This month’s Blogs of the Round Table topic asks the ever-so-fascinating question of whether video games teach socially responsible lessons. Considering that I spent a little too much time dabbling in moral philosophy courses in university, and thus know that there are many different ways to answer this question, I’m going to start by dividing this question into three parts: Can video games teach socially responsible lessons? Do video games teach socially responsible lessons? Should video games teach socially responsible lessons?

My answer to the “can” question is a pretty straightforward “yes”. Video games have as much, if not more potential to convey positive themes and messages as other artistic media. People of the Roger Ebert school of artistic thought would likely disagree with me, citing the presence of interactivity and player input on the story as harmful to the author’s intended didactic goals. Personally, however, I believe that interactivity has tremendous power to teach by example rather than by rote, which I’m pretty sure has been proven to be most effective and personally meaningful, and tailoring said examples to the player’s current worldview and preferences makes it even moreso. For further reading on this particular topic, I highly recommend the book Persuasive Games by Ian Bogost.

My answer to the “do” question is a little more loaded. The gist of it is that I believe every game conveys a message of some kind, even if it doesn’t intend to — the latter being the case regarding the majority of games in existence. Generally, what happens is that said games simply reflect the beliefs of the majority of society, [1] which are taken for granted to the extent that no one even knows that a message is being delivered at all. While this can indeed be useful when it comes to, say, teaching young children how the world works in this day and age, it can often be a contributor to all those lingering prejudices and biases that we’re still having trouble getting rid of, and this, in my view, is irresponsible. [2]

I’m not going to tackle violence and sexism here; though both are topics I feel passionate about, I think they’d probably undermine the point I’m trying to make. Instead, I’m going to tackle a more benign-seeming gameplay mechanic, which is that of collection. Anyone who plays games of any kind has seen this before; the more crap you collect, the higher your score — or in the case of adventure games, the more likely it is that you’ll have the right thing you need to solve the next puzzle to get to the rest of the story. Basically, since in these kinds of games, there’s rarely any consequence to having an excess of stuff, the message being delivered is heavily favoured towards a capitalist view of the world.

I myself come from a capitalist culture, and as such, I believe that making and saving a reasonable amount of money is important to survive and live somewhat comfortably in the current state of the world in which I live. However, I would also like to believe that life isn’t all about trying to get rich, and have realised that I don’t really like buying and owning too many physical objects unless I know I need them. Granted, I’m nowhere near as frugal as folks like Jason Rohrer, but I also don’t have any aspirations to live in a huge house with an expensive car and all the newest gadgets, either. Hence, I’ve noticed lately that games in which the primary mechanic is collection don’t particularly appeal to me.

One of the more infuriating specific examples of capitalist gameplay I can think of is Animal Crossing for the DS, where there’s a gameplay mechanic in which you must pay off the loan for your character’s house. Once you do so, your house gets expanded to a larger size, forcing you to pay off yet another loan for said expansion, and so on until you’ve got a giant mansion. I found this annoying because once I had my house at the precise size I wanted it, which wasn’t all that big, there was no option to pay off the loan, leave the house the way it was, and continue the game debt-free. Thus, even though in many ways, Animal Crossing is a game I applaud for being one of the least “socially harmful” ones out there, I believe that this particular mechanic is very irresponsible, especially given the number of people in the middle-class Western world who spend their lives suffering because they’re caught in this neverending cycle of spending and debt.

And now, to tackle my third question: should games be more socially responsible? By now, you can probably guess that my answer is going to be a resounding “absolutely”. It’s not that I fault developers for failing to be socially responsible — they are, of course, following the path of least resistance rather than specifically choosing to convey an irresponsible message. However, I still believe that developers ought to give their game mechanics careful thought and analysis, rather than blindly running towards what’s “fun” and what “sells” above all else. It’s perfectly fine, and in many instances, very important to consider amusement and marketability in a game design… just make sure you pay attention to the message — because there will always be one whether you intend it or not — and if you can still sleep at night knowing what kinds of ethics your gameplay will be reinforcing, then by all means, go ahead with it. [3]