Why people play games

I found this a little while ago:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6932785.stm

It struck me as interesting because it suggests that what is we find 'fun' about games is the learning process we engage in when we play them and the opportunities they give us to see the results of our efforts. The article implies that people actually enjoy learning; something that seems similar to what Papert is referring to in his introduction to Mindstorms when he talks about falling in love with gears. So, instead of thinking about games in terms of how we can 'make learning fun' by 'harnessing their motivational power' (c.f. Futurelab review), maybe we should be thinking about them as successful learning environments which can be compared to areas of education that aren't.

Co-located play (or Playing games in the same room with friends)

I've been thinking a bit lately by how social games have become. I mean, they've always had a social side, but they've become a lot more socially 'acceptable' over the last few years. And I don't just mean the rise of the MMORPG, like World of Warcraft, but the more traditional inviting people round to play. I know with respect to the Wii, the novelty factor is responsible in part for this curiosity, but can it last? Can the Wii introduce people to gaming and keep them interested?

I was playing a couple of games at my sister Katerina's over the weekend. She's never been seriously into games but enjoys playing them with people. One of the games we looked at was Super Mario Galaxy. I wanted to try out the co-star mode where you have one player playing Mario, and the other acting as some sort of helper, and we took turns in different roles. The second player uses the Wiimote to do things like collect and shoot star bits, freeze enemies, make Mario jump higher etc but you don't actually play a second character (like in Sonic 3 on the Mega Drive for instance, where you can play Tails ). I didn't mind being the 'co-star' as it was pretty interesting trying to anticipate what player 1 was going to do next and figuring out how you could help out. Plus, I'm sure there were a couple of points where my actions e.g. freezing an enemy mushroom, dictated what player 1 actually did do next. In contrast, my sister got a little bored after a while. We only played the first couple of levels, so it's possible it would have got more interesting as the levels got more complex. Meanwhile the endless storyboarding at the start of the game (which you unfortunately can't skip) probably didn't help either. Nevertheless, I can see how you could get bored just pointing the Wii remote at the screen for hours, while someone else actually gets to play the game.

We also played EA Playground, a game that revolves around a number of different playground games e.g. dodge ball, track car racing, tether ball etc. There were three of us playing but we only had two Wii remotes, so we ended up taking turns. It would have been interesting to see how the games would have dealt with more than two players, as I'm not sure they all could. There was a bit of a learning curve as each game had it's own set of instructions that we had to read through, but since there was some crossover between games it wasn't too bad. What was annoying was the tiny writing the instructions were displayed in. One of the things we noticed while playing was how in some games e.g. tether ball, you could quite easily strain your arm. Ok, so part of this is due to getting a bit excited waving the Wii remote around (which also tends to something getting knocked over) but it must have something to do with the feedback from the game. This came up in a meeting with my supervisors a little while ago when we were talking about Wii Sports (the gameplay in Playground is pretty similar to this). We talked about how the feedback from the remote is not the same as you get in real life when performing the same actions. The fact that you don't 'feel' the ball when you hit it seems to make you more likely to try and hit it harder. Since there isn't actually anything there, you just end up straining yourself. If the Wii is trying to tap into 'natural' movement, this could end up confusing the learning process when you realise it's not quite the same as in real life.

We did enjoy playing Playground though and I reckon this was because it is set up as a number of different competitions. You can play in the same team for some of the games, but the goal is still to win. Super Mario Galaxy requires a lot more investment in terms of time, and is not so easy to dip in and out of. So for what we wanted - to spend an hour or two playing games - we were much better off with something like Playground where we could try out different games that were relatively short and had clear cut goals for each of them. I think it might be quite difficult to find a dedicated co-star to play Mario with over long periods of time. In contrast, the single player mode in Mario is probably a lot more interesting. Though kids can play both games, EA Playground comes acorss as a bit more simplistic and with less to explore than in Super Mario Galaxy.

I guess it partly comes down to what you want to play games for and to everyones' personal preferences. It seems to be the case that when it comes to playing a game with a group of people, you don't want something with a high learning curve that requires a lot of investment. What seems more popular are games where you can compete against each other, or a computer controlled team, and that you can play in short bursts (or longer if you so choose). So far, the Wii seems to be catering for both the dedicated single player and the more casual group of multi-players.

Trauma Centre: Second Opinion (Wii)

I borrowed Trauma Centre from the department, and was looking forward to trying it since it looked like it was really going to let you make the most of the Wii Remote. Plus, cutting up people and trying to stitch them up seemed like it should be fun. The game took a little while to get going since it was introducing the characters which seemed fair enough at the time. You play this sort of inept new doctor, who essentially depends on a more experienced (young, pretty, female – big surprise) nurse to guide you through your first couple of operations. This seemed to be a pretty good way to introduce you to the controls and sequences you have to go through, especially in my case as for some reason the dept has the German version of the game (its in English but the manual isn’t) so I had no idea what I was doing at first. I managed to kill my first patient straight away, by not realising I had to put the glass shards I tweezed out on a plate on the side of the screen and lowering my patients vitals pretty quick. The music definitely adds to the tension, as does the time limit and the fact the nurse keeps calling out “doctor!” – making think I’ve done something wrong when she is just telling me what I should do next.

So anyway, after my initial failure, I started to get the hang of it. The operations were fun, and I seemed to pick up what I needed to do without really realising it. This was something I noticed when I got a new nurse (also female, younger and possibly prettier but definitely less helpful) and had to figure out what I needed to do when on my own. Some of the tools were easier to use than others, for instance I quite liked the scalpel since you just had to wave the remote in a relatively straight line but had trouble with suturing as it took me a while to figure all I needed was a zig zag motion across the wound. There were some tasks though I had real problems with like using the defibrillators, and learning how to draw a star so I could activate my healing touch (more later on this). The game threw some medical terms at me, some of which may have been real and as you go on, some which were definitely not. But you didn’t seem to need much of this information to do the actual operations so I didn’t care too much.

I also didn’t really care too much about the narrative – in part at least because it was all scripted and I had no control over my character, who I didn’t really identify with, and because it all seemed a little silly. You have to play this inept doctor (even if you do get given an A at the end of all your operations), who goes on to discover he has the “healing touch” (an ability passed down from the ancient Greeks which allows you to slow down time during operations when you play Derek or helps increase a patients vitals when you play the Nozomi sequences) and is actually the only one who can defeat the GUILT virus. I laughed out loud when I first came across the GUILT virus, I thought for a minute it might be some horrible disease you get when your conscience has had enough but no apparently it stands for the Gangliated Utrophin Immuno Latency Toxin virus. And it looks like terrorists are to blame for it. Uh huh.

Trauma Centre is a fun game, and does utilise the Wii Remote and nun-chuck in pretty cool ways. It also manages to teach you how to use them without you having to think about it too much. The operations themselves are addictive; you did want to keep trying until you got the hang of a new tool/sequence (or until your patient didn’t die). You do want to get an A as opposed to C rating at the end of each one. Oh, and it helps you can change the difficulty rating at each operation. But the storyline didn’t really work for me. I started to lose interest and grew bored of having to click through seemingly endless storyboards (Which Will did mention when I borrowed it). I didn’t care about the characters, or the GUILT virus, I didn’t want to find out what was going to happen next. It all came across as a little ridiculous – surely we have enough diseases in the world without having to resort to made up terrorist ones – while it also treated issues such as suicide and euthanasia simplistically be resolving them in really cheesy ways. Any experiences of flow were definitely limited to the operation mode. Ultimately, it wasn’t emotionally engaging enough and I felt the story was getting in the way of me doing what I actually wanted to be doing.