a game design and criticism notebook
Posts tagged social sustainability
Creating Socially Sustainable Games, pt 2
Mar 30th
In the last post, we looked at the definition of social sustainability as it relates to urban planning. But…
How does it work when applied to games?
Creating Socially Sustainable Games, pt 1
Mar 26th
Games train us to behave in a certain way. Like complex Skinner boxes, video games reward certain behaviours and discourage others. This is pretty much common sense at this point: the persuasiveness of games has been debated hotly in the mass media for the last thirty years. I’ll accept that games train their players in certain ways; however, I also subscribe to Miguel Sicart’s theory of the “virtuous player.”
The concept of the virtuous player comes from Aristotlean virtue ethics, which sounds intimidating but is really just a theory of how to react to the world. The virtuous player is someone who recognizes that games influence us in certain ways through their game mechanics, and examines them even as she participates in them. Gamers aren’t moral robots. We are completely capable of self-reflection and thinking about our actions.
As part of a game culture of the kind that Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins are trying to create at PAX East this weekend, all of us – consumers and creators alike – need to keep in mind what kind of behaviours we’re encouraging and why.