gamestate

Something keeps pulling me back to the idea of audience in regards to serious games.  Serious games are made with a specific, often educational, purpose in mind which implies that this purpose can either be met or not.  The game succeeds or fails.  So when your audience is an active collaborater in the creation of the game text, how do you as the developer ensure that your goals will be met?  How do you account for the audience’s subjective reading of the game’s rules?  To even begin answering these questions, I think that the audience needs to be defined. Ian Bogost makes a compelling argument for the ways in which advergames, game created to host a procedural rhetoric about the claims of a product or service (simulations), effectively engage players, yet glosses over who these players are and why they would be playing advergames in the first place.  In disregarding audience, I feel that he misses a critical component of the argument he is mounting: that advergames “represent significant progress in advertising” (214)

Bogost posits that this space between the game’s rules and the player’s subjectivity - what he calls a simulation gap - is what makes advergames a potentially progressive force in the advertising world. This gap is the equivalent of what Artistotle would call a procedural enthymeme - an argument (stated through participating in a process) with either one of its premises or conclusions is unexpressed but assumed.  For instance, in the game Friskars Prune to Win, players (gardeners) are asked to work with four different types of tools in pruning a simulated garden.  The basic premises put forth: Friskars makes many quality tools, all tools presented are necessary for gardening, therefore all the Friskars tools are necessary for gardening.  It is a simple premise but becomes particularly effective by allowing the player to map out a representation of their garden at home, then work through the process of pruning this representative garden.  So, the conclusion that all Friskars tools are necessary for gardening is mediated by the customer to become, yes, all Friskars tools are useful, these two or three are most useful for me.

In traditional advertising this enthymeme might be put forth, but results in what Judith Williamson calls a “cut out” space.  To Williamson, advertisers dupe potential customers into entering this space, yet unlike the simulation gap, there is no room to engage and negotiate with the product.  The conclusion cannot be mediated - advertisers assume a foregone conclusion, you need this product or service.

Why does this matter?  Advertising is all about the endgame - getting the customer to purchase the product or service.  Does the means matter?  According to Bogost, it does.  I also agree.  By allowing the potential customer to reject, accept, or further interpret the product, the advertisers are creating a “real” relationship between product and customer. This argument is convincing especially when I transfer the act of playing through a simulation to the real world equivalent of testing out a product first hand. I can see how it feels in my hands, imagine how it could fit in my life.  Allowing me to make a better decision engenders a better feeling toward the product and company.

Again, I ask the question, does the means matter?  To advertisers, maybe not….but it should.

This brings me back to the audience.  In our media-saturated culture, audiences have advanced to the point of becoming tired and distrustful of advertising.  They no longer accept the intrusion of advertising in their programming.  Migration to cable, pay-per-view, Tivo, internet and Netflix have left advertisers scrambling to hold onto their markets.  Commercial messages are unavoidable, but maybe consumers are regaining control.  For now, most advertising dollars are spent on television ads, highlighting the fact that advertisers are behind the trend - more people are getting online.  In a report issued by the Yankee Group, the Internet makes up 20% of media consumption, while ad agencies only spend 7.5% of their budget to reach this group.

How can advertisers engage with an audience in an online space?  The internet is perceived as free space where the intrusion of advertising (i.e. popups, banners) is less welcome.  A consumer is free to browse and essentially create their own individualized content.  This ownership is what makes advergames a compelling tool to be used in online spaces.  The interactive element of the game allows customers to engage with the product in a highly individual way - they are co-authors of the text being created.  As they own the content they are creating online, they also own the narrative that is being created about the advertised product.

But, it is this ownership, this subjectivity that is part of what makes serious games hard for to take seriously (groan, I know).  As a developer, or in the case of this posting, advertiser, you have to give up control of the information being processed.  This subjectivity on the part of the player is scary - the fact that a potential customer can interact with your product, question it’s value and reject it is scary.  I noticed I haven’t answered my own question about authorship and goals, but I still believe looking at who the audience is, what they want, will help make inroads into this question.  For advertisers, understanding how people want to relate to their media and the corresponding shifts in media consumption is pivitol to creating media messages that speak to their audience.

Please note:  I didn’t realize until after I completed this post, that I unintentionally focused on internet games and completely disregarded video games as advergames.  This omission is telling not only about my lack of familiarity with video games, but also highlights the fact that I still don’t understand why people would voluntarily play serious games for explicit educational or other non-entertainment purposes.  Entertainment, and profit, seem like important draws.

References: Webpro News TechCrunch TNS Media Intelligence ADWEEK Media Outlook