Why do we play video games?

"Frankly, I've been trying to find the answer [to why I love games] for a while.  My "tastes" are so varied, ranging from pure "gameplay catharsis" to story driven to aesthetics/mood pieces [...].  Music and film fills me emotionally, books provide good literature, learning and all, but with games I don't know it feels...  I guess new and full of potential.  The interactivity certainly plays a part of it, but I don't know, I can't explain.  When I see a particular landscape my mind goes to a state of awe." — Found in this Reddit thread and edited for typos

It's September 9, 2014, and we're approaching midnight. People across 178 countries are lined up in front of over 11,000 video game retailers.  Doors will open at exactly midnight — yes, in the middle of the night.  Why?  Because that is when they will legally be allowed to sell copies of the latest game from a gaming studio that is fast becoming legend.  The studio is called Bungie, their new game is Destiny, and it will make over $500M in sales in a single day.

There is a special energy surrounding video games.  Those who play them can sense it in their favourite title.  Those who don't get glimpses of it when they hear stories like the above.  Or when the industry makes the headlines with yet another mind-boggling statistic.  Nearly half of the world plays video games regularly.  We collectively spent somewhere around 750 billion hours playing games last year — that's over 1 million human lifespans.  This used to be a young man's hobby.  No more.  Age doesn't matter.  Gender doesn't matter.  Babies play games on smartphones and tablets before they can walk, grandmothers play them to try and keep their brains sharp, and everybody in-between plays one type of game or another.  The medium clearly took the world by storm.  In 1962, video games were barely more than a few moving pixels on the screens of MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) computers.  By 1983, Trip Hawkins — founder of Electronic Arts — was declaring that a new art form was born.  By then, parents, educators and researchers were already getting worried that far from being a new form of art, this was a dangerous new addiction that was quickly corrupting the minds of young men.  Fast forward to today, and that debate is still very much alive.  Games are literally addictive according to WHO (World Health Organization), which officially added Gaming Disorder to its list of psychological pathologies in 2019.  Except that others disagree, like senior researcher van Rooij who immediately published a rebuttal in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions arguing that this new diagnosis stood on shaky ground: borrowed thoughtlessly from substance addiction, likely to pathologize healthy gaming, and to fuel a moral panic as a result.  On the other side of the aisle, you have people like Bavelier and Green publishing research claiming that playing games can have real benefits for major cognitive skills, things like selective attention, executive control, and even general learning speed.

So which is it?  Drug?  Or a new art form that, at its best, nourishes the mind in the way Beethoven's 5th Symphony and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel can?  That very question was on my mind before I even knew it would be possible for me to bring my cognitive science and research skills to the video games industry, and in the past 15 years I think it fair to say that it has been my most consuming area of professional interest.  I have read nearly every research paper I could get my hands on.  Watched every conference talk and read multiple books from industry leaders.  And for 15 years I have been sitting down to have people tell me all about their favourite games, sometimes for a whole hour — something which I still consider to be an immense pleasure and privilege.

This essay is dedicated to exactly this question.  To answer it, however, will require much more than a single post.  Not only because this is my first blog ever and I need time to warm up to the writing (I definitely do); but also because I believe the medium deserves better than the kind of answers and attention it is currently getting.  I believe that the magic feeling we get from our favourite games is more than a hypnotizing spectacle.  I truly believe — and I was writing essays about this when still in college — that video games as a medium hold an immense potential that we've barely begun to discover.

I propose, then, to start from the very beginning of my own journey: what would you find, today, if you were to look for an answer to why people so love to play video games?

A new art form?  You want games that make you cry.

One of the fiercest advocates for video games as an art form — and someone regarded by many as a creative genius — is Hideo Kojima.  He is perhaps most well known as the mind behind Metal Gear, a series of games spanning eight major titles that occupied the lion's share of his career for over 25 years.  Kojima is also unusually outspoken and articulate among successful developers, which may have something to do with his passion for film and writing.  He calls video games a "sōgō geijutsu" — a "total art form".  A concept coined in Germany (as best as I can ascertain) in the mid-1800s by such greats as Richard Wagner, it denotes a creation that tries to integrate as many art forms as possible (music, visual arts, performance, literature, architecture, etc.).  More specifically however, Kojima argues that games are unique among sōgō geijutsu in how much they rely on the dynamic interplay between the game and the player.  The player doesn't merely experience the work of art, they literally complete it through play — much like how, in the story by poet Rumi, a polished Greek wall reflecting a Chinese mural did not merely mirror it, but made it come alive with added vibrancy and a shimmering dynamism.

It may be tempting to write off this high view of video games as relevant only to one of the industry's elites, reflecting on his work while approaching the end of a long and distinguished career.  Except that, not only are his views shared by a large number of the most prominent developers across the world, they are arguably at the very root of the explosive success of the industry as a whole.  In 1983, games like Pac-Man were thriving in arcades while the home console market was crashing after too many low-quality games flooded the market.  Most people assumed video games would find their market in the classroom.  In 1983, you had to be hungry and foolish to invest your time and money in a home video game studio.  You had to be doubly foolish to post a full-page recruitment ad in a newspaper that asked: "Can a computer make you cry?".  Truly, you had to be out of your mind to claim that computers had an "enormous potential" and that video games, of all things, were going to be the type of software that fulfilled this potential — becoming "software worthy of the minds that use it".  You had to be young, hungry and foolish like Trip Hawkins, who posted this ad on behalf of Electronic Arts, a company he invested his personal savings into just a year earlier.  And yes: computers can now make people cry.  EA may have had the most iconic ad, but its views weren't the exception.  Many of the industry's giants, from Activision to Blizzard and Nintendo, share similar roots in the passion for games and the belief in developers as artists.  It's widely accepted — or at least it was — that the industry we know today was built by people with a deep passion for the medium; something I can personally vouch for after working with many talented and passionate people at Ubisoft and Electronic Arts, and hearing first-hand their experiences through the 1990s and 2000s.

Games obviously vary wildly in scope and richness, across platforms, genres and developers.  To those who have felt the magic in a particular game however, the passion and creativity of its developers is undeniable.  Why, then, do so many conversations about games nowadays feel like they're about some dangerous substance invading the minds of the young and vulnerable as if we're talking about drugs flowing through the streets?

The fall from grace.  Your brain has been hijacked.

The idea that video games are addictive has experienced a surge in popularity in recent years, as more and more game studios across mobile, PC and console seem to have mastered the applied science of conditioning people's drive and emotions.  There's still debate among psychiatrists and psychologists about exactly what should define video game addiction, or indeed whether gaming is even a new form of addiction.  Nevertheless, it's become hard to argue with the phenomenon at large when players themselves voluntarily seek therapy to help with their problematic gaming habits.  Read Cam Adair's story or watch his TEDx talk if you want a particularly touching and nuanced account.

Believe it or not, however, we didn't need any of the modern — and sometimes mind-blowingly intricate — reward and appointment mechanics of games like World of Warcraft and Destiny 2 to cause a general panic.  Parts of the industry might have shifted focus from passionate craftsmanship to behavioural engineering, but there were already reports of psychiatric complications due to video games back in 1982.  Because of Space Invaders.  Yes, this Space Invaders.  These men reported "fantasizing about [the game] before falling asleep" and one even "delayed his honeymoon excursion for an hour" because of it.  Things were getting out of hand, fast.  And researchers rose to meet the new challenge.  Video games were making people violent, depressed, anxious and lonely.  There is plenty of research out there that supports these views.  And also plenty that contradicts them.  Over 40 years later and not only do we lack a general model for how, when and why video games might harm people, we can't even settle the debate on whether games cause the harm in the first place or are merely used to cope with difficult situations.  To make things even more interesting, we'll see in a little while that some research even suggests games can have a positive impact on one's well-being.

Perhaps because the overall question remains so complex and unclear, then, many prominent public figures have moved from games as addictive to games as a complete waste of time.

Admit it: you're just wasting your time.

Among internet figures discussing the impact video games have on our mind, few are more prominent than Andrew Huberman and Jordan Peterson.  Andrew Huberman is a neuro-ophthalmologist by training and taught neuroscience at Stanford for several years.  Jordan Peterson had a long career as both a practitioner and professor of clinical psychology at the University of Toronto.  In recent years, both have gathered large audiences on social media, producing podcast- and interview-style video content that very often focuses on psychological well-being.  Both have been repeatedly asked for their opinions on video games.  And both share, to a large extent, the same view.  A view which shows that the debate has, in fact, evolved over time, since it sits somewhere between "games are addictive" and "games are an art form" (though admittedly much closer to the former).  It also fails to incorporate some very significant facts about video games specifically and games in general — strangely so if you ask me, given that both figures rely heavily on scientific literature to inform their opinions.

In short: games do turn out to be exceedingly good at delivering certain very meaningful experiences, but they do so in a way that completely robs these experiences of any real value to you.  I say this at least begins to rescue the "games are an art form" idea because it goes beyond games as a mere drug or channel for pent-up aggression.  Video games don't just create the illusion of progress by delivering dopamine to the brain, they set up a situation where people legitimately dedicate huge amounts of effort towards acquiring and developing skills, or possibly completing certain projects.  They create rich mythologies that let players enact in vivid detail classic narrative structures, like that of the hero saving the kingdom from the very essence of evil, or the underdog undergoing a rags-to-riches story of epic proportions despite overwhelming odds against them.  We could keep going on.  I might be slightly generous with their own descriptions here, but the real point is this: despite all of the richness and apparent meaningfulness of some of our gaming experiences, none of it amounts to anything.  Never mind that one might spend hours staring at a black canvas in New York's Museum of Modern Art.  Never mind also the (otherwise excellent) nearly 2-hour lecture Huberman will give you on the power of play.  Or Peterson's insistence on the power of stories — including those in books and movies.  The time you spent playing and replaying NieR: Automata was a complete waste of time.

These are people whose exposure to games is primarily through their patients.  That said, as men of science I would have expected them to at least try and get the whole story.  And there is definitely more to this particular story.

A redemption story on the horizon?  Games satisfy basic human needs.

We come, finally, to one of my favourite topics.  The surprisingly recent idea that games might fulfill some basic and important psychological needs.  I say surprisingly because the idea that play itself is important is comparatively much older.  Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder worked for decades to establish how crucial play was in psychological development.  Piaget's most famous book on the topic was published in 1951 — a whole 30 years before video games became mainstream.  Even the specific theory that would be applied to games (Self-Determination Theory or SDT) had been popular since 1985.  Yet it wasn't until 2006 that anyone tried to ask whether video games might actually contribute to well-being.  But that 2006 paper by Ryan, Rigby and Przybylski did not disappoint.

In what is almost certainly still the most widely cited paper on this topic, the authors shared a series of studies with impressive scope.  They demonstrated that need satisfaction could predict enjoyment and desire to play.  They showed that different games can satisfy each need differently.  And that different players may "get" something different from the same game.  They connected need satisfaction by games with short-term well-being (in the form of vitality, self-esteem and mood).  They showed that need satisfaction was a better predictor of many of these outcomes than players' overt motives — things like a desire for achievement, socializing or immersion.  Their results even suggested that playing for the "wrong" reasons leads to a drop in well-being.  All while publishing a questionnaire (a validated scientific instrument required for good research) that is still in use 20 years later.

So, does that mean the debate is finally settled?  I'm afraid not.  Despite what I still consider to be a huge breakthrough in the field, relatively little progress has been made in the 20 years since its publication.  Some meaningful work has been done, to be sure; notably by a group of researchers comprising Johannes, Magnusson, Przybylski and Vuorre.  One study confirmed that games can enhance well-being in the very short-term, especially for more casual games and players.  Another — surveying over 38,000 players — showed little to no overall effect of video games on well-being when looking across different games and players.  These results are important to move the academic research forward, though I suspect they will do very little to silence the critics of those who worry about the the widespread influence of games.  Most importantly, none of this provides any guidance to players, parents and therapists who want to make space for the magic that video games can deliver, while guarding against their worse aspects.  And it is not just conclusive results that are lacking.  We have yet to see a single study that takes into account how well players are able to meet their own needs outside of games, and how that changes how gaming fits in their life.  We have barely even begun to come up with the vocabulary for how to talk about games in this way.

This is a lukewarm place to end, to say the least.  Thankfully, we are not yet done with our review — and the real seed of hope might be just around the corner.

Learning to take the corner: fun games with serious results.

The Need for Speed games were among my favourite as a teenager.  The ultra-high speed police pursuits.  The jaw-dropping vistas.  The beautifully detailed cars.  One of my particularly salient memories with the franchise had me driving at high speed on a highly picturesque road winding up and down what must have been a European mountain range.  Then, as I was about to take my next turn, the game suddenly paused for a tutorial: to take a corner with maximum speed, it informed me, I should brake from the opening to the apex of the turn, then accelerate again.  I'm not even sure I had taken my first driving class at the time, yet that tutorial still influences how I drive today.  In fact, the research of the past 20 years suggests that all of the time I've spent playing simulation racing games almost certainly made me a better driver overall.  It definitely helped me win more than one go-kart race.

Play and learning are so deeply intertwined that it becomes equally easy to dismiss the fact as trivial, as it is to elevate it as one of the grandest ideas.  In the games industry, Raph Koster is known for defending the idea that it is the very process of learning that makes games satisfying; a game that hooks us is one that constantly presents us with new patterns that are just difficult enough to learn.  In his book — A Theory of Fun for Game Design — he also argues that this aspect of games can be elevated into an art form.  A very similar idea (coincidentally or not) was shared by historian Johan Huizinga in his 1938 book Homo Ludens: play is a powerful biological drive that predates, and indeed is partially responsible for, the development of human culture itself.  Legendary writer Leo Tolstoy (author of War and Peace) famously argued in "What is Art?" that what we call art might be totally useless — harmful even — entertainment, or it can be used to heal and develop our minds in a way nothing else can.  More recently, game designers like Jane McGonigal and Jonathan Blow actively seek to engage with the medium at this high level.  Which brings us back to where we started: art.  What is art?  Beyond the obvious aspects of expression, skill and beauty, why do art and culture have this strange allure of something intangible that nevertheless holds the promise of immense power?  What role do they play, how does that relate to education, and can games truly fill that role?  These may be daunting questions.  Yet I firmly believe they are the right questions to ask if we can approach them in a way that's fruitful.

Let's start from the beginning.  Play is a fundamental biological drive most (if not all) mammals share.  As kids it's how we learn about the world.  In its essence, play is a state of mind in which we agree to be bound by somewhat arbitrary rules.  Aggression is unleashed and bound at the same time, such that the pup stops biting as soon as it feels the pressure between its jaws.  A round bouncy object becomes a thing we must put at the back of the net at all costs — a clear example that play can be quite serious and high stakes.  Indeed, the athletes we admire the most (think Michael Jordan or Lionel Messi) are often those who stay playful even when the stakes are highest.  Play is also how we learn new crafts and professions: we watch, we engage in pretend play, we learn to emulate.  Then, in the best of cases, we experiment — we "play" around — to discover new techniques and push the whole craft forward.  Artists and intellectuals invite us to play with them through their work: to play with their ideas in your mind until they make sense.  Scientists play the scientific game to discover new models and technologies.  The greatest games might be turned into rituals — historically, we often see the same group take responsibility for culture, education, wisdom, healing and religion.  This was still true until very recently, with for example learning institutions in the West overwhelmingly run by Christian priests.  We quite literally play through life; sometimes to learn, sometimes to communicate, and sometimes — it is true — merely to distract ourselves.

This — in a way — is as valid a summary of how video games relate to learning in modern societies as I could give you.  Minecraft has been used in classrooms ever since it was released.  Computer simulations are used to train pilots, and you can learn how to operate almost any plane through video games.  Surgeons who operate through robotic surgery seem to perform better if they've been playing video games regularly.  Someone designed a game (called SPARX) that can teach kids to manage negative thoughts and emotions.  Another teaches people about cyber-security.  Games can lead to scientific discoveries.  People who play video games are sometimes shown to have greater creativity than those who use computers and mobiles for other activities.  A study noticed that playing games can boost learning speed in unrelated tasks.  Playing games seems to protect against dementia, similar to how cognitive activities in general might slow cognitive decline.  And in what must surely be the Grand Finale of all video game achievements (or should I say the final boss?), players are having serious discussions about games and transcendent spiritual experiences — all while academics write on the deep relationships between games and religion.  Yet, the most comprehensive review ever published on the topic concluded that no amount or type of game has any impact on cognition whatsoever — all we find is placebo effects and other biases.  How is that possible?

The crux of the challenge is most often called "transfer".  That is: can learning or improvements in one activity transfer to another, seemingly unrelated activity?  This is still a hotly debated topic in many fields of research.  There is a classic 1983 study showing that stories can transfer learning through analogies, especially when people were first provided with two concrete examples plus supporting instructions.  Then there are reviews like the above stating that "the lack of generalization of skills acquired by training is thus an invariant of human cognition." The real problem?  Almost nobody is working with an actual scientific model that describes when and how learning and development take place.  An astonishingly large number of studies — the majority in fact — mash together games of all types played by people of all backgrounds for arbitrary amounts of time in arbitrary conditions of play, then ask whether there is measurable growth in the most general and difficult-to-train cognitive abilities they can think of.  All with the appearance of the utmost scientific rigor and frontier-level thinking.  Nobody I could find even has such a model, that is true; but this does not explain why researchers skip the problem rather than address it.

I deem it extremely reasonable to think that in the best of times, we do choose to play games because they stimulate our senses, challenge our cognition and develop our sensitivities on many levels.  Whether video games turn out to be a curse or a boon for you personally — and for society as a whole — is not a question to be settled through empirical research. It is one that will be settled by our own choices as players, artists and technologists.

The important answers come after the right questions

So, why do we so love to play video games?  That question, as we've seen, gets a lot of different answers.  The point, however, is not about deciding who's right; and it goes much deeper than merely "it depends".  The powerful influence of video games doesn't require any proof.  The material above has, hopefully, made it clear that games have the potential to profoundly impact our lives for the better.  That potential, I believe, is the true question most people have on their mind when they ask "the question" about video games.  Why are some people so passionate about games?  Should we take games seriously as both art and educational tool?  What we really want to find out is what the potential of games is, and how we can avail ourselves of that potential.  That is the question that the true artists and pioneers in the field are posing to us, the question that the industry as a whole appears to have gradually moved away from in the past decade, and the question which this blog is intended to explore.

That question demands a much deeper and broad understanding of games than what is currently available.  It demands a general model of how people interact with video games.  One that takes into account the relevant characteristics of the player, of the game, and of the circumstances surrounding their play.  It is only a structured and grounded understanding of this sort that can help people decide what and how they play, help parents guide and support their gaming children, and help researchers actually make sense of the sometimes inconsistent and confusing results of their experiments.

From a ship shooting bobbing aliens and two paddles ricocheting a pixelated ball back and forth, we have arrived at persistent online worlds, inhabited by millions of players, who organize themselves in complex social institutions, complete with their own cultural norms and trade-based economies.  Games might be the most powerful psycho-technology humanity has ever invented.  I wish that my work might make some small contribution to what we all take away from them.

Stay playful,

Vincent