Bad Consequences

April 2024

Now, I’m not doing research to prove all unintended consequences experienced by OWRPG gamers are positive – I’m under no illusion that there are a load of negative ones too, and these need to be investigated as much as any positive (or neutral) consequence. So, here’s a negative one I’ve just experienced.

I’m presenting at an online conference in a few weeks, and I'm going to be talking about games and positive consequences around wellbeing, entering a state of flow, improved problem solving, and ‘accidental learning’.

Parts of the presentation will involve playing screen recordings of games such as Starfield, Diablo IV, and Skyrim and asking participants to put themselves in their students’ positions, to (vicariously) experience how aspects of game play and style can be a force for good as well as evil(!)

This means I’ve been recording a load of screen captures. One Starfield-based video is simply a walkaround in a gallery I’ve built, housing my legendary armour and weaponry. And while this was loads of fun at first, after realising that the gallery was a little stark and need some decoration, by the third evening of traipsing around yet another barren planet looking for coffee cups and teaspoons to decorate the gallery’s coffee shop (yes, really), I found that playing had become a real chore rather than a pleasure. So much so, that I genuinely went ‘Bah!’, threw down my controller and went to bed in a grump.

That’s a negative unintended consequence (experienced, ironically, while curating content for a presentation about positive consequences). I’d managed to turn one of my favourite games into a chore akin to having to take out the recycling. Starfield stopped being fun.

Update:

After writing this post, I gritted my teeth, and went back into Starfield to get the last film done. I didn't care how many bloody coffee mugs and teaspoons I had  collected - I was going to get the footage, download it to my computer and switch off the XBox.

Instead, I did all of this, and then proceeded to play Diablo IV for six hours, its cartoon slaughter reinvigorating my love of games. This was an unintended consequence arising from an unintended consequence and now my head is spinning.