Vanthor’s Random Rant

You might be asking yourself, right now, what is a serious game and why should I care? Well, as far as I can tell, a serious game is a game where the main point is not to have fun. There are two major types of games that fall in this category: Simulators and other educational games, and games with a message. This is not to say that simulator or games with a message aren’t fun, its just that the main point of the game is not for the user to have fun.
Now, what I want to talk about is games with a message. In my opinion, this is an under utilized medium for getting a message across. Up to this point, most games that have a message fails to get it across either because the message was too subtle, or the game failed to elicit an emotional response in the person playing it.
There is a game called Save Darfur. The game is supposed to get you to care more about darfur, and to teach you about what happening there. Unfortunately, in fails in many respects. When a game is used to teach something, it should do so in a transparent manner. You really shouldn’t be actively noticing your being taught something. The act of playing the game should be what teaches you. Saving Darfur fails to teach you anything useful through game mechanics. In fact it only teaches you by sending you to outside websites about darfur. This is not only annoying, it detract from the experience.
A game should elicit an emotional response in the person playing it. If your game is about genocide, it should not be in any way in friendly, which saving Darfur is.
In order to make a good serious game, we need to apply the greatest strengths of games. Games are all about problem solving, no matter what game your playing. Whether its figuring out what platforms to jump on, to what units yo need to make to beat an opponent in a RTS. It is through solving problem while actively playing the game that you get learn things.
Games are immersive, this is a given. It is the greatest strength of games as a whole. If you are going to make a serious game which includes the destruction of a village, the game should get you to care about the destruction of the village. If its a pre-made village that you where just given, you probably won’t care so much. If its a village you spent an hour lovingly constructing, you’ll care a great deal that some assholes just burned it down. You’ll definitely care in that instance.

Well I’m out of time, so I’m just going to post now.

Nah, just kidding. This is really just a test. It’s possible that I could post something worth while, but its much more likely I’ll just wait until tommorow when I’m in my two hour long IMGD class.

 On A Side note, apparently I didn’t get first post on my own blog. Imagine that.