So, after I quit, one of the things I’d intended to do was write a design for a Flash game where you shoot a person, and watch them die. The point would be that on its face, it would look like a traditional FPS, and every indication, from the context, would indicate that what you should do is shoot the person coming at you. But no, they’re just a regular schmoe, and it’s you who’s got it all wrong, wandering around downtown with a machine gun. You’d only get to shoot thie one person, though, and you would see the consequences of your actions. You’d see the agonizing death you’ve put this person through, you’d see his (let’s assume it’s a man) family grieve, you’d see his children grow up without a father, you’d see the financial burden their family goes through, and watch how you’ve destroyed not just this one “real” person’s life, but how their death impacts those around them.

The point would simply be that death in videogames is not at all like death in real life, and how screwed up can be, simply because FPS’s have trained you to respond in a particular way to certain stimulus.

(As an aside, I’m *not* talking about losing the distinction between fantasy and reality – I’m talking about seeing a few simple indicators, and believing that because you’ve got a certain number of visual cues, that you assume that what you’re supposed to do is shoot an innocent person.)

Of course, I haven’t followed through on that at all, mostly because the bulk of the work is in the art, and I’m not a good artist.

However, the thought occurred to me last night, in a pretty convoluted chain. Went something like this:

* One day, I’ll have kids.
* They’ll probably eventually start asking me questions about stuff.
* I probably won’t know some of that stuff.
* My dad always seemed to know the answer to anything I asked him.
* I wonder if all the stuff he’d read at night, in his leisure time, was like the teacher’s answer key to life, the universe, and everything?
* Still, reading during leisure time, you get smarter.
* What do you get from playing games?

So, there’s a huge subset of books that are written to transfer information, or educate a person on something. Maybe that’s a person’s view of the world, or it’s a book on some new research, or it’s a philosophical tome, or whatever. There’s a lot of books that even I read in my leisure time that I’d consider “educational” instead of simply “fun.” But they’re STILL fun to read, and I seek them out because I’m interested in spending my leisure time reading something interesting.

But games are so focused on “fun,” to the exclusion of all else. Will people buy it? Is it FUN enough? But books and movies don’t only trade on fun, they trade on entertainment, which isn’t *purely* fun. So, a couple games come to mind, when thinking about this – Oregon Trail, Sim City, and Shadow of the Colossus (which I still haven’t finished, so please don’t spoil it in the comments).

Oregon Trail was fun – it was fun to make decisions, and see the unexpected consequences of those decisions. Sim City taught me a lot about city planning that I still see reflected in the various places I visit. Shadow of the Colossus wasn’t “fun” so much as “epic,” and by simply focusing on evoking a different reaction in the player, it breaks from the mainstream.

The thing is, I remember more from Sim City and Oregon Trail than I do from almost *anything else* I learned in the same period. Both games were fantastically addictive and interesting, but not because they were *fun,* but because they challenged some part of my brain that most people have stopped challenging with games. I want to go to a game store, and pick up a game that gives me an experience I cannot have otherwise. Maybe I’m a palentologist, or an astronaut, or I’m living in Iraq, during the current war. Use the interactivity to show me something I can’t otherwise see. Teach me something. Challenge my assumptions. Break the conventional wisdom.

This is something I’d like to do, in games. I don’t have the slightest idea how, but it’s a conscious focus of every design I write, and one day, I hope to figure it out, at least in some small part.