Can games be a force for good?

well if both are in the same health condition it is more than fair to assume that the kid in the us has a better chance to make it than the kid in a poor country..

so the kid in the us "deserves" toys.. whereas this money could save an actualy life on the other side of the globe (no one cares about since its apprent with such "charities")

as for terminal ill children.. thoose are not exclusive to the us.. but since the us is one of the richest countries on the globe you think the families of thoose sick children would have a better chance to "buy" him toys than thoose from a poor country who can't even afford medicine for their child..

you think if an ill child from the west would actualy aware of the state of health care in poor countries he would still want fifa12 for himself if thoose 50$ could save someone elses life?

childs play makes no sense for the im the way it is build, thats like sending a free toy to a "rich" kid.. in global comparison..

well i strongly thing all acts of humanitary help should be in a kind of hierarchy.. the same way a doctor helpts patients on the same merrits (at least he should) , so more sick = more help , more poor = more help

charity should help people in need.. and a kid in a hospital does not need and xbox.. this kid in the us for sure has more than enough toys already or the family could easily provide for it..

again perspective is important.. in a poor country kids play with stones, sticks , whatever.. they have no xbox but apprently there is an charity needed to get toys to sick kids in the us.. whereas the money could have actually did alot more "good" and saving lives somewhere else.

yeah of course and thoose xboxes need to be new from amazon, because ?

and if you think the indie bundle needed childs play to get awareness i dissagree completly.. if they drop it tomorrow the same amount of people will buy the bundles..

why on earth would you "need" to buy the humble bundle because it shares some of its proceedings with childs play? if you want to support this phony charity you can do so without the need to play, buy or do whatever with the indie bundle..

 

yeah so where do you start.. good question.

a question which i can't answer for you. thats for everyone himself to decide.

again my view on charities like childs play are my own personal opinion and no one needs to share them..

also schplurg make a good example how wrong a charity can actually be and how few of thoose donated dollars actually end up where there suppose to be..

people feel good if they donate.. but most people are naive and short sighted how much of that donation actually "does good" if at all..


to close the circle.. since this thread was about "games" doing good.. whatever this means.. i think thats pointless for a "core" game..

the mass is "stupid" out there.. so subtile messages placed in a product ususally don't work or just for a small percentage, especially if you target a casual audience..

if you want to have the "educational" theme dropped like a hammer onto the customers this could , like you said actually let them back off the product..

so why even bother.. make a game thats fun to play, tell a story about whatever you want.. but don't force it to be anything else than just a game.

except you want to make an educational title, then its different, but thoose are not the same target audiences..

i still think mr gates is a good example.. he did not make money by being a "force of good" or making such products.. but he uses his wealth to make a little dent into the world.

so maybe the topic should rather be "should a game be a force of good? and whats the point"

 

@Mr.Ugly:

Just trying to offer a different point of view. I happen to have been born, and spent a good chunk of my childhood, in Russia, under communism. There was definitely no immediate difference upon moving to the US. I was still very much the same person. Let me tell you from first-hand experience, being injured or hungry or poor feels much the same regardless of the country you're in...

I think that's the biggest flaw in your reasoning. You are trying to quantify suffering based on some arbitrary criteria, and that just can't be done.

I also think you are making a whole lot of assumptions about Child's Play. The accuracy of what you can guess about how/why they function and whether they're doing any good is pretty limited, at best. Why do you take one quick glance at something like this and judge it to be "bad?"

Why things like XBoxes?
Because it's really hard to fit a playground into a hospital room. Sick children still have the need to play, and console games logically seem to be the best and least messy way to allow them to do that.

Why through Amazon?
Because they're an enormous company, and I'm sure they offer Child's Play all sorts of benefits. I'm sure Child's Play is able to purchase/have things shipped at cost, in a way that's easy for them to track and process. Let's imagine that they did take donations of people's old consoles. They come packaged in a billion different ways, need to be checked for whether they work at all, probably cleaned, etc etc. This would probably be much less cost efficient in the end.

Why assume that Child's Play does nothing for the Humble Bundles and vice versa? I heard of the Humble Bundles through Penny Arcade, who promoted them because they are strong supporters of Child's Play. If there wasn't a good cause behind it, I don't think I would have made the purchase. There are tons of great games out there available for cheap or for free. But for me, the fact that it could benefit a sick kid somewhere was the icing on the cake, and I made my purchase because of it. I doubt I'm an isolated case.

Furthermore, I still don't understand why you feel that there's something good about keeping "good" and "business" or "games" separate. I don't think you've ever given an actual reason. You just seem to find it distasteful. There's nothing dishonest about trying to figure out some way that your game can benefit more people, IMO.

 

thats definitely not true.. being poor in a rich country is easier than being poor in a poor country..

in germany , which is a very rich country and a very social one.. you can be poor but there is a plentora of help you can get for free.. money, food, rent etc. if you can't afford it yourself..

in other countries such social nets does not exist so once your poor there is nearly no way to get out of it.. here you actually have a chance.. if you want.. actually you can quite comfortable live on social wellfare in germany.. a system missused by quite alot of "poor" sobs..

so i would not agree that being poor is the same in every country , since the help you can hope to get varies alot.

everything is arbitrary in global scope.. then again this is only my opinion..
there is a saying that translates a bit like "there as much opinions as there are anuses (sp?)"

so yeah you can either quantify on global scale or not.. sending money to a charity is the same since the money can and will be used arbitrarily.. since you don't know if the money will be reaching your desired target or end up buying donuts for the next childs play meeting..

[/QUOTE]
I also think you are making a whole lot of assumptions about Child's Play. The accuracy of what you can guess about how/why they function and whether they're doing any good is pretty limited, at best. Why do you take one quick glance at something like this and judge it to be "bad?"
[/QUOTE]

well i have as much information as you do.. so your assumption they are "good" is based on the same merrits

ermm.. if a child is well enough to play on a playground, it would not be in a hospital in the first place..

so what, this would be more work if done proper? really.. bummer..

of course its easier and cheaper for childs play to send out amazon packages ordered online.. but it makes no sense at least not to me. if i can get 3 used fifa 2012 copies for the price of 1 new..why should a hopital need a new copy.. etc.etc. there are so many reasons why this is more than odd, especially if the target of the charity is to help as much kids as they can..

there you are wrong.. penny arcade are not strong supporter of childs play they are the founders of it..

that just makes no sense.. if you want to donate to childs play do it.. why on earth would you need todo if over the humble bundle? thats exactly the odd think i posted before.. why on earth would somebody buy beer brand x only because they donate 0.01% of their income of this product to charity y.. ?!

sound like people are easily lulled into such pr shemes, because they think that product x becomes "better" that way..

if i buy an indie bundle i do it to support the devs, since like 99% of the differnet bundles i don't havent downloaded yet or plan to play.. or already had bough from steam etc.

so if i want to donate to childs play i can just go ahead and do so.. i don't see the logical synergy between thoose two.. or rather i don't see the attraction of a product you buy to support a charity, especially if you don't need the product because you can buy cheap or free games elsewhere..

maybe you should ask yourself why there are 99% of the hopitals on their map from countries one would condier "western" or "wealthy" ...

around 70 hospitals "around" (LOL) the globe participate.. why do you think that is? because amazon.com does not ship to uzbekistan? or probably because poorer regions do not need gaming consoles but other stuff which is alot more important to them? like medicine, technical equipment etc.


childs play is a "charity" for the "need" of rich countries. One Hospital needs Fifa 12 the other needs antibiotics. So if this is not ####ed up perception then i don't know what is.

because some things don't blend well.. imho.. because such mixture is usually used to benefit the company, not help.

and of course there is nothing dishonest about finding a way for a game to "benefit" people.. but since when are games doing that..? they are entertainment.. windows out of your daily life.. be a hero, drive a train, fly a spaceship, flick birds against pigs..

i have yet to meet the one game that really makes a difference in life and changes it for good while playing it..

 

That is your own preference and point of view, sounds to me as though you are the kind of person who doesn't easily empathize with game/film characters and made up worlds, that is perfectly understandable, to each his own

Some people take games and fiction media more seriously, and they would be the ones expected to claim that games and other fictional media have had a major affect on their life or personality.


Creating games that are "a force of good" is certainly not going to 'work' on all gamers, perhaps most gamers, just as PR and charity stunts dont convince all consumers to buy certain products

 

of course its my preference.. i think i plastered imho all over the text..

and as a developer im somehow trained to see all the little cogs in the bg and any medium must be really well done to let me dive in.. but i assume that comes with every Profession..

well as for empathize with fictional characters.. well in games thats pretty hard since storytelling is still miles behind movies, which of course have the benefit of not being interactive and having good script writers, directors and actors being involved.

i still doubt a game itself, the product, can be a force of good. rather the people behind it if they choose todo so.. again feel free to proove me wrong and change the world with an ios game for the better.

 

I think games are a force for good, mostly because they're necessary for survival. You can go your whole life without ever reading a book, watching a movie, or listening to music, but if you never play any sort of games you won't grow into a functional adult. Games evolved as a way of isolating and rehearsing survival skills in a safe environment.

Granted, I mean games in general and not just video games specifically, but the same principle applies to video games. Since our brains are hard-wired to learn new behaviors through games, there's a huge potential to make games that teach useful skills or behaviors. All the story and character development in games is great, but it's just window dressing. You can have story without a game, and a game without a story. But you can't have a game that doesn't teach something.


That, and a side benefit of having games in hospitals is that they act as a pain killer because of the dopamine release. (which is also why they can be addictive)

 

@ Mr.Ugly: I think we can probably go on debating this forever. Of course, I think it's a topic very well worth debating!

The fact that survival in some country while being poor is easier does not necessarily mean that suffering is reduced. The poor are alienated and marginalized, usually more so in wealthy countries than in poorer ones. Even though food and shelter may be easier to come by, this creates a different sort of stress and suffering.

I think you are still making assumptions that don't quite add up. You have some statistics and impressions, but what I'm saying is, you cannot compare the suffering of a "wealthy, western" child to the suffering of a child in Uzbekistan. We (fortunately!) don't have a value system for this sort of thing. We can't in all fairness say that a terminally ill child in the USA, even though he is surrounded by many more commodities and comforts, is less terrified than a terminally ill child in Uzbekistan.

To me, a good deed, however small, is still a good deed. Why point your finger at someone who seems to be trying to comfort the sick rather than pointing it at the uncaring and the corrupt? Let me take your priority system and challenge you to apply it here. If a sick child in the US shouldn't have a free XBox because a child in another country lacks food, should you condemn a charity while there are still much worse organizations who really deserve to have their faults exposed?

 

lets agree to disagree and whe are way off topic.. its about games, a product itself.. not a charity behind it, next to it or whatever..

really looking forward to see what waffle has cooking there to change the world..