GDC 09: Do Games Shape Society?

The GDC panel "Stretching Beyond Entertainment: The Role of Games in Personal and Social Change" brought together some of the great minds in gaming. Moderated by Rusel DeMaria, author of "Reset: Changing the Way we Look at Games," the panel featured Lionhead Studios' Peter Molyneux, The Sims creator Will Wright, former EA Chief Creative Officer Bing Gordon, Oddworld Inhabitants' co-founder Lorne Lanning and one of the forefathers of Xbox, Ed Fries. Over the course of an hour, the group discussed the potential games have for affecting society and the responsibilities of game designers to promote such change.

Will Wright kicked things off by stating that he felt designers are actually more responsible for furthering the medium than pleasing the players when creating games. Wright later clarified his statement, calling videogames an "infant medium" that needed to be nurtured. The things developers do today centered on helping the medium grow will "have a positive affect on gamers" in 5-10 years. That's not to say developers shouldn't make games fun, but that games shouldn't be made without consideration as to how they are progressing the medium.

Part of that nurturing involves making games that have an additive value to society. Lanning compared entertainment to food. "We could make Twinkies or something" or we can fill the package with healthy content. So long as you have an "attractive enough wrapper" the support will be there for the product. Lanning added that the very notion that games "have to be profitable is absolutely ass-backwards." In fact, Lanning asserts that the games industry could do great things, such as redefining the education system -- making it console-based -- but the government has no interest in investing in the industry or even engaging the industry in such talks.

The government has been more interested in finding ways to censor videogames. While censorship wasn't touched on, violence and immorality in videogames was a major talking point for the panel members.

Wright summed up the argument best, stating that showcasing the worst in games is actually the best way to affect change in people. He noted that, historically, social change through media almost always comes from cautionary tales. In many of the city planning documents he'd read (likely as research for Sim City) were notes of concern that certain proposals might turn the city into Blade Runner. Moby Dick, written in 1851, can be seen as a warning against Nazi Germany (many good men following a charismatic, but obsessed mad man). People want their books, movies and games to "represent states we want society to avoid." One good example is GTA, which Wright admits to playing "a lot" because it is a "sociology simulator."

Molyneux added that if you want to teach lessons, then you can't sugarcoat the message. The idea is to have someone walk away from a game saying, "this must never happen in my world."

Consequences for immoral actions are important and while most of the panel felt that games failed to show the negative effects of immoral behavior, Molyneux disagreed. The Fable creator said that he felt many games provided adequate punishment for poor actions.

Wright and Lanning were the most vocal against this. In fact, Wright (with tongue in cheek), said that a proper shooter should be "10% first-person shooter, 90% life in prison." Lanning was particularly disappointed in war shooters. "The things that give people shellshock are taken out of war games," Lanning said. Developers are "distilling war down to the fun parts." He went on to suggest that it was time developers started "breaking some paradigms" of design and make games that don't fit into the mold.

It wasn't all doom and gloom. In fact, the panel was fairly positive about the influence games had on society. Bing Gordon called games the new MBA and that cooperative games teach leadership qualities. "Kids spend 25 hours a week in a jail that we call school," Gordon said to applause, "but games are a better place to learn skills." The world's youth has a better social relationship with the international community than their parents because of social networking and videogames, according to Gordon. He also noted the success of the industry and declared, "games don't need a bailout. Videogames need to bail out the culture."

"Everyone is connected together through cooperative games," Molyneux said, calling co-op games a "good social bonding message." He believes cooperative play will become predominant in videogames and combative game modes will because far less of a focus over the next few years.

Wright did caution that many games miss out on important opportunities to bring people together. After all, you manage to connect young people from different continents who have different religious beliefs, backgrounds and world views. Then you make them both orcs, essentially stripping them of their unique qualities and diluting the cultural exchange.

So what does Wright think needs to happen to help games make a bigger impact on society? He'd like to see more user-generated content. Give players the tools to "create socially responsible games and get out of the way."

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/967/967465p1.html

Aghh, so you are asking, are video games being used, will they, or can they be used for social engineering like practically everything else is?

No responce, if you know the nature of the masses, then you know the answer to this.

In the mean time, I highly suggest people look up these books and give them a read, it is more important now than ever in history!!!

The Media Monopoly

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Cruel Hoax - Feminism and the New World Order

Brave New World

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

Subliminal Seduction

The Age of Manipulation

Media Virus

The Waste Makers

Deadly Persuasion

The Hidden Persuaders

and more important, a history of communism in relation to social engineering, socialism in relation, and last but not least, our dear old capitalsim.

There is a great video from the BBC on the subject titles:

Century of the Self which I'm sure you can find streaming on Google or what ever.