Games are empowering user experiences, experiences that are changing society. I won’t have time here to illustrate how each game below figures into innovation in other non-gaming areas, but I will delve in to the following: Each game seeks to empower the player in different ways, either through game elements (aka narrative), play mechanics (rules and gameplay), or a combination of the both (rewards). Checkers would lean on the empowerment via mechanics side, whilst the Sims might be seen as more of an empowering experience through its elements (as in, the stories players might generate for their sim people). Side note: Tracy Fullerton and Chris Swain at USC developed a “Play Matrix” which I will discuss in a later post.

So, let’s look at ten electronic games, many from a really fun evening in my Interaction Class last week at UW, and the ways these games empower players and make the experiences either exciting or dull. Player behaviors provide for this empowerment, so what are some of the unique behaviors of these games?

1. Lambda Moo – A MOO, or MUD with Object Orientation (hey, slow down buddy, what’s a MUD? – that’s a Multiuser Dungeon – wait, what’s that? – a text based game played over telnet! yikes, ancient tech!)  Lambda MOO, as a text and chat based experience, requires players to visualize their environment, and is therefore capable of really encouraging a players imagination.  However, in this space where the game becomes a joint narrative in typefont, a writing experience, the writer-player becomes limited by the commands the game provides for.  It seems counter-intuitive that I can’t type in something wild and imaginative like “eat my foot” – the game will just tell me it does not understand.  So, unless someone is strongly married to the rules, the game quickly becomes dull.
2. GWAP.com – GWAP is a service of sorts from Carnegie Mellon, a website that presents a plethora of casual object/relationship style games that help improve search engine AI.  For example, a song is played in one game, and each player needs to decide what genre it fits in.  Its fun for awhile, where one is able to show-off one’s knowledge, but being paired anonymously with another player who might not care as much about being right can detract from the challenge.
3. Pac-Man – Everyone loves Pac-Man!  Here’s an experience where you navigate and collect, while evading enemies that want to collect you rather than your treasure.  It’s an empowering analogy for life: we’re out working hard to make a dime, searching high and low through the maze of life, while bad guys are trying to prevent us from ever so doing.  There is nothing dull about the Pac-Man experience.
4. Scrabble On-Line – Apart from shutting down Scrabulous on Facebook, Scrabble in electronic form continues to be a satisfying experience.  A lot like GWAP in terms of showing off one’s knowledge, this time vocabulary, you can actually determine WHO you get to play with.  It goes to show the important social element of games and the relationships that can be cultivated and developed both in competition and cooperation.
5. Tower Defense – A popular flash game, like so many that appear to spring virally from the intarwebs, is an intensely strategic game.  You have to place weaponry and other defenses you have little to no control over throughout a grid.  Then, those items can be moved around while you try to protect your fortress.  A simple interface and fast gameplay make this experience appealing to RTS (real-time strategy) addicts who might not have time for a full-blown RTS experience.
6. Wii Sports – The Wii is immensely popular for its implementation of haptics (sensory input/feedback) technology.  See the tennis ball coming at your character, swing the Wii controller just like you were holding that tennis racket and voila!  It’s horribly intuitive.  And I mean horribly for an old school gamer like me, who is so used to hand-eye coordination controller joystick-n-button inputs for games that I wish I could hold the Wii controller still and use the directional pad and buttons the old fashioned way.  Nonetheless, these haptics through the Wii is opening up gaming to demographics traditionally uninterested in gaming, which is great for the industry and will no doubt further innovation in sensory input and feedback.
7. Rock Band on the XBOX – Furthering the theme of haptics, music and fantasy collide with intuitive gameplay to create a home gameplay experience that was reserved for installations, themeparks, karoake bars, and arcades in the past.  You have specialized input devices, such as a microphone, drum pads, and faux quitars to simulate a rock band experience.  Licensing tons of popular tunes from the real world really helps, too.  Players are empowered by being provided a chance to simulate an experience, this time, being skilled musicians, without having to know how to play real instruments.  One imagines that games like this, games on the Wii, Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, and so forth, will continue to be developed.  Games are no longer a sedentary experience alone.  This might do wonders to combat childhood obesity.  But, moreover, it trains, educates, and helps people replicate experiences that they wouldn’t normally have.  And the voice recognition software in Rock Band is something to see.  As you sing, you have to match pitches and lengths of notes!
8. Nintendo DS Games AND iPod Touch/iPhone Games – Ok, this isn’t so much a game, but for this eighth entry here I will cover some portability gaming experiences.  The DS is novel in that it has a traditional screen and buttons, but also a touch screen for use with a stylus.  Opening up multiple ways of defining player input gives the device longevity and provides for potentially very new and interesting games to be developed.  But, the iPod and iPhone take that one step further, generally ditching buttons in favor or motion sensory inside the device.  The way the device is held can control game mechanics, for example, or move a character.  Essentially, it introduces haptics to portable games – the iPod touch is basically the portable version of the Wii.  Sorry, Nintendo, but Apple beat you at your own game here.
9. PSP – Cheating again here and not specifying a particular game… but what I do want to mention is the flexibility of PSP hardware for playing ROMs of older “abandonware” console games.  Through widely available hacks that basically turn your PSP in to a PC in your hands, you can then install a ROM emulator on your PSP to get playing older titles from discontinued consoles, many of which are not yet available anew from on-line console interfaces like XBOX Live and the Wii.  Why Sony won’t just make a Windows-based PSP is beyond me.  You already have provided the user with buttons and controls that can be used for old-school game experiences.  A device powerful enough to play them, and a device that could be used to play NEW games made by Joe Average with Open Source software right at home would be ideal.  It should be an open experience a la Linux, but any hacking of the PSP respresents a violation of the terms of use.  I’m not condoning pirating older titles, but I am advocating open devices with powerful processors.
10. Tetris – I love Tetris.  I feel that Tetris is the ultimate single-player gaming experience for the organizationally challenged.  Why?  Because it forces you under time constraints to learn to organize objects according to shape.  I feel this is a very empowering experience for the organizationally challenge in real life.  It’s counter-artistic, but it’s fun.

There is so much more to be said about game design, but what is overall empowering for society is the way innovations in game mechanics and interactive narrative building has already changed so many other businesses, learning institutions, and even traditional manufacturing. Not every game is appealing to every person, but the right game mechanisms, seen in different ways, can be reproduced to solve complex problems in other areas of science, technology, and society.

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