Make solar power, not war! Farmville art by Rusty Boxcars

Over on Heritage Key there’s a Bloggers Challenge competition that invites bloggers to answer the question: How Much Fun is Virtual Edutainment? Specifically, can it ever be enough fun without guns and sex? I’m not allowed to win, but it’s an interesting question.

There is an unspoken assumption that the most exciting game or interactive experience is the one where you get to shoot people. But hang on, where did this come from? Who says that shooting is fun? It’s certainly not my idea of a good time.

After a tough day the last thing I want to be immersed in is a war. I want stories, drama, excitement, entertainment – a good laugh. Maybe, if I’m honest, a little weep. The worlds of literature, publishing, film and TV have all cottoned on to this and try their darnedest to come up with the goods. There are brilliant, life-changing, profound books and films out there. The games industry, however, is still lagging behind, and virtual entertainment has barely set off yet.

The mass market console end of the games industry at the moment is still like Hollywood. The big blockbuster titles in both games and films are so expensive to make (with exceptions) that the risk-averse distributors shy away from the slightest deviation from the tried and tested formulas. Instead, they continuously regurgitate and repackage the same old stories. The difference between mass market games and Hollywood movies though is that Hollywood tries to maximise its audience by offering genres for all major types of consumers, whereas games tend to stick with just one core audience – the shooters.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a moral stance. The reason why I don’t play these games is because they bore me to tears. I don’t feel the motivation. I’m trigger unhappy. I despair when I go into a shop like Game and see rows on rows of shoot-em-ups for the PC and consoles. I’ve got a couple of twenties in my pocket and I’m in the market for something enjoyable, but it’s just not there. More often than not, I leave empty-handed, and the global games market misses out on yet another forty quid.

In an era when there are more and more female gamers, when The Sims is still one of the most profitable titles of all time, online sites for chess, backgammon and bingo attract thousands, apps, quizzes and casual games on Facebook are played by millions, and hey, there’s the Wii and Guitar Hero, it is absolutely insane to think that consumers need to perpetrate violence and/or sex in order to enjoy and, ok, become a little addicted to a product.

Away from the constraints of the major publishers, there are a whole load of independent, and innovative, online games, virtual experiences like Heritage Key Virtual, and other web-based entertainment such as interactive dramas and social media and iPhone apps that are developing and growing creatively. These examples prove that there are ways to make a living without a slot on the shelves of Game. But gaming and interactive entertainment needs to aim higher than that.

But what about the educational, ‘edutainment’ element? Actually, I don’t think it’s helpful to draw a big red line between what’s educational and what isn’t. By separating entertainment and education we suggest that the two are mutual exclusive, which is just not the case. At pre-school, there is as much emphasis on playing catch or finding out what a policeman does as there is on learning maths and the alphabet – everything’s educational. It’s the same for us grown-ups. To some degree, everything we engage with teaches us something about the world.

Games and virtual experiences (we need a catchier description for that by the way) offer an amazing opportunity for the player to really immerse themselves in the character and story and learn something. So far, I have yet to find an example in which the character and story are anywhere near as poignant and human as in the best books, films or TV. A game or interactive experience has yet to make me cry (apart from in frustration), but it will happen. And it probably won’t be on sale first in Game.