Game Purposes

This article serves to explore the potential purposes of games. By keeping in mind the reason a game exists, a designer can keep themselves focused on keeping the elements of that game focused and true to its intended design.

As a learning experience

A game as a learning experience enriches or expands the players ways of thinking or approaching a problem. The learning benefits can be broadly applicable (for example, communication skills learned in an MMO or general logic techniques learned from a puzzle game) or specific only to the game at hand (learning specific play patterns of characters in a fighting game), and whether one or the other is "better" isn't a strongly arguable matter. A learning-focused game often requires additional purposes to solidify the game. This is because learning is often a secondary motivation — we want to learn to get good at a game that's already enjoyable for other reasons. Games designed strictly for learning often fall short and feel boring and soulless. This doesn't mean the learning element can't be the primary focus of the game design, but it's rarely sustainable as the sole focus.

Examples:

• Competitive games
• Often MMOs
• Tactics/strategy games
• Educational or logic games

As an immersive experience

A game as an immersive experience seeks to make the player think or feel a certain way. Often times the author wants to share a perspective, a feeling, or a scenario with the player, and evoke certain responses. Immersive games can be very hard to pull off, because of the very careful conditioning required on an arbitrary player, but when done properly they can be very powerful experiences, often evoking feelings or making us think in ways that we would never come across in ordinary life. It's fundamentally important when designing an immersive game to keep track of the mindset of the player, and to consider how the player will interact with what the game presents on a subconscious or emotional level.

Examples:

• Story-focused games
• "Experience games"
• "Art games"

As a social device

A game as a social device brings people together. The design is less about the game itself, and more about how the game can facilitate interaction between the people involved. Designing a game with a social focus brings both constraints and new possibilities — while the game has to be designed to work in the specific social context it's intended for, it can also draw a lot of "features" from that context, things that couldn't exist within the game itself. It's fundamentally important for such a game to be aware of how the players playing it might interact with each other, and to design with that in mind.

Examples:

• "Real" games, such as board games, card games, pen-and-paper RPGs
• Most multiplayer-focused games
• Single player games can be, if the intent is to be shared with friends
• Meme games
• Games one might play as a group
• Games in a streaming context

As a time-waster

Although not as grandiose as we may like, a game as a time-waster serves a simpler and more basic purpose for the player. It simply allows them to pass the time in an enjoyable way. There doesn't have to be any greater purpose or potential to such a game — It simply has to keep the player's brain trivially entertained until they decide to put it down and do something else. While it may seem a lesser form of game, and it probably is, a time-wasting game can still serve a positive purpose for the player. Irresponsibly designed, however, a time-wasting game can definitely be a negative. When a game absorbs time simply for the sake of wasting time (or in more sinister cases, making money), beyond what the player needs — when the game is controlling the player, and not vice versa — it becomes unhealthy.

Examples:

• Most idle games
• Short replayable "mechanical" games
• Solitaire for example, for a lot of people
• A lot of flash games
• A lot of web/mobile games