularly bad day at school one afternoon, I came home and booted up The Game everyone was talking about at the time: Doom. I picked a favorite level, entered in the command for invulnerable "god mode," and outfitted myself with the chainsaw. I went to work on the zombies. By the time the level was cleared, I was feeling immensely better, and while the cares of school weren't forgotten, the emotional edge had been purged in a comicly grisley manner.

Everybody Gets To Be A Hero
Meeting with some good folks at the Drolvarg camp outside Firiona Vie in EverQuest, I learned a lesson in teamwork I didn't expect possible in the primitive rule system of the game. Astonishingly, a party filled with self-sacrificing folks who looked out for the good of the team above their own gain actually gained more - as individuals - than those who were looking out for number one. Time after time we beat the odds, and watched the experience points and platinum roll in at a rate I'd never before seen.

I Didn't Recognize You Without Your Epic Weapon
Many months after that experience in the Drolvarg camp - after joining this group's then-fledgling guild, we decided to celebrate. Considering the fact that so many of us were from Utah we figured we'd hold a guild barbecue one afternoon to meet each other. Several people from out-of-town didn't want to be left out, and also came to participate. Since we didn't want to turn our out-of-town guests away after only three or four hours, we ended up turning the afternoon barbecue into a full weekend event.

For our part, the guildmistress and her husband asked if they could stay at our house during the weekend. We agreed. It was only the night before they were to arrive that we felt misgivings. Who are these people? We'd only known them from their in-game avatars. The next day, two strangers appeared on our doorstep, introducing themselves by their character names. We nervously let them inside our home, and showed them around. After about 20 minutes of conversation, we suddenly realized that these strangers were truly friends that we'd met within the virtual world of the game.

The weekend went off fabulously, the barbecue couldn't be beat, and a good time was had by all these strangers who soon found out they had been friends all along.

Identified By Use Of Lame Jokes...
I had only been at a new job for a couple of weeks when a coworker, unbeknownst to me, bought my newly-released game Void War and started playing it. A couple of days later he came to my desk and asked me for tips. A couple of other coworkers (and my boss) wandered by to listen. He commented to everyone how the game had my personality and sense of humor written all over it. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

But having played several indie games and having some (mostly email-exchanged) conversations with the creators, I believe that's often the case. From what I can tell from communicating with their creators, Kid Mystic, Aveyond, and Cute Knight all stand out as being imprinted with the personality and beliefs of their creators. While most games may not have deep messages, agendas, or heavy themes, they are still a little bit of an expression of a piece of the creator's soul... maybe a fun, whimsical, public-facing piece, but a piece nonetheless.
With small or "lone wolf" development teams, this personality doesn't get buried under a legion of contributors.

I feel like I know these people a little bit better because I've played their game.

It's All About Geek Bragging Rights
We used to joke at the Singletrac days about how we spent more time talking about our lunchtime games than we actually spent playing them. After a mission or three of Falcon, ATF Gold, Rainbow Six, or Quake, several of us would stand around talking about the game we'd just played. We'd hear about it from other people's perspective. Even single-player games played individually at home provided ripe fodder for conversation around the water-cooler the next day.

The games brought us together, gave us stories to tell each other, and provided a multifaceted shared experience that made us enjoy each other's company more.

Hit "X" To Feed The World?
No, maybe making or playing games isn't as critical as researching cures for cancer, or teaching young children to read and write. But cancer researchers and schoolteachers have to knock it off and get some rest & relaxation in there at some point, too. The ER workers may need to get their World of Warcraft fix in eventually...

But my point is that there's something going on here - something that's been going on for a while. The medium is capable of doing good. Of educating, asking questions, communicating ideas, and bringing people together. Maybe it comes from a "serious" game, like Darfur Is Dying, or Peacemaker, Or maybe its a game that just happens to educate as it entertains, like Dave Gilbert's "The Shivah," or Sid Meier's Civil War games. Maybe it invites you to think about parallels in the real world, like Ultima IV or Cliff Harris's Democracy. Maybe it's just gamers coming together to contribute to charity, like Penny Arcade's Child's Play. Or maybe it is a purely entertaining "fluff" game that just makes people laugh, gives them something in common to talk about, or gets them together for a LAN game after hours at the office. Connecting people together to play, or to talk.

I think it's all important, in a small way, and can be for the good.

As always, have fun!


Okay, at this point I'm supposed to tag some people to pass this meme along. Just remember that most people are doing short responses with only a paragraph or two. So I am just not a good enough writer to limit myself to only 100 or so famous last words. Well, that, and I wrote this too far past 1:00 in the morning... as I do with too many of my blog posts! I'm surprised they make what little sense they do!

So --- entirely optional, but let's tag some folks and see if they would like to participate. Some of my favorites:

* Brian Green of Psychochild's Blog
* Ron Gilbert of the Grumpy Gamer
* JenaRey of Eeps, Meeps, and Ipes
* Shamus Young of Twenty Sided Tale
* Raph Koster of Raph's Website


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Labels: Game Moments, Indie Evangelism

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