Let's talk about Values Throughout the Game Space. Values are important because a lot of our discussions about games deal with values,
violence in videogames, tropes with women in video games, Gamergate.
These are all discussions about values because they're about what people find important.
Violence is bad, so why is it in the games we play? Why are game characters oversexualized? Why is this game so politically correct?
It turns out there's a handy framework to guide some of these discussions, and it's called Values at Play.
Values at Play has been expanded into a whole bunch of other frameworks:
ethical game design, empathy game design, anti-oppressive game design, and many others.
They're really useful if you are trying to look at specific values and if you're looking at design.
But what about values more broadly? How do they interface with development or publication, for example?
The Game Space model is really useful for looking at this because it contains five discrete stages:
Design, Development, Publication, Interaction and Reportage.
This means that it covers the whole game lifecycle from concept all the way through to after play.
First, we have to figure out what values are, though.
This is kind of tricky considering they're inherently linked to what different people find important.
Looking at various definitions, we can get some ideas: Values are abstract, they deal with relationships, motivations, attitudes and traditions.
They can be properties of things or states of affairs, qualities of environments, personal traits, political states, or even grand ideals.
That's a lot. But generally, values tend to eschew specific descriptions for more abstract ones.
Using this, we can provide our own definition: Values of the abstract representation of properties,
actions and motivations used to describe concepts that an individual or group find significant.
Now we can look at the Game Space to see how values integrate into each space.
There are eight game-as components in five spaces. The Design Space deals with concept and ideation.
The Development Space deals with making the game.
The Publication Space deals with publication and the Interaction Space is where the game is actually played.
Finally, the Reportage Space looks at how the game is analysed and critiqued based on how players recall their experience.
There are various ways we can integrate values into the Design Space, but broadly we can separate them into narrative, systems, and presentation.
Values exist in narrative because of how our context is presented. A game by throwing oddly shaped Jews down a well sounds gross, right?
Well, yes, but it's also Tetris. A simple coat of narrative paint can heavily engage players with values.
Systemic integration of values is slightly harder, but it can be done.
Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution inherently highlight the value of physicality, for example.
And Train gained notoriety for being a mechanics driven game where players unknowingly transport people into concentration camps,
highlighting values like power and racism.
Finally, values exist in presentation. Chicory explores the values of well-being,
creativity and expression by having players colour in a black and white world after a character falls into depression.
Values can be integrated into the Development Space when developers consider the kinds of experiences they want to make.
It turns out making personal games can be a useful way to explore and process lived experiences.
As a result, personal game jams are becoming increasingly popular.
These game jams use simple tools like Bitsy to empower marginalised creators to learn about and make games.
When making games, developers need to engage with these experiences and their own values to actually make the game.
It's also becoming increasingly important that developers engage with communities that they portray during development.
It sounds obvious, but this engagement empowers those communities to exercise control over their portrayals.
The developer of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, for example,
consulted with psychiatrists and patients to ensure that their representation of visual and auditory hallucinations and psychosis were accurate.
Values most often appear in the Publication Space with publishers organisational values.
Valve has had a bit of a torrid time with this. They initially claimed their values wouldn't influence the games they published on Steam.
However, this was prior to games like Active Shooter and Rape Day appearing on their service.
Valve has since changed their guidance on the kinds of games they publish on Steam. I wonder why?
Given that kind of controversy, publishers might want to avoid dealing with values.
But the critical success of The Walking Dead Season 1, The Last of Us Part II, Death Stranding and Life is Strange: True Colours
suggest that some players really enjoy playing with values, so publishers might be engaging with values for a while yet.
The Interaction Space deals with how values manifest when a game is played.
This is typically how we think about values in games, and as a result, countless values can manifest depending on the game.
Some of these include empathy: the industry's favourite buzzword for games that make players feel feelings.
Violence: Because the video games and violence debate will seemingly never end.
And well-being, by way of games like Pokémon Go! and other gamified applications.
Players might also intentionally choose to play with values, which can range from basic morality play (like killing the quest giver)
to dark play and positive negative experiences where players intentionally court negative experiences to safety and cathartic to explore their own values.
This often occurs in Live action roleplaying games where play can get particularly transgressive.
Looking at specific values, empathy has recently exploded in popularity.
Games like REAL LIVES allow players to fully embody the perspective of characters from anywhere in the world,
using real world data and tasking players to live their lives.
Extended reality experiences like A Breathtaking Journey also provide unique, immersive experiences for players.
Players take on the role of a refugee in a virtual reality game, augmented with motion platforms, breath sensors,
and scent diffusers to give players new ways to step into others shoes.
Violence as a value is most interesting when looked at through the lens of irony.
Spec Ops: The Line pulls no punches here, and was praised on its release for its unique retelling of a seemingly typical war game narrative.
Similarly, September 12th tasks players with eliminating terrorists in an Arabian marketplace.
Except the explosion radius is so large that you inevitably kill some civilians who become terrorists themselves.
Then for wellbeing, there are things like the Games for Health agenda; games like Pokemon Go! and Zombies Run.
The sector is growing, though, with more games tackling mental health, like Depression Quest (just as fun as it sounds)
and Self-Care, a game in which you stay in bed all day and cuddle your cat. Pure bliss!
Finally, there's the Reportage Space, which deals with all games are analysed and discussed.
Generally, when we talk about values in games, we're talking about pro-social ones:
kindness, sharing, community - things that can make the player better.
And indeed, games can have this effect if they're so designed.
Values-conscious games can also help with processing personal experiences. Depression Quest Players, for example, reported to its developer that playing it encouraged them to seek help,
suggesting that some games could potentially be used as a form of creative arts therapy.
Lastly, the Reprtage Space touches on ideas we brought up at the beginning: discussions of the values that game should or shouldn't embed.
Games might always be criticised for being too sexual, too violent or too offensive, and some people might disagree.
Still, understanding values is important. It allows us to reason that a pig raping a human might be justified in a horror game.
But coercing an African-American protagonist to rape someone in a first person shooter probably isn't.
We can integrate these discussions into the Game Space diagram to create a Taxonomy for Values in Games.
This is really important because it shows that values are everywhere throughout the game lifecycle.
To make this taxonomy more practical, we also present a set of questions that designers,
publishers or players can ask themselves to better understand how their games engage with values.
We then utilise the designer questions to help develop an in-progress game design.
By showcasing the relevance of values at all stages of the game lifecycle for everyone involved,
We can see that values aren't the weird philosophical stuff that stakeholders should avoid,
but rather a core part of games. Considering them in all areas of the game's lifecycle will help move the medium forward.