The Potential for Games to be Used as a Persuasive Medium. 


With the title in mind I have been considering what to focus on for my essay. Games can be used to persuade in many different ways.

• There is the obvious fact that a game must persuade a player to engage with it and to decide to play it in the first place. Marketing a game is very important in the industry and with so much competition with other game titles it's important to persuade a player to invest in a game or franchise.
• Games can be a vessel for a writer or developer to portray an idea or value. For example many games have an underlying political or social message.
• There can also be a more direct message than the above example. Instead of politics etc being an underlying message in a larger story the whole point of the game can be to persuade someone to think differently about various social issues.
• There is a great deal of argument that games can persuade players to act more violently if they play games with a lot of violence in them. 
• Advertising is very persuasive and can be used to great effect within games. Adverts that are part of games can subconsciously influence the player without them really noticing it was even there to begin with. 
• Games can be very persuasive in making the player keep coming back to play them, there are even studies which suggest that games can be highly addictive. Especially multiplayer online games where the player feels a sense of duty to keep playing daily.
• Games can also persuade a player to partake in certain behaviours or activities such as learning new skills, improving things such as memory or being more physically active through playing.

I think what I find most interesting about this subject is the ethics involved in making a game. Because games can be such a persuasive tool and can affect player's lives a great deal I think it's interesting to think about the responsibility of the developers of games. Do they have a responsibility to avoid certain subjects or to take care not to persuade players to act in certain ways. How much do games companies think about their social responsibilities? Is it enough to put an age certificate of 18 on a game, does this then allow a developer to put whatever content they like in?