The Compulsion to Make Progress

"...when you buy furniture, you tell yourself: that's it, that's the last sofa I'm gonna need. No matter what else happens, I've got that sofa problem handled." - Edward Norton in Fight Club

When I have a lot of things to do in little time, I feel a palpable sense of anxiety. Similarly, when I clear one of those things off my plate, I feel a sense of relief. These are emotional responses tuned to push us into action when situations threaten to get unmanageably complex.

Games can trigger these same emotions -- both the anxiety related to an unsolved problem and the reward that comes with resolving it.

The Compulsion to Make Progress by Simplifying Problems

I used to play StarCraft. Back when I sucked even more than I do now, I used to like playing maps with lots of resources in one place so I could just sit and build up a beautiful defensive line, which I would foolishly convince myself was unbreakable. Next, I would spend huge amounts of time building some unbeatable army. Only then would I venture out on the attack. Of course, as soon as I came up against an even moderately good player I would get my ass handed to me on a platter.

I was succumbing to the compulsion to simplify. I wanted to solve problems and therefore not have to think about them again. The prospect of constant upkeep and surveillance, as is required for a viable dynamic defense strategy, seemed unpleasant. In my case, this compulsion destroyed my StarCraft game (eventually I realized what was wrong, and started occasionally winning matches against small children).

Triggering this compulsion is generally done by presenting the player with a complex situation which can be simplified. Single-player RTS games are like this. You start with a complex and hard to control situation involving multiple AI bases, and are challenged to take down these bases on by one. With each enemy base destroyed, the game becomes simpler. Eventually you can toy with the last enemy base at your leisure. That final release of pressure is the emotional payoff.

Any game that starts out complex and becomes simpler will trigger this compulsion.

Compulsion and Addiction

Purely linear entertainment products, like film or books, are self-limiting. They always run out. Games, however, do not suffer from this limitation. This includes pre-computer games like card gambling.

Gambling with cards is well known to be addictive for some people. Gambling addiction has destroyed many lives. There are support groups for those addicted and their families. Similarly, some games are so effective at compelling people to play for extended periods of time that there are support groups dedicated to breaking game addiction.

But wait a minute. Gambling addiction destroys your bank account. Drug addiction destroys your body and brain. But the entire reason we play these games is because we are evolved to compulsively do so, since these compulsions are evolutionarily beneficial. Games are tools for learning and socializing. A person who plays chess or basketball for hours every day is called dedicated, not addicted.

I've personally learned a lot from countless games that I played throughout my childhood. I learned World War II history from Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. I learned about municipal tax systems from SimCity. I learned about the stock market from Railroad Tycoon II. I learned about Roman history from Caesar III.

Even games with no real-world analogue can teach deeper skills. StarCraft taught me about dynamic defense, when not to plan ahead, and how to manage complex situations under pressure. Counter-Strike and Unreal Tournament taught me hand-eye coordination and teamwork.

But what about a game which teaches nothing useful, and is so good at triggering compulsions that it can force people to play continuously for years? What if it could engineer a compulsion to play so powerful that it destroys the rest of a person's life, and they get nothing back from it? Does this make us the moral equivalent of casino owners? Not evil, but maybe just a little bit suspect?

Maybe. I don't think that creating powerfully compulsive games is unethical. But I think that a game should do more than trigger a person's compulsions.

Games could be incredible tools for elucidating a concepts -- whether those concepts is educational, philosophical, or political. Games can hold attention for a very long period of time. They can and communicate ideas differently from other media because we can actually force the player to live some part of a reality instead of just reading or watching someone else's story. We can put people in anyone's shoes and show them a tiny bit of what it is like to make that person's decisions. We can teach systems through exploration and experimentation instead of just showing results.

Games like this are showing up, but slowly. DEFCON: Everybody Dies (2) is a mechanically fun but thematically horrifying game about trying to "win" a global nuclear war. September 12 (3) is about trying to stop terrorism by killing people -- which, in this game, tends to create more terrorists.

These games show promise, but there is so much more territory to cover. For most of gaming's history, we have been more concerned with figuring out how to generate compulsions to care about whether our games say anything. Maybe now we can all start using our medium for something greater than psychological button-pushing.

_{1. Phend, Crystal. "Video Games Hone Laparoscopic Surgery Skills". Medpage Today. http://www.medpagetoday.com/Surgery/GeneralSurgery/tb/5089 Accessed December 4, 2007}

_{2. Introversion Software. DEFCON: Everybody Dies. http://www.everybody-dies.com/}

_{3. September 12. http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm}