Some of you who keep up with the popular gaming blogs (or Penny Arcade) have probably heard about Chore Wars already. In a nutshell, Chore Wars is a web-based game that allows users to create a fantasy RPG character and level it up by logging chores that were completed in real life. The character’s stats (and, subsequently, the character’s class) change according to the types of chores logged. As a disclaimer, I have not personally signed up for the website (though I’ll certainly revisit the option when I get a kid of my own), so I don’t know the exact details of how Chore Wars operates apart from their brief help page. But I’m here to focus on the broader possibilities of these kinds of emergent gameplay – those that arise from non-game activities.
This type of emergent gameplay isn’t a new concept at all. If you’ve ever been on a long road trip as a young child in the absence of modern-day portable gaming consoles, you might remember turning the passing of cars into a game of sorts, like the “find-the-highest-license-plate-number” game and the “find-a-license-plate-from-each-state” game. And for billboards, there’s always the “find-words-that-begin-with-each-letter-of-the-alphabet” game. And then there’s always the generic game of “I Spy” to turn the very act of observation into a game of its own.
One reason that Chore Wars stands out among these other, more common examples of emergent gameplay is its focus on transforming menial, laborious tasks into something enjoyable. This is certainly something to give it credit for, but I think the biggest reason that Chore Wars has garnered so much attention is the depth of its pseudo-gameplay. Not only does it manage individual characters, but it also tracks chores over time, chore frequencies, chore statistics among the group, etc. Chore Wars also allows groups to decide XP values and even has a system of acquiring gold and treasures.
The biggest shortcoming of Chore Wars, from what I can tell, is that the “game” is primarily a one-way interaction. The user logs his chores into the game, but aside from the increase of the character’s stats and possessions, there is no tangible reward – nothing that opens new options for the player to encourage further gameplay. In the language of The Chemistry of Game Design, no new skill atoms are chained to the skill atom of performing a chore and getting experience and items for it. Chore Wars is fundamentally similar to Progress Quest, where the growth of the character is ultimately meaningless – the experience of the game remains unaffected by it.
In its credit, Chore Wars claims to allow the group moderators or individual players to decide the meanings of the numbers associated with each character. Perhaps a child can trade his accumulated gold for a new toy or a “get out of chore free” card. So the natural extension of Chore Wars’ gameplay is to implement these reward systems and take the burden of creating a fun, balanced game from the hands of the administrating parents (or weary spouses, as the case may be). These could be considered “meatspace” rewards. Such rewards would create the back-and-forth interaction between the real world and the game world. A user/character logs a chore in the real world, that chore is translated to experience, gold, and treasure, and finally, those in-game metrics are converted via meatspace rewards into tangible, real-world prizes. One could easily envision reward trees that gradually expand to offer more substantial rewards as a character attains higher and higher levels.
Another path (that is not altogether exclusive) would be for Chore Wars to implement “gamespace” rewards by creating an actual game and virtual world that revolves around the Chore Wars characters. As a user logs more and more chores for his character, that character acquires in-game abilities, armor, and weapons to do battle in a virtual world, not unlike modern MMO’s. The leveling process, and even combat, can easily be mapped to the performing of chores. I am aware of several games that have similarly-styled world-to-game interactions. An old Pikachu virtual pet detected the number of steps its user took and translated that number to “watts” – a type of currency that could be used to make the pet happier. Boktai for the GBA had a built-in solar sensor to translate time spent outdoors to in-game power. Plundr, being built on the DS, uses a GPS system to translate player positions in the real world to in-game positions.
The problem with meatspace rewards as I’ve described them is that they don’t inherently create the skill chains necessary for proper gameplay. The trading of in-game assets for real-world rewards resembles a bartering system more than it does an actual game. The problem with gamespace rewards is that, unlike the meatspace rewards, the feedback loop does not involve the real-world component. The real-world aspect of the game is strictly an input – the game’s rewards remain in the realm of the virtual. To address both of these issues, one can imagine a complex hybrid in which meatspace rewards augment the player’s ability to acquire more of those rewards. In the example of Chore Wars, this would be analogous to the player starting with, say, a paper towel and a bucket of water. As chores are completed with this primitive toolset, the player’s in-game assets can be spent to acquire (or earn the right to use) better tools for completing chores more efficiently – a spray bottle, more absorbent towels, cloth towels, a mop. Eventually the player will acquire the use of a vacuum cleaner, an automatic dishwasher, etc. End-game content! Admittedly, this isn’t the most efficient way to get chores done, but the theory is that by the time the player has reached the ability to use the advanced tools, he will have acquired a strong desire to continue to “play”. Of course, Chore Wars would do well to support this meatspace advancement with a corresponding context in the gamespace, providing a motive that goes beyond just a simple sense of domestic duty. Perhaps missions can consist of cleaning a particular room in a given amount of time. A boss fight could consist of performing a task to the satisfaction of the player’s mother (who would later rate the player’s success).
Extending this model even further, one could imagine applying (or at least attempting to apply) this type of feedback loop in other areas – the classroom, the office, and even consumer product sales – see Allen Varney’s Lifegame 2020 article in the Escapist for an excellent picture of what that might be like.
One can even apply this model to existing games as a way of adding additional depth. A few years ago, I used to go bowling every Monday night with a group of friends. While bowling was fun in itself, I felt that the game could greatly benefit by having more persistent elements. I started out by recording scores and tracking stats – mean scores, average spares/strikes per game, consistency, improvement, etc. Then the idea came to me to add an optional RPG element: points acquired in games would be used to level a character. As the character advanced, new abilities would open up that would increase the number of points that were obtained. Different paths in the ability tree would cater to different strengths: a “Sniper” could use the “Clean Shot” ability to triple the points acquired from picking up a spare on a split; a “Rogue” could treat all frames with one pin knocked down as a strike. The possibilities are endless. Unfortunately, I never got around to fully realizing and fleshing out my bowling RPG. But who knows? Someone may yet go there. Someone may already have.
With games like Chore Wars, the recent development of the Wii and the increasing popularity of alternate and augmented reality games, it’s clear that the dialog between meatspace and gamespace holds the key to the future of game immersion.
