Why do we play games?
- allazarr
- Nov 6, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 2, 2021
The video game industry wasn't so populated with exciting titles till the late 1970s. The market was not familiarised with the concept of gaming and the reasons behind playing anything at all.
However, the first video game was released in 1958 by Physicist William Higinbotham. The gaming market had a significant break after this revolution till as I mentioned earlier 1970s. At that moment companies saw a potential profit in this new evolving market and started investing money and resources in the new technologies.
From that moment the arcade era started with the first release named "Computer Space" in 1971.
This entire history lesson does not answer our question, Why do we play games?
A study made by Nick Yee shows the existence of 3 major reasons we play games. The complexity of each game we can see today or the simplicity of the games from 50 years ago is resuming to those 3 factors.
1. The achievement component.
Each game has a mechanical structure which has as a foundation an achievement system. This can be easily translated as the purpose of the game. The players need to defeat a level to advance to the next one or to collect a certain number of points to advance in the storyline. This system keeps the players engaged and keen to solve all the puzzles and to get to the finish line.
2. The social component
This component is concentrating on bringing people together and creating competition. Simple gamification techniques as scores are implemented in a ranking system (leaderboard) to create an additional challenge between the players. Also, this component is the one that creates communities around games and applications that can keep hundreds or even thousands of people connected together. Another very powerful element of this component is the ability of cooperative tasks. The freedom of completing different tasks with your friends can release a high amount of dopamine. The ability to chat, collaborate, and win can give a significant boost of competitivity to any application.
3. The Immersion component
This component is frequently seen in the newer titles than the old ones. The immersion occurs when you can totally relate to the character you are playing with. As much control you have over the character, the better. The AAA game productions in the last time have introduced the ability to customize the character and the story that you are playing. The player has totally freedom over the look of the character and the decisions that he is taking. This type of technique is known as non-linear storytelling. The game gives the freedom of choice from multiple pathways with eventually the same or multiple endings. Titles as Assassin's Creed, Detroit Became Human, and Witcher have implemented these mechanics which adds a boost of immersion to the story.
Summering everything, the game industry is evolving fast with more and more titles every year. To get an understanding of the market, in 2004 on Steam (game platform) only 7 games were released. On the same platform in 2019, 8.290 were released. The technology became more and more accessible and easy to use. Any startup company can now create a game in weeks or months where in the past a game was released in 2-3 years of production.
Games are becoming more accessible, immersive, and engaging, and we, consumers, are simply trapped in their immersion.
コメント