The Appeal of Computer Games

Satyender Yadav, Rishav Binayak Das

November 4, 2012
1 The Question
What is it that makes computer games so appealing and engaging?
2 Synopsis
Games have an important role in our lives surving the purposes of recreation and
intellectual stimulation among others. Computer games, however, are always
simulated, not real. With the emerging technology, new games look very close
to real but after all this no matter how much we proceed technologically we will
always say only those games as computer games which have some simulation and
virtualization done by a computing machine. There is an element of a virtual
world in a computer game. Through this denition, computer games are dis-
tinguished clearly from all other sports and even from other indoor games.We
will rst look briey at the nature of dierent computer games and a broad
classication of dierent kinds of games according to criteria such as manner
of gameplay, number of players involved, complexity, convergence and diver-
gence,etc. before proceeding to our main arguments.
It has been argued by digital culture visionary Marc Prensky that Computer
and videogames are potentially the most engaging pastime in the history of
mankind. Contrary to what some people may think, the craze of video games
transcends the boundaries of age and gender. In our term paper, we will review
the major factors that contribute to this.
All games from the most primitive to the most advanced (by advancement,
we refer to technology used, complexity and realism of graphics, sophistica-
tion of articial intelligence,etc.) have some aspects in common in that they
all give us enjoyment, passionate involvement (through interaction), structure,
motivation, ow, and even ego gratication. In our term paper, we have a
look at each of these factors individually and pick up some popular contem-
porary examples to highlight our points. We critically look at the concepts of
fun,play,rules,goals and ow in this context.
However, some games go a level higher and engage players through realistic art-
work, engaging plots, powerful music (often contextual), intellectual stimulation
and (more contemporarily) a sense of competition in the local as well as global
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community (with the more recent social gaming trend and online multiplayer
games). We will also look at the use of emotioneering in games (to arouse
emotions in the gameplayer thereby capturing his attention and interest). Yet
another point well look at is the parallels between contemporary television pro-
grams and cinema and computer games and what are the ways in which these
are similar and where they diverge.
We will also look at the dierent genres of games : massively multiplayer on-
line, real-time strategy, rst person shooter games, arcade games, role-playing
games and racing games to name some and look at what makes each of them
appealling to the player. In addition, well look at the historical backgrounds
of these dierent classes in an attempt to understand their mass appeal.
Finally, we review our main arguments, summarise the key points and conclude
our term paper.
3 References
1. Herik,Uiterwijk,Rijswijck, Games solved: Now and in the future, Arti-
cial Intelligence 134 (2002) 277-311
2. Wikipedia Article : Video Game Art
3. David Freeman, Creating emotion in games: the craft and art of emo-
tioneering ,ACM Computers in Entertainment, Vol. 2, No. 3, July 2004
4. Henry Jenkins, Games, the new Lively Art,Henry Jenkins Publications
5. Marc Prensky, Fun, Play and Games : What makes games engaging ,
Digital Game-Based Learning , McGraw-Hill 2001)
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