More Than Games

The gamer dream is to be a dev. The dev dream is for everyone to play their game. Both are demanding dreams that drive each group to play, and work, endless hours, making games their life, not just their livelihood.

But it's not enough.

There are better posts about work-life balance, stress management, and fulfillment. As a long-time MMO player and maker, I'm not the guy to write about that. I've spent literal years of my life online in pursuit of both dreams.

But it wasn't enough.

To succeed in games, I've discovered that I need to do more than games, for purely professional reasons let alone for the real benefits to health and happiness. This is an obvious truth, but I offer it here because game developers can live completely within the bubble, wrapped in an endless loop of work-as-play. And this keeps us from seeing the world as outsiders see it, keeping us from finding fun beyond our own borders.

When I worked on The Ville for Zynga, it was the first time I'd built a game type I didn't deeply play. It was a life sim on Facebook during the time games still lived there. Chris Trotier also worked on it, having come from the Sims. She explained to me the idea that, in her experience, women played games to relax rather than to win. This is another obvious point, but I didn't really understand it until I put a trampoline in the game.

In The Ville, you built your own house, adding furniture and elements to customize it. We were having trouble with people engaging the first free purchases, and so I pushed to, 'pull the fun forward,' grabbing an interactive prop with animations - the trampoline. The gamers in the group loved it, and it was seen as a win.

It did far worse than any prior change. In fact, it was so bad that we hot-swapped it for a series of area rugs while we went back to the drawing board. The rugs blew up, driving players to play to unlock more props than anything before.

While it may seem this was a case of gender bias, core gamer bias, or just too little time played in life sims, it was actually something more significant. I had lived so long in virtual adventure worlds that I missed what people liked about the real one. I had constantly viewed the world through my game-saturated frame to the degree that I didn't realize that a simple rug brought the game, not just the room, together.

Perhaps that'll be enough to remind me in the future.