Video Games Go Boom Part 1

Video Games Go Boom is a series of opinion articles focused on various aspects of video game culture and the future of video games as entertainment. If you came here from a search engine, be sure to read the previous installments before continuing.

• Part 0 - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6

Everybody likes games, right? As children we played hopscotch, football, basketball, Tic-Tac-Toe, checkers, Go Fish, etc. As we grow older our more developed brains crave sophisticated entertainment. Enter video games, the world's first scalable form of gaming that can meet the needs of both adults and children.

But wait a second. If video games can be for everyone, why does only a small percentage of the world seem interested? It's a one word answer: simplicity.

What Defines a Video Game

To know what a video game is means you must first know what a game is. Games involve several concepts, the most basic of which are rules, choices (which contains strategy, chance and randomness), and rewards. One of the simplest games around, Tic-Tac-Toe, uses all of these concepts:

• Rules: One player is "X", the other "O". They take turns placing one of their shapes within the grid. The first one to have a row/column of three wins.
• Choices: You can place your shape anywhere on the board.
• Rewards: Drawing a line through your row of characters.

The same holds true for video games. Take Tetris for example:

• Rules: Slide and rotate the game pieces to create horizontal rows.
• Choices: Where on earth are you going to put that piece?
• Rewards: Completing lines; points; advancing to more difficult levels.

It's an over-simplified way of looking at it, but it serves for the scope of this article.

Now take those ideas and fit them into a game like Halo or Final Fantasy 7. It's more difficult, as the principles aren't as clear-cut in these blockbusters. The rules, rewards and choices are constantly shifting. As you're carried through the story, your brain must keep track of more information in order to feel satisfied. As we will see below, most people don't want to bother with all that work. In fact, most people's brains aren't trained for these games.

Video Games and Our Brains

Playing games, taking chances and gaining rewards are all a part of the structure of the human brain. The risk-reward loop releases chemicals that we will simply refer to as "the good stuff". Playing a game -- any game, not just video games -- initiates this cycle and causes your brain to let loose these chemicals of goodness.

So why aren't video games mainstream if playing games is a normal activity? A simple answer to a simple question: complexity. Video games are a hybrid form of gaming/entertainment/media that's still very new to human development. We've been pushing rocks around with sticks since day one. But put a controller in our hands and something different occurs. Something is between the gamer and the game, adding one level of complexity to the cycle of getting the good stuff.

Today's breed of games are chock-full of visuals, complex storylines, strange control mechanisms and other barriers of entry to non-gamers. Anyone can pick up a stick and play baseball, but how many people can pick up a controller and play a baseball video game? For seasoned gamers whose brains are well-trained in the ways of video games, complicated methods are often necessary to stimulate yummy chemicals. For others who rarely play games, all that's necessary is a game of Tic-Tac-Toe. Why go to the trouble of learning how to play a strange, abstract game when you can just play checkers?

The Next Article

Gamers vs. non-gamers. They're two separate groups. Though the lines are a little more blurry in real-life, the video games industry sees the consumer as just that.. In the next article we will take a look at the business behind video games. How did this self-feeding industry get so large with such a small population of consumers?

Article Navigation

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• Part 0: Introduction
• Part 1: Gamers and Non-Gamers
• Part 2: The Video Games Industry
• Part 3: Sony
• Part 4: Microsoft
• Part 5: Nintendo
• Part 6: Outroduction