A short entry today, but I hope to make up in scope what I lack in depth.

I made a bit of noise about serious games in DD2, the gist of which is that I think frequently we try to change the fundamentals of what a game is to make it serious or educational, at which point it can cease to be a game, the thing that we found compelling enough to try to bend to serious work in the first place.

So here is a thought experiment for you: Is it possible to design a game that has serious, indisputably positive impact on society, on the lives of citizens, yet is still completely a game that one would stroll into an EB and purchase with hard earned cash because it is fun?

I think yes.

The problem: Social Security will fail sometime in the next 10-20 years as the baby-boom retires. Many folks will be left without a retirement safety net.

Damn Serious Game solution: A Government run MMO.

How it works: One of the biggest problems with saving for retirement is that young people save almost nothing during the time when compound interest would be a huge boon, putting much greater demands on them when they are older and making enough money to think about saving.

So, the government commissions an MMO, the biggest, best and shiniest MMO ever made. And yes, because it is just too perfect, it would be called Warhammer 401k.* The budget is huge by game standards, miniscule from the standpoint of a major governmental program. Hire the best people, hire hordes of artists to make the most fully realized virtual world every seen, in short, make the game completely irresitible (yes, I’m glossing over the huge pain in the butt it would be to actually make this happen. Humor me.)

Now, charge $30 bucks a month to play the game. Each month a serious amount of new content is added, the story line changes, the world evolves. The average player starts at age 13 and plays until their mid 20s (he said, pulling numbers out of his…head). That money goes directly into a private retirement savings account for each player. At 5% interest, in their mid-twenties, they have about $6700 in the account, and that alone, with no other savings is 57k by the time they retire.

Well, ok. I haven’t solved the Social Security issue in today’s write-up. And I was feeling pretty good about that too. Damn. But it does seed the account, and we haven’t even talked about the in-game economy, where you can buy leet gear for real cash, which goes into the account. Or the follow up games that continue to feed the account as you grow older.

Point being, a game does not necessarily have to be serious to have a serious impact. And yes, we need to talk about the impact of a government controlled narrative that kids spend 13 years immersed in, and what government endorsement of virtualized play means, but I’ve got to wrap it up today, so until next time,

-game over-

Thanks for reading another action-packed installment of Design a Day. For background on the Design A Day challenge, take a peek here and here.

*I am a lemming, and puns my irresistible cliff. Oh, no!