Meaningful Play - Video Games

Video Games

Video games are an example of designed meaning. They draw the player into the designed world and from that point, the player finds their own meaning either by following the designers intents or making their own. An example of games like this can range from Pong to the new Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

In Rules of Play, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman introduce meaningful play as the goal of successful game design. They offer two definitions, one descriptive and one evaluative:

Descriptive definition: "Meaningful play in a game emerges from the relationship between player action and system outcome; it is the process by which a player takes action within the designed system of a game and the system responds to the action. The meaning of an action in a game resides in the relationship between action and outcome". This is a cause-and-effect definition, for example if you press a lever and a door opens, the descriptive definition is that pressing that certain lever causes that exact door to open.

Evaluative definition: "Meaningful play is what occurs when the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernable and integrated into the larger context of the game". This definition has to be looked at from a wider viewpoint where the actual actions that the player takes are analyzed. It asks the question of why the player takes the actions that he does and what meaning his actions have over the entire course of the game.

These can be broken down into the original components of meaningful play, where descriptive is inherent, and evaluative is the designed meaning of the game. With meaningful play in games being based on designing a successful game, it can be difficult to evaluate what is a successful game. Examples of very successful games that had success in non-intended ways are provided.

Both evaluative and descriptive definitions have been studied extensively in the online genre of games. One of the most notable examples are Massive Multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPG) such as Everquest where the descriptive definition of the game is to live a second life using a character that you have built yourself. These games are very similar with how people actually perform daily activities (i.e. getting a job, working towards future goals), studies have been done on game participants playin to see if the game impacts their real life interactions .

While video games are unquestionably built with the intention of being enjoyable and fun, functions or programs built into the game sometimes have interesting, though unanticipated, outcomes. An example of this happened in the MMORPG, World of Warcraft. The behavior that players had during a virtual outbreak of a disease allowed epidemiologists to study this behavior and use it as a disease outbreak model . While the properties of this disease were not designed into the game on purpose, due to its nature and the actions of the players (descriptive meaning) it allowed scientists to study the behavior and extract the evaluative meaning behind the players’ actions as they played.

Various political organizations have also used video games to get their points across or to try to visually represent their standing. For these types of games, the entire focus is on the evaluative definition because they are built for the sole purpose of trying to educate the player about the message and meaning the party has. A prime example of this would be the games by PETA .