Monsters and Mistletoe

The Game of Giving

There is also still the dilemma of the player being unable to meaningfully give back in the game. "In real life, we seem to have a balance: people are complex, yet we can understand them enough to make interesting choices about them," Rohrer muses. "But we have so much information about each person to bring to the decision - we may have known them for years, and we know all sorts of details and stories about them. How can you cram all those elements of 'knowing someone enough to pick a gift' into a game? Seems like you would need to solve the strong A.I. problem as a bootstrapping step, and even then the player might need to play for months before being able to pick a good gift for this A.I. game character." As far as single-player experiences go, it may be a matter of developing characters with whom we empathize enough that we want to help them.

It's certainly easier to introduce gift giving once you add live players to the equation. You can circumvent the A.I. dilemma entirely by just adding friends you care about. Letting someone have a kill in deathmatch might be a bit of a stretch, but not stealing a kill or offering a civil apology certainly counts. Letting someone have a piece of armor or loaning out some gold in World of Warcraft are also examples of gifts that could be facilitated in a video game - the popular MMOG even allows players to wrap items to add an element of surprise.

There's certainly plenty developers can give to their fans as well - some new content, mods or even a fun inside joke for the community. Players, in turn, can mute their criticism for a few minutes and send a thank-you e-mail to the developers for all their hard work. Or even better, they can show their appreciation by making some content of their own.

There's some debate today about the rampant consumerism that the Christmas season brings. It's the same dilemma that plagues gift-giving in game design. How do you maintain the sincerity of the exchange? Perhaps there is no ultimate solution; there is no foolproof way to really make a gift have meaning every time. What makes it a present and not a necessity is that it was given for no reason in particular.

L.B. Jeffries is a law student from South Carolina who spends too much time playing videogames or screwing around on The Escapist forums instead of studying. He writes reviews, articles and a weekly blog for the videogames section of Popmatters.