Why, exactly, do we play videogames?

It’s a difficult question, and one to which different gamers (and game developers) would provide different answers. Traditionally, though, most of these answers would be focused on the concept of accomplishment. In videogames we face some specific and usually significant challenge in order to accomplish some goal. And once we accomplish said goal, we gain one or more rewards for our efforts. The bigger the challenge faced, and the more impressive the accomplishment, the better the rewards that are gained.

Accomplishment versus Experience

The seemingly simple principle of rewarding accomplishment has formed the basis of game design, specifically in genres such as the Action-Adventure, for as long as we can remember. But as of late there have been developers who have questioned this approach. During the previous console generation, a game designer by the name of Fumito Ueda, working for Sony Japan Studios, released two games that went wholly against the grain. Instead of focusing on providing hefty challenges and rewarding accomplishment, ICO and Shadow of the Colossus were focused on the experience of playing the game. The Ueda approach is also quite simple: should the gaming experience be sufficiently rich and immersive and unique, then the player will already be richly rewarded, and it simply becomes no longer necessary to provide some hefty challenge. These two games demonstrated that a game does not always have to be an endurance contest, or a race, or a tournament. Sometimes, a game can be a poem, or a ballet, or an opera. In short, it demonstrated beyond any doubt that videogames can indeed be art, instead of merely entertainment.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Prince of Persia.