Meaningful Gameplay Part 2: Concerns About Where We’re Heading

[Continued from Meaningful Gameplay Pt 1: What does it mean?]

Having watched the games industry develop over the decades, in many cases I don’t like what I see.There are trends which have potentially harmful social implications.

Gaming culture is a driving force behind the development of young minds, but despite the internet being an unpoliceable moral frontier, developers are fusing the human need for social interaction with game design which encourages long-term investment of time. They are developing products which encourage gamers to live out their existences online to the detriment of their real lives. The free-to-play marketing techniques are no different to those of street dealers – “the first one is always free” and “it’s just a bit of fun.”

Of course, game developers can always claim that their responsibility ends with appropriate labeling and it is parents who should monitor their children’s exposure to video gaming. This is quite right, but what about the adults? I have personally seen many families torn apart by addiction–is video gaming any different? Are game developers answerable to the same controls and responsibilities as pharmaceutical and beverage companies?

On the flip side, there is a potential social benefit to gaming. If the impact on the individual is disregarded and broader perspective considered, encouraging video game addiction will perhaps work as a sociological sedative in the same way the couch potato phenomenon does. It is an ingenious way of keeping people off the streets and probably lowering the rate of reproduction. So perhaps video game manufacturers can consider their part in passive population control as their true “meaning”.

The Gaming Pyramid

Development studios are certainly growing wise to the most meaningful gameplay being a multiplayer experience. In pursuit of the the most cost-effective meaningful gameplay model, more and more developers are looking to the emergent gameplay trends of “making players the content.” This strikes me as the gaming equivalent of pyramid sales, where the development studio becomes hands-off whilst encouraging a culture of pressure on the free labour of their own customers to deliver content to each other. Players become loyal not to the brand, but to the community beneath it. In some ways this is admirably devious, but in others it seems almost unethically manipulative.

As we head into the future of gaming and game design is refined to deliver more immersive virtual worlds with increasingly powerful hooks and more easily achievable rewards than reality, is such an endless stream of “meaning” something that should be sought out? Or is it a poisonous experience to be avoided like an ambulance night shift on a full-moon Saturday after pay day.

I remain conflicted.

What are your thoughts on “meaningful gameplay”?

[Header image credit: ‘Reality’ by Eran Fowler]