My Understanding about Meaningful Play

Imagine in the faraway future, where new advanced technologies allow humans to experience anything by connecting to AR device or playing an immersive video game. Even nerves can be stimulated electronically, providing a truly immersive experience. It reminds me of a scene in the animated film WALL-E, that owing to the technological advances, humankind became so comfortable, lazy, so averse to physical activities and obese,that they never bothered to experience nature in its natural phsical form. If this happened, how do you feel as a game designer?

Games are not meant to supplant real life experiences; they are meant to enrich our human experiences. This is what I thought after watching that scene. You might wonder: am I only talking about educational games. No, not really. Possibly as a result of the high strung force-fed education that I had (in China), I think there are many aspects can be improved in educational games. When I first heard the term “educational games”, it was field under the genre of “serious games”, and hence never caught my eye. As the genre sggests, most “educational games” are either too utilitarian or too boring.

However the more games I've played, the more I feel that games is a good tool to have a meaningful impact on human life. It is not only about games that are tagged as "educational", but also about any games that cast influence on players. So what is the problem? How can we solve it? The key lies in the difference between being “educational” and “influential”.

I remember that we used to have Ideological and Politics class in school. I always find these classes are nothing but time consuming, mind numbing and brainwashing. What they taught made sense but the way of its being taught is far from pleasant; which is exactly the contrary of what I mean by “meaningful” interactions. For instance, in China, “patriotism education” is the first lesson we learned in kindergarten. It probably sounds ridiculous and hard to imagine for who've grown up in the free world. Regardless, at that age, it’s impossible for children to understand what “love” means, what “nation” is, and what “party” stands for, let alone to put them together. The teaching is excessively utilitarian in its sole purpose to get everyone brainwashed rather than educating effectively. That’s certainly not a good means of education. But, there was a teacher who impressed me. She taught honestly (as honest as she could), not afraid of comparing the education in China with the ones in other countries, especially the early education. In some other countries, children are guided to feel the love for themselves, their parents, their friends, the people, public facilities, the country, etc. The main differences here are, “rote learning” vs. “inspiring by feeling”. The effect of the two methods should be apparent.

However, I feel there’s no excuse not to develop entertaining meaningful games. The reason why I emphasize the word “entertaining” is that the more enjoyable a game is, the more convincing and powerful it will be. Gaming is a process b which the emotions of the player play an integral part. So I treat “entertaining” to be just as important as being “educational / meaningful / influential”. Maybe because I’m also an artist, I can’t regard educational games as real games. It’s kind of like the sophistry paradoxes of “A white horse is not a horse”. It doesn't make a game for not being fun enough; at most it is just sequence of interactions.

There are well-crafted educational games that can achieve their goals. There are engaging indie games with deep intrinsic values, and it often makes people consider their real life. Like what I said earlier about games being meant to enrich our human experiences, a good game tries to form a certain behavior pattern by guiding players to solve the game; a good character tends to be a positive example by inspiring players to comprehend and learn from their behavior. It might sound difficult and impossible. But it’s not. So my attitude is to achieve and never asking the outcomes. Because if you focus on how much you can influence your audience, it tends to lose fun. In other words, it depends on the audience. That’s why I feel “meaningful play” more accurately describes what I’m thinking than “meaningful games”. Without the interactions of players, we can never judge a game. Meaningful games are where meaningful play happens.

Let’s go back to the scene I described at the beginning. There seem to be a conflict between completely taking over people's lives and bring positive value to our players. By taking these considerations into heart, we can be more direct and clear when designing a game. Like, what do I want to convey through designing this entertaining game that might change the way that players do something? Is there any positive ways my characters can do something which will hopefully be emulated by players do or think about something? Or is it more effective for an educational game to better engage our guests?