Triptych 16 Three Subjects in One Blog Post

• Rewards for Intermediate Objectives

• Video Games and Imagination

• Technical Quality and Soccer Players

Rewards for Intermediate Objectives

(Written in 2015)

We were playtesting my Zombie Escape at Origins many years ago.

I was quite surprised when one of the players suggested that there should be a reward for defeating a zombie.  It is not a long game, 40 minutes on average but longer with the six players we had this time.  To me, defeating the zombie was one of the steps of winning the game and did not require a separate reward.  But in the video gamer point of view virtually every successful action should have a reward.

Why is this?  Partly it’s the zeitgeist (the spirit of the age) of the 21st century, kids in school expect rewards merely for participation, and rewards that single out someone for particularly good work tend to be frowned upon.  Some kindergarten teachers are told not to give out gold stars because it makes the students who didn’t stand out feel bad.  I suppose in the end it’s a culture of entitlement rather than a culture of earning what you get.

Partly the reason for wanting immediate rewards is that completing a video game is not really an accomplishment anymore, because it’s largely a matter of persistence.  You can keep going back to your save points to try again and again, possibly using trial and error (guess and check), until you succeed.  You can’t actually lose a video game the way you can lose a tabletop game.

From another point of view it’s a symptom of shortsightedness.  If you don’t have your eyes on the long-term goal then you’re more likely to want many intermediate rewards along the way to that goal.  And another aspect of the zeitgeist is shortsightedness, the “Age of Instant Gratification.”

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Interesting to see video games proposed as vehicles for imagination.  Everything I've read or seen suggests that kids have much less imagination now because everything is supplied to them with the story already made (and often in viewable (which is to say, passive) form).  "Let us imagine that for you." Maybe the 8 bit generation was the last to need to use imagination with games.

We "grew up with" games in the 60s, but they were paper games, Diplomacy and Stalingrad and Afrika Korps and Gettysburg and Acquire, and a little later, Dungeons and Dragons.  Our toys were paper boats and planes, plastic soldiers and cars, dolls, and so on, not often-electronic stuff with stories built in.  Imagination was definitely not optional.

Games don't have to be about photo-realistic stories, and of course they weren't in the 80s (or 60s), they were about interesting gameplay.

Games through the ages have let people make their own stories, with no pretension of telling them a story (that's what novels, plays, films are for).

This is what the video game industry often loses sight of: games are enjoyable because of what you DO, not because of what you see or hear.  Technology is not necessary to good games.

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Nowadays I’m a soccer fan, even as I bemoan how conservative (backward) the rules are. Arsene Wenger, manager of Arsenal for nearly 22 years, sometimes called “The Professor,” is a person I always listen to.

“Players have lost their technical quality over the past 10 years,” (Arsene) Wenger argued. “Athleticism has become more important than technique and decision making. It's more about physical characteristics and intensity, about explosiveness. And it's also about being a showman.”

That's not true for women.  Because they are smaller, slower, not as muscular, technical skill is still the ideal. Further, they have more room to shoot at, given goalies are smaller, slower, less muscular than male goalies. It's in effect as though men played with a bigger goal.  But women also have more room on the pitch, because of their lesser athleticism, perhaps similar to men's games 75 years ago.

So a women's game can be more technical than a present-day men's game. It's harder for women to "park the bus" (fall back and defend in depth) as well. And women are less likely to play in a way physically dangerous to their opponents. For whatever reasons. Just better to watch. Unless you're just looking for astounding physical feats.