GDC Report: Stretching Beyond Entertainment

It is not often that you can find Peter Molyneux, Will Wright, and Lorne Lanning within five feet of each other, but that’s exactly what happened at this year’s Game Developer Conference. The industry icons assembled for a roundtable discussing the topic of video games and their responsibility to society. As with most GDC panels, an hour is simply not enough time to let these visionaries flap their wings. The moderator, Rusel DeMaria, alone took up twenty minutes simply talking about how little time they had, and of course shamelessly plugging his books.      

The first question was whether or not the developers believed they had a moral responsibility to gamers. DeMaria demanded each panelist only give a yes or no answer, to which Fable creator Peter Molyneaux jokingly replied, “Yes and no.” From there the discussion branched out in to each of the panelists’ personal experiences and memorable input they’ve received about their games over the years.   

Lorne Lanning, famed creator of the Oddworld series, recalled his choice to include a bad ending where Abe, the game’s protagonist, would perish if the player failed to rescue at least fifty of the slave Mudokens. Most players are unlikely to achieve the good ending on their first try, therefore reaching the end of the game only to learn that they doomed the character they had been playing as from the very start. The Oddworld publisher was hesitant to punish players in such a way, expecting a negative backlash, however Lorne said that he received a number of emails stating that was the first time a game had actually affected the person playing it. One mother said that whenever her eight-year-old son started killing Mudokens, her five-year-old would unplug the PlayStation controller.  

Spore and Sims developer Will Wright confessed to Molyneux that the first time he ever felt guilty in a game was when he beat his creature in Black & White to see what would happen. He realized that guilt was an experience exclusive to video games; something movies and books had never achieved.

Throughout the panel, each of the panelists’ similar feelings towards video games as a serious means of childhood education were brought to light. Former Electronic Arts Chief Creative Officer Bing Gordon specifically championed the idea, saying that more games and less schoolroom classes are needed. He cited World of WarCraft as a superior way of learning leadership and The Sims for storytelling/writing. Lanning backed this up by saying the government should include games in their budget. This would allow developers to create better titles and help teach kids through a medium they are already readily susceptible to.

The thought of video games as an integral part of educational curriculum is a compelling thought, yet it was only briefly touched upon in the extremely limited time allotted. Just as things were really getting going, the panel was ended abruptly with dozens of GDC attendees’ questions left unanswered. Considering the hefty price tag for GDC admission and the fact that the panels are often the reason industry people from all over the world are willing to pay it, future panels such as this one should be moderated more efficiently and given much more time to give all involved their money’s worth.