Jamie Cannon

Let me preface this entry (and its very somber title) with a slightly more lighthearted reference. I was inspired to write about this idea based on a link my friend Andrew recently sent me – Starcraft Origami. Yes, that’s right. Take a moment and enjoy the pictures following the brief introduction. In case you’re unfamiliar with Starcraft, it’s a real-time strategy game originally released by Blizzard (now Activision-Blizzard) in 1998 for the PC. And if you haven’t ever heard of it, I have to assume you’ve definitely never been to Korea. While Starcraft was immensely popular worldwide following its release, it is still incredibly popular in South Korea. Entire television channels (yes, that’s plural) are devoted to showing nothing but professional Starcraft matches. Tournament winners are treated as celebrities. The game’s success was not, as some may have expected, overshadowed by the release of Blizzard’s next RTS, Warcraft III. No, Starcraft had carved a niche in the heart of too many gamers to be replaced so easily. In fact, when I recently signed onto Battle.net (Blizzard’s online gaming support) to play a game with my friends, I noticed an immense number of game rooms and players, even nearly ten years after the game’s release.

So what magical formula did Blizzard follow to create a game that remains popular nearly a decade later? They’re definitely not telling, and their current enterprise World of Warcraft seems to be echoing Starcraft’s success as much as it can (it is a different genre, after all, and Starcraft still has the epic fanbase it has ever had, apparently regardless of the rest of the gaming world). But what’s so special about these games? Is it the complex, well-written storyline present in both? Are Starcraft’s factions balanced more fairly against each other than later RTS games? Is the gameplay easier to understand quickly and therefore hooks the player into realizing its other great strengths? I could go on. The truth is that we’re never going to narrow it down to one specific trait, because despite the great number of other well-written, balanced, easy to get into games that have come out in 10 years, the fact remains that everyone still loves Starcraft. So maybe it’s something special.

This brings me to the real point of this article. As a game designer it is often your job to create a product that one never wants to put down. A game that sucks you in and never lets go. A game that isn’t too complicated for ‘newbies’ but one complex enough to interest industry veterans. In other words, the perfect game. (I find it interesting that, technically speaking, Starcraft is far from the perfect game. The artificial intelligence in free-play maps is so extremely predictable that one winning strategy can usually be duplicated on any map with equal success. And of course, its graphics are 10 years old as well. Is this a sort of ‘answer’ to the gameplay vs. tech question haunting the industry? Well, I can hope, since I do like to create those complex storylines…)

But what is the price of creating the perfect game? Though fanatical game playing has yet to really grip the average American family, it has definitely created quite a stir in the media throughout Asia. A child dying due to neglect from WoW-addicted parents. Another boy committing suicide due to an apparent addiction to Warcraft. These are just two examples of the problem using my Blizzard reference as a sample. Massively Multiplayer Online games are notorious for gaining near-cult followings, especially in Asia, which is probably some of Blizzard’s motivation for adding parental controls limiting the amount of time a child is allowed to stay logged into the game world. Chinese versions of WoW have such changes included as – no bare bones showing on an Undead player; no player corpses lying around, as they always turn immediately into graves – apparently China wants their internet to be seen as peaceful and harmonious. Though this could easily flow into a censorship debate, let me circle back around to my point, here. Chinese players are easily among the largest group of ‘addicted’ players in the world simply because of the sheer population size of the country. There are probably enough WoW players to create an army of considerable size in Asia alone (and they would probably storm Blizzard if Starcraft II was cancelled!). So the idea of ‘game addiction’ means quite a lot to these other countries, but as a game designer, what should it mean for us?

There is no reason we should stop trying to design The Perfect Game. I will continue trying to create The Perfect Story and suit it to The Perfect Genre and The Perfect Graphical Style, et cetera. But it is a topic that we cannot by any means avoid. It almost would seem to me that game addiction is a sign of total design success, because that means the product is so appealing as to seem better than real life or at bare minimum, better than all other forms of relaxation/fun. However, if your game is designed so perfectly that it causes the death of children in other countries, well, is that really worth it? Having never worked on such a game, I can’t really say. It’s definitely not the fault of the designer if the game is so addicting that people lose track of real life. By all means common sense should prevail in all these situations and people will log out in town once in a while to check on their children.

However I think it’s clear that common sense is not among the most reliable variables in human nature. So by no means should a game designer ignore the potential for disaster in their product. Luckily for me (and my peers) a game such as WoW has paved some of the way by implementing parental controls and generally suffering through controversy and outrage so that later games won’t have to. But what about the seemingly-ancient Starcraft? Maybe no one has killed themselves over it (or at least it’s never been broadcast anywhere I’ve seen) but the game has single-handedly altered the culture of an entire country. So if you wanted to be broad about the definition, yes, it has also created a nation of addicts.

What can we do? Spread real-life-over-virtual awareness? Sounds silly but I have to wonder if it’s going to become necessary as the new generation of gamers, raised on WoW and ready to play games 24/7 takes over the market.