Resident Evil Update: Why missing it matters.

A few weeks ago, I vanquished the final foe, and completed my first video game.

It was less satisfying than I had imagined it might be. In the game, my reward for defeating the final bad guy (two rocket launchers did the trick) was saving the girl. In real life, my reward was…

satisfaction in my completed task?

I think I was underwhelmed because while I wanted to beat the game, mostly I wanted to keep playing it. I miss playing it.

That’s the mark of a good game: when even the built-in goal of the game takes a backseat to the simple experience of playing it.

Epistemic games have inherent goals, such as publishing an online journal or designing and presenting spring-mass creatures for clients, that are exciting and rewarding outcomes for the players. But the activities that lead up to these successes are really fun (even when they are really hard).

Interviewing scientists or experimenting on Sodaconstructor is fun, but one difference is that after the actual game, players can take their personae with them. One great example is the middle-school age girl who played journalism.net and months later continued to immerse herself in both science and journalism. She wrote a letter about stem cell research to Time. And got it published.