Video Game Positivity
My children, 5 and 6.5 years old, enjoy video games. They both have an assortment of games for their Wii, Nintendo DS, Leapster, and various family computer games. Over the last couple of years of watching, helping, and reviewing games with them, I have a request of the video game industry based on some of my observations
Observation: Both of my children experienced disappointment, frustration, and a depressed feeling on occasion due to the video games. This includes age-appropriate, E-rated games targeted at their age from the big names in the industry (Disney, etc). What seemed to be causing these feelings is what I can describe as “negativity” the games were portraying. In pretty much all of the games, if the player did not come in first or accomplish some goal, there was an environment of negativity portrayed on the screen which had a profound impact on their experience. For example, on one racing game, less than a first place finish resulted in your toon hanging its head down, kicking the ground, while depressing music plays and audio clips boo the player and state quite forcefully, “You Lose!”. Statements like “I'm a looser”, “I hate this game”, and “Dad, will you help me so I will not be boo'ed” were often issued by my kids after this treatment a few times. After talking to them about it and additional observation, it became clear that it wasn't the fact that they hadn't come in first that bother them, it was negative sensory input that was being produced which was affecting their emotional state and enjoyment of the game.
Request to game industry: Create a “positivity” option in all E and under 12 year old targeted games. Feel free to
The goal of the request is to make changes in the game behavior when “positivity” mode is enabled, removing all the negative media experiences and comments while the mode is enabled. This would allow parents to enable this mode for smaller kids or kids that have demonstrated negative impacts from the standard mode of gameplay, while preserving the “normal” mode of reinforcement for more mature children, adults, etc.
For most video games, I believe adding the “positivity mode” would be a fairly simple affair. For the end-of-event score and feedback screen, simply have 2 different sets of media which, one “normal” and one “positivity”. When the end-of-event is entered, the game chooses the media to play based on the positivity settings. It may be acceptable to still have gradations of positivity, so that a better score receives more pomp and glamour. Even if the player does poorly, in positivity mode, the game should show a toon with some level of positive image and some form of encouraging or positive music and speech.
Additional options that may require a little more investment:
- In positivity mode, simply don’t keep score, or use some more abstract form of scoring.
- In positivity mode, track the player performance on successive plays of the event and make positive reinforcement when the player demonstrates improvement.
- In positivity mode, multiplayer scores are added together instead of being used to determine a winner against the human players. Players can still play in somewhat of an adversarial mode, but adding the scores may create different objectives in the game. A very good example of positive multiplayer is the “teamwork” games in Outdoor Challenge for the Wii.
So there is the request. I encourage the video game industry to seriously consider it. I will happy direct my purchasing behavior to games that implement a “positivity mode” or has a more positive gameplay experience.
-- CsB
Posts
