Interesting read in the NY Times recently, noting a common theme among many successful commercial games: the ability to connect gameplay to certain aspects of physical reality. This comment, in particular, caught my eye:
Elves and fairies and dragons are all well and good — see World of Warcraft — but as the top game designers in the world begin to have children and enter middle age, I am sensing much more willingness and ability to bring the real world into top-end game experiences. And as the players and their tastes mature, many great games may come to feel less like escapist fantasies and more like creative riffs on reality.
Indeed, one of the knocks on ‘edutainment’ in the past has been that the focus on fantasy left players lacking empathy and games, themselves, lacking relevance. I am curious to see what kinds of riffs these designers play, and how it will help make serious games effective.
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