November 28, 2007 6:00 AMIn a lengthy discussion at the Montreal Games Summit Jonathan Blow, creator of the 2006 IGF Design Innovation award winner - Braid, discussed the use of familiar concepts and simplistic rewards systems to keep players coming back to games. Among other things he asserts that many of the tools developers use to interest gamers in their products are ultimately harmful to individuals and even society as a whole. One of the titles he cites as an example is Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft."The game industry is chasing bigger player base, and we’re exploiting them in an unethical way," Blow asserted. "We don’t see it as unethical because we refuse to stop and think about the magnitude of what we are doing. You can smoke, have fast food, and play World of Warcraft sometimes – when you talk about these things at a societal level, it becomes a societal problem." "The thing I want to get at is – I’m not trying to blame players here – what I am saying is, if you’re the CEO of McDonald's, you should not feel good about your job, you should feel ashamed. We don’t have that in the games business -- we don’t have that sense, because we feel like they’re 'just entertainment.' We don’t feel like we can do things we can be ashamed of yet," he added. Blow believes that according to WoW, the game's rules are its meaning of life. "The meaning of life in WoW is you’re some schmo that doesn’t have anything better to do than sit around pressing a button and killing imaginary monsters," he explained. "It doesn’t matter if you’re smart or how adept you are, it’s just how much time you sink in. You don’t need to do anything exceptional, you just need to run the treadmill like everyone else." "You don’t come away from WoW with that in your head, but that comes through subtly and subconsciously," Blow added. "It’s like advertising and brand identity. People identify with their activities – same thing with games, people are products of their origins and their environments. We’re giving them these environments and helping to determine what they’re going to be."To read more of his comments head over to the Gamasutra article linked below. Gamasutra: Jonathan Blow On The 'WoW Drug'

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