Another genre of games involving gifts are Japanese bishojo, or girl games, and their sub-genre of dating sims. In these you have to get to know a character, learn her tastes and try to do things that she'll appreciate. All of the elements of gift-giving are present, but the emotional payoff is somehow lacking. Whether it's to advance the plot or go on a successful date with a girl, there is still an element of necessity to the act of giving. "The danger in games that simulate people," Rohrer explains, "is that either the simulation is too simple to be interesting (the king always likes wine, so I always give him wine) or so complex and opaque that it comes across as random (the king's tastes are changing, but I have no access to information about how those tastes are changing, so a randomly chosen gift is as good as any)."
There is also the obvious problem of the person in the videogame not being real. Can a game at least teach the player an appreciation for acts of kindness to others? Numerous videogames feature gifts and second chances for the player. Super Mario Galaxy randomly gives you a gift of five extra lives from Princess Peach. Contra gives you extra continues to make the game's difficulty a bit more forgiving. Rohrer's freeware game Cultivation establishes elements of this through its careful balance of altruism and competition. The player must cultivate plants in a garden that provide three different vitamins while their opponents do the same. Rather than encouraging competition, however, Cultivation urges players to compromise. You get the most vitamins by letting opponents take from your crops and they, in turn, let you take from theirs. This asymmetry naturally leads to situations where the player receives more than he can reciprocate.
Finally, BioShock's endlessly discussed Little Sisters tap into the very simple choice: do you save the young girls or harvest them for resources? Either option leads to roughly the same amount of Adam - the currency of BioShock that allows players to upgrade their abilities - but sparing the Little Sister's earns you tokens of their appreciation in the form of new abilities and bonus Adam, all wrapped up in a cute teddy bear for you to find. Yet giving a gift to the player is a hollow act, because the game designers have created his needs and inadequacies anyway. Whether you believe it's disingenuous or simply a way to curb difficulty, letting the A.I. give players gifts obviates the necessity of figuring out what a person really wants.
