Here’s the serious side to playing games

IMAGINE if there was a way to study the unthinkable, the unethical or amoral.

People would be up in arms if scientists inflicted deadly diseases on human guinea pigs, but a group at the University of York reckons the same results could be achieved in a far less sinister manner – by playing computer games.

Sound far fetched? Well Professor Peter Cowling, who leads the team, says it’s already begun with findings gleaned from a virtual pestilence in World of Warcraft kicked off by players who then kept it spreading after the first outbreak.

He says they are far more detailed than could ever be the case in a real outbreak and were considered so useful The Lancet accepted them for publication.

“As an object of study this is intrinsically interesting, because epidemiologists learned from this game how plagues are transmitted,” says Professor Cowling.

“If you think about studying this in the field you don’t know who is interacting with whom. But study it in a game and you know exactly who transmitted to whom.”

Prof Cowling also cites games with an application to help the motor skills of recovering stroke patients through games based on Wii or Kinect.

Then there is Floqua, where people herd fish, while using and learning about realistic biological models. Another practical example he says where a game can advance science.

People just think they are playing a game,” says Prof Cowling. “But they are learning the science of it at the same time.”

That’s also the case with games which sanction the sort of monetary experiments that could never be conducted in the real world.

And, who knows, in the future we might even see a multiplier online game funded by the Treasury that could monitor everyday reactions to economic policies, and the logic behind them, through millions of pieces of gamers’ data.

Something like that could even forge the first truly empirical study of macroeconomics.

The University of York team is called NEMOG, which stands for New Economic Models and Opportunities for Digital Games.

It is a £1.2 million project designed to bring together researchers and the digital games industry in the hope that they can devise games to address social and scientific objectives.

“You will be able to analyse the behaviour of thousands, even millions of people,” says Prof Cowling.

“You could have a tool for experimental medical science that would be wholly impossible to investigate in the real world.”

Just how big the games market has become was underlined recently by Forbes magazine which suggested that, by the age of 21, a typical child will have played for 10,000 hours – as long as it takes to become a concert pianist.

Indeed the global share is larger than the Hollywood film industry and in Britain it contributes some £3 billion a year to the economy.

But Prof Cowling says games can offer more far-reaching benefits.

“We are looking to shift public, research community and governmental perception of games from one based on profit and fun, to include health and well-being, science and education,” he says.

To do this the team aims to conduct a detailed and participative study of the present state of the digital games industry, then build simulation models to address the impact of moving into these new markets.

It might sound like science fiction, but Prof Cowling says there is a vast amount of data generated from every button push.

And with the hours people play, he reckons NEMOG only needs to persuade a small fraction of the gaming industry to come on board to achieve massive benefits for society.

“There is a truly immense source of information about player behaviours and preferences. This could start a movement that will lead to a mainstream distribution of games aimed at giving massive scientific and social benefits.”

Prof Cowling’s team is also looking at bringing together learning in the classroom with the things kids do on their Xbox at home.

“I think, very often, learning by playing games is completely subliminal,” he says. “You learn a lot of stuff about how game agents react with each other and what strategies work.

“So if it’s fun to do this, which is after all meaningless in a wider context, wouldn’t it also be fun to learn by injecting things that are meaningful?”

Prof Cowling is not saying everyone is going to love learning through games, but if a teacher says homework for tonight is to play a game for 30 minutes, imagine the enthusiasm that could be generated.

There are ethical considerations, of course. But Prof Cowling is at pains to point out that all the data is used anonymously. “You are generally dealing with aggregations of large amounts of data in order to look at trends and effects,” he says. “The interest lies in identifying classes of individuals that behave in a similar way.”

That was something touched on by Jeffrey Lin, who was a guest speaker at the recent NEMOG launch.

Jeffrey, a doctor in psychology and lead designer of Social Systems at Riot Games, revealed that online contests for multiple players, such as his firm’s League of Legends, which is played by 27 million people every day, provide huge quantities of game play data.

This, he says, can help us to understand player behaviour and preferences as well as encourage altruism, which makes it an increasingly important tool in game design.

“Sportsmanship helps players win games, but win or lose, it makes games more fun,” says Mr Lin. “Sportsmanship already widely exists in online games and online gaming communities. We believe the next evolution of design involves making teamwork the path of least resistance.”

In order to make the NEMOG project a success, Professor Cowling says his team needs to understand the state of the industry. To do this it already has a group of 12 games companies and nine network organisations, who have pledged their support.

Now it is hoped research can be conducted between them and academics from different fields into finding sustainable models for games with social benefits. NEMOG will then assist businesses to start up and develop the ideas into a new generation of games.

“This is an ambitious programme,” says Prof Cowling. “But the potential benefits, if we are even partially successful, could have a huge impact on children, science and wider society.”

• The NEMOG (New Economic Models and Opportunities for digital Games) initiative is funded jointly by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council.

• The project is a partnership between the Universities of York, Durham and Northumbria; Cass Business School, City University London and games companies and industry network associations.