I only wish that someone would put it into a nondescript arcade cabinet in a hallway somewhere, so that people could stumble across it unprepared.
Edit: Naturally, it turns out that Mr. Barr has a PhD in this sort of thing, and that his thesis has to do with how we demonstrate our values during the course of playing video games. http://www.pippinbarr.com/academic/Pippin_Barr_PhD_Thesis.pd...
Like in GTA, do you try to talk our your problems or do you shoot first and ask questions later? The UI will repeatedly encourage you to shoot first and players will learn that, because if you won't, your enemies will.
This is the definition of value they're using, which I guess applies in this case: "A value is an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct is preferable to other potential modes of conduct".
Seems like a weird use of the word "values" to me as it's essentially about being able to figure out how it's best to progress rather than moral beliefs as the term may imply for many people.
EDIT: Yet they try to mix these interchangeably in the paper, with examples like "a value of PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT means that we will choose to put out the recycling on Tuesday evening, rather than put all our plastic in with the regular trash." - the reason you believe that is probably not because you stopped progressing and there was nothing else to do. I suppose this is the distinction between "video game values" and real world values. But I think it's important to note the lack of overlap and reasoning, which I'm not sure this paper does. Though maybe it does say something about our real world values changing to get the job done.
So for example I really just cannot bring myself to play a "dick" character in games like Fallout 4, Skyrim, Mass Effect, etc, but I know plenty of people who delight in it.
I don't think people's real world values have much if any influence on their play style. Ultimately playing Skyrim and Fallout for stealth and one hit kills will dictate a lot more the decisions I make than their moral value to me. I need to make certain decisions in order to optimize my build, so I'll make those decisions whether I like the values they show or not and whether they're consistent or not. I kill for weapons and armor, I steal for cash, etc.
It's funny like the parent I cannot bring myself to do that to "innocents" in games like Skyrim, even if the game reward it, I need to really force myself to roleplay to start letting my values step back
This is the first thing I saw in his paper and I have to say those claims are, well, interesting. And I say this as someone who plays video games. I can think of numerous counterexamples to each claim and even examples that conflict with every claim. Take Dwarf Fortress, who's interface is the bane of every player's existence, or Human Resource Machine which is essentially a learn-to-program game and therefore most serves its purpose when its emulating a beginner's version of MSVC. Minecraft's creative mode offers no fail states, cathartic killing sprees or explicit challenge, but merely stimulates parts of the brain capable of 3D processing. Competitive gaming like CS:GO, COD, Dota (and about 30 more) also don't fit into this model of games.
Admittedly I'm not a PhD in anything, much less video games, but this paper's analysis seems to fall short of explaining most games.
His point is that games are NOT means to an end, they are things where the whole point IS to interact with them (Minecraft creative mode is a perfect example of this).
To put it another way: The ideal way to make a powerpoint presentation would be to think of it and have it instantly materialize. On the other hand, what's the ideal implementation of GTA? As much as we say that the point of the game is to "beat it", if we just showed you the victory screen, then it would ruin it.
The same goes for Dwarf Fortress, Human Resource Machine, CS:GO, etc. If you just jump straight to the end result, you miss the entire point: the interaction itself.