Challenges and Rewards: “Why can't Call of Duty actually be about duty?"

From http://www.design21sdn.com/feature/2250

“You can’t just have a fun game and then tack on an ethical message. The message has to be the mechanic,”

“A game about Darfur or Hurricane Katrina sounds horrific,” he says. ”In entertainment, the whole goal is to have the audience experience an emotion then [empower them to] let it go. The problem with playing Darfur is Dying is, not only am I feeling awful, but I can’t stop feeling awful because it’s a real. There’s no end so now I feel even worse. It’s not bad enough that I read about Darfur in the newspaper, my country won’t do a damn thing and there’s not much I can do about it either. Let’s say you play the game and save Darfur or whatever – it’s a frustrating experience because it’s a game and you didn’t actually do anything. In the end you can only feel bad about it.” He maintains that expecting gamers to behave honorably is completely counterintuitive to the appeal of computer games and points to games like Fabel and Knight of the Old Republic as revealing of players’ true nature.