In my lecture “Design Reboot”, I urged designers to think not just about the good feelings that people get from playing our games, but what the consequences are of those feelings (and of the time spent playing the games). This is a difficult concern to express to people who don’t already understand, and I am trying to come up with more effective ways of explaining.
This month, Bill Moyers interviewed Benjamin R. Barber about modern capitalism and its undesirable effects. I encourage everyone to watch this interview (it’s 23 minutes long, broken into 3 parts). Barber’s points are ideologically in the same neighborhood as mine, but his scenario is much bigger in scale (applying to everyone in the world, not just game players).
Here are links to the interview:
One thing I find interesting: to consider the picture he paints regarding the infantilization of the modern adult, and think about how that dovetails with modern game design (especially reward-schedule design like MMOs or Diablo-style games or even Peggle).
