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Editor’s Note: I’m digging this series of articles from Frank Anderson. Sure, video games may not be curing cancer (or are they?), but they do more good than popular opinion suggests. Here Frank examines how games encourage creativity in players. -Brett
Most people think video games are a reactionary medium. They think that you simply press a button when the button needs to be pressed, and after a few hours, you have beaten a game.
This is untrue in almost every case. Most games require at least a degree of creative thought. Super Mario Bros., for example, lets players choose among multiple paths, thus allowing them create their own specific way to play through the game. Even Pong requires the use of simple geometry to be truly successful.
In Part 1 of this series on the benefits of video games, I focused on video games that help to find cures for diseases or make life more bearable for cancer patients. In this post, I focus on how games can stoke the creative side of gamers’ minds.
While the creative process can be used in many games when developing strategies for play, this is not true creation. The creation of things requires you to use materials or ideas to create something of your own design. Excitebike on the NES is one of the first games I can think of that allowed this. Yes, the level creator was basically a way to copy and paste your own track, but the feeling of accomplishment that came from driving on a track that you created yourself was very unlike the feeling of simply racing on one of the pre-built ones.
Seven years after Excitebike came out, Nintendo released Mario Paint. Sure, this game was an easier-to-use version of MS Paint, but it put creative tools into the hands of players who might not have used a painting program before.
In more recent times, games like TimeSplitters and Tony Hawk featured detailed level creation tools that simply weren’t possible in the days of Excitebike and Mario Paint. The move to 3D space allowed for much more creativity and innovation. Soon developers were giving gamers the tools to create their own low-tech games.
The RPG Maker series is one of the most popular of these create-your-own-game games. They are basically tool sets that allow players to create their own simple role-playing games using pre-set items, characters, and titles. Inventive gamers can fabricate entire worlds and story lines, as well as determine the precise location of enemies and items.
By far the most popular way for gamers to currently flex their creative muscles is by getting into the PC modding scene. Modding emerged when the makers of games like Doom and Unreal gave players access to the tools that they themselves used to create their games. The depth of these tools even allows players to add their own art assets, leading to the creation of games almost on the level of full retail releases. As a matter of fact, many developers releasing games right now got their start by modding. For example, Kaos Studios, makers of Frontlines: Fuel of War, started out as the developers of a popular mod for Battlefield 1942.
Now the current generation of console makers is taking a cue from the PC modding scene, offering the public a variety of ways to create their own content for games. Microsoft has had their XNA Creators Club going for years now. The XNA tool set gives people the tools needed to create games that can then be sold on Xbox Live. They also recently released the free Kodu Game Lab. This program is meant to be an easy way for people with no development experience to create games, but my time with it so far has been both muddled and uninspiring.
Meanwhile, Sony has captivated budding creators with LittleBigPlanet. This is a platforming game, much like Super Mario Bros. The twist is that the platforming is not the main reason to buy it. No, the big hook is that LittleBigPlanet lets users play with the same tools as the developers to create their own inventive levels. Developer Media Molecule designed the tools so that they are extremely easy to use, and players can quickly upload their levels for other players to download, rank, or even tweak if they are so inclined. With the success of LittleBigPlanet, Sony is applying this formula to next year’s Mod Nation Racers, which will let gamers create and share race tracks, karts, and characters.
Stoking the creativity of gamers may not be directly changing the world for the better, but it is a great step toward banishing the image of video games as having created mindless drones that kill endless waves of enemies for the simple goal of wasting time.
Instead, video games are becoming less of a reactionary medium and more of a participatory medium. Developers can put tools into the hands of players that allow them to become their own personal game developer.
While most people consider the act of “making art” to be limited to traditional methods like painting, sculpting, or writing, this is less and less true as time passes. The more that gaming can tap into the creative part of gamers’ minds, the more it can be seen as a worthwhile activity for people to take part in.
So the next time you pass a person playing a game, do not assume that they are mindlessly whittling away the hours; they may just be creating the next big game. Sure, making games may not be as lofty a goal as curing cancer, but it does make the world a better place for people who want to see what they can build, create, and share.
I would call that a big step forward for gaming.
To find out more about how video games are making the world a better place, read part one, Can Video Games Make the World a Better Place? (Re-Mission and Folding@home). You can find all entries in this series here.