Games As Art? How About Games As Utilities…

Hey folks,

As I attend various game conferences, I usually hear discussions about “games as art”…I’m not sure that’s the most important question. For games to be ubiquitous, they need to be utilities. I think the important questions to ask are…what mechanics/systems do we need to invent to turn games into utilities.

When a game becomes a utility, it then jumps out of the consumption curves of movie content/mmos…where there is a huge uptake initially and then a taper off over time…and into the utility curves of things like Google or Facebook….services that have grown over time.

We’ve already seen some innovations in ways to make games utilities…with services like FourSquare, Digg, and SCVNGR

With a utility, the games success grows over time. Now the question is…what are mechanics/systems that we can reference to build these game utilities…
Here’s an incomplete list…mostly borrowed from MMOs and Casual Games…

a) The game utility needs to work within the normal habits/acitivities of people/teams. That means…these games are not diversions from everyday life…but either amplifiers or accelerators of everyday life. FourSquare amplifies your experience of visiting a specific place. When you check-in, you may get a badge, etc. Digg relates to ranking and organizing news.

b) Badges/Achievements…this gives folks mini-missions/goals as they use the utility

c) Persistence…this is something that helps to show people’s time investment in the utility. This can be in the form of points, rank, or other types of system-generated content/information that helps to communicate the player’s investment in the utility…like an archive of their posts, comments, or ratings by others.

d) User-generated/Community-generated information streams…systems like Digg and FourSquare rely on users GENERATING content (rather than consuming it) … that content is added to the system to help make the game utility more valuable…for example, one player may create content relevant to other participants in the system.

These are the obvious mechanics…there may be other new ones…there has to be…because right now, the current design spaces have not thoroughly identified the mechanics/systems that can modify current games and turn them into utilities. Once we discover/invent these mechanics, we can easily apply gaming to everyday activities like search, dating, news, etc….with the expectation that the games will grow over time, rather than decline and taper off.

Any thoughts on other mechanics/systems that can turn games into utilities?