What if a video game challenged your beliefs? It pushed back at you and told you that everything you’ve ever believed about the world might be wrong?

Would you play it?

As we get older we have more and more invested in our personal beliefs. They define us and help direct us as we make daily decisions about life. For many people, questioning those beliefs is stressful. Most people already have enough stress in their life so they aren’t out looking to create more of it. This avoidance makes them resistant to ever changing their beliefs. We’re good at ignoring things that challenge us. In psychology it is a phenomena confirmation bias. It lets us conveniently to see things as we want them to be, rather than as they are. It provides a lot of great material when we want to talk about the quirks of the human condition. Writers write about it, psychologist study it and daytime television makes a living on it. The question is, can we make video games that addresses those beliefs, allowing people to explore their beliefs and then consciously think about it? Well, from a game design perspective I think it is possible, the challenge is actually building something that people would want to play.

Our Beliefs

There are a few places that people tend to settle in their beliefs.The simplest way to approach life is reduce things to a black and white perspective, there is always a right and a wrong and that is it. Why torture yourself by thinking about gray areas and the complexity created by different situations or contexts? You’d be in good company as about 45% of people tend to think this way.

Not everyone believes in absolutes though. About 40% of people believe that there is no right answer. They’re convinced that everything is relative and that all knowledge is really just an opinion. This means that whatever they believe is pretty much as valid as anyone else’s opinion.

There are a small number of people, about 15%, who tend to question their beliefs all the time. They’re invested in evaluating new things, even if that might challenge their beliefs on a regular basis. This is because they believe that knowledge needs to be constantly challenged. In addressing these challenges they feel that they can grow intellectually and personally. These people might sound like pure scientists but it isn’t just science that gets challenged. It is also ethics, morals, philosophy and just about anything that is based on knowledge of some kind.

It Matters

You might wonder why it really matters? If people view the world in a certain way it is just a personal choice, right? Well, it is actually becoming more and more of an issue. We live in a world where our success is increasingly become based on a more sophisticated approach to thinking. Technology is creating a knowledge economy where we need to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity almost daily. Understanding how to deal with change is going to have a big impact on our success in the world.

Next: How this relates to video games and game design: The Burning Itch