Golden

Why video games need gold (or something else that is so precious and pretty that the player will covet as though it were real)

If it is because of the story, the graphics, or the gameplay, video games are entertaining per se. However, games frequently have some sort of collectible that causes a different kind of pleasure. These collectibles are not only valuable because of what they mean or what they are worth within the game, but also seem valuable by themselves, as if they were a real thing.

Gold

I was merely 6 years old at the time when I first saw the game Age of Empires II. I lived in an apartment building and had a neighbor who was my age. I would go to his apartment to play. It was in one of those occasions that his father showed me the game. He showed me how to play it: in a nutshell, you had to acquire resources from nature (gold, silver, wood, etc.) to build an army that would be able to confront, or defend your base from, an enemy army.

(Quick aside: in my memory his father was around 50 years of age. But perhaps he was younger, because our memories distort reality after a while. Go figure… It so happened to also be one of my earliest memories of video game, my first memory of a PC game, and my first contact with someone “of age” playing video games. I would never imagine video games would be a great part of my life, even during adulthood.)

The game was and still is really fun. Years later, it still is one of the best strategy games out there. But there was something else that made me fascinated by this game. And it was… The gold.

Gilded guilt

Yep. I did not come to the keyboard to tell you about the game. I came here to tell you about gold. Because as a kid I understood for the first time that humans have a primitive desire for gold — or anything that is beautiful and rare.

Nowadays, living in our urban forest with careers, stress, and WiFi, overall we don’t really give a fuck about gold. But imagine yourself living five thousand years ago in a forest basically untouched by civilization (without WiFi) and coming across a nugget of gold glistening in the river bank. What a beautiful and fascinating little piece of rock… Or rather, imagine yourself buying or looting a collar made of almost pure gold and giving it to a fair lady in ancient Egypt or in the Celtic civilization. Gold was worn by nobility and represented wealth, power, and comfort. You can easily imagine the wonder that would strike any person to see such rare and expensive metal.

By mining gold in Age of Empires II, I really felt like I owned it physically in real life. I felt an uncomfortable pleasure from acquiring it.

At first, the game stroke me as really sad and distasteful. It was a game about the worst of humanity — about war, about destroying nature, and, even worse, exploiting nature for war. It was, and still is, about everything that I am against. I was taught at home and at school that we need to create a world where humans live harmoniously with nature. This means not depleting the world of its resources, not extinguishing the living things, not polluting, and not fucking killing other people!

It was even weirder because I do not like the looks of gold in real life. (Heck, it is kind of yellow!) I am a silver or platinum person… The silvery color goes better with my wan skin tone and with my mostly black wardrobe… But I digress again. The point is that, irrespective of the material (be it gold, marble, leather, or glass), it is a characteristic of humans to covet things of the earth, to modify them with art and make them a product of wonder. Precious gems and metals such as gold have always been objects of desire. From playing that game, being merely 6 years of age, I understood one of the most basic and primitive aspect of humanity. More than that, I felt it. I felt craving for gold.

Gold as a game mechanic

The gold symbolism is frequent in books. Take The Lord of The Rings, for instance. The One Ring is simple in design. But it is thick and made of pure gold. It glistens. It calls for you, whispering to your year how valuable it is. It was forged by one of the strongest forces of the earth in the fires of Mount Doom. The only ring that can disrupt the entire civilization. It can give you power beyond measure.

Similarly, the gold symbolism is present in many games. They are collectibles that are both beautiful and rare, and that may or may not serve a purpose in the game. They may indicate completion, a token of an achievement, or they may be a tool that can be used within the game. They do not need to be made of gold, but I will call them this way in this text.

If you think of a game that you really like, it likely has some sort of gold symbolism. These objects of desire in the game have a great impact on how much I enjoy a game. This is probably because I love collecting crap in games — the so-called Collectathons — , because I am a visual person, because I like pretty things, and because I pay a lot of attention to the visual details in games.

An attribute of art

Age of Empires II showed me how valuable the look of gold was in that game. And by doing that, it conditioned me to covet it in the game. It is interesting to notice that gold in real life was merely an ugly yellowish expensive thing. But within the fantasy universe of the game, gold was… Gold! And I wanted it very bad!

Which leads me to the visual aspect of it. How close the collectible sparks our desire for it is an attribute of how well the visuals of the item was implemented in the game. The visual aspect of it plays a major role in defining how much you will covet it, and, by extension, how much you will covet the game itself. Yes, visual art has this much influence.

Gold needs to either glisten beautifully, or to be a gorgeous work of art. Examples of glistening gold are the Invincibility Star in the Super Mario World game, which is yellow/golden and twinkles, and the DK Coins in Donkey Kong Country 2, which really seemed to be made of gold. Whereas instances of gorgeous works of art are items such as weapons in Bloodborne or Assassin’s Creed.

What’s more, gold is often accompanied by a twinkling sound, or a magical element around it, such as a glow. The most striking example for me were the Orbs from Spyro The Dragon, which make a twinkling sound that could be heard louder as you came closer to it.

Scarcity and reward

Image from Nintendo World Report

I know that Super Mario has gold coins and that Donkey Kong Country has golden bananas, or other types of golden coins. Although they are made of gold, these are not the gold I mean, as they have only one of the two characteristics: that is, they are beautiful, but not rare. You want them, but you don’t crave for them.

The metaphoric gold that I mean is by definition difficult to find. Repeating the examples, in the Super Mario World, the gold that I mean is the Invincibility Star. You can remember the thrill of finding those. Whereas in the Donkey Kong Country 2, it is the golden DK Coins. Again, find those in the game and collecting them made me feel like a king. They were difficult to find and even harder to reach.

The New Super Mario 2 for 3DS does a terrible job, because although the visual appearance of gold coins are excellent, the game fills the game with coins everywhere. Therefore, gold stops being that valuable!

Examples

• Super Mario games (most)

Starman

• Crash Bandicoot: Warped

Gems

• Spyro: Enter the Dragon

Orbs

• Donkey Kong Country 2

DK Coins

Take home message

My early experience with Age of Empires II and my later experiences with most games taught me that:

• It is part of human nature to seek resources, despite the bad consequences that it may bring to the environment. This is not solely due to commercial value, but because we all share a primitive urge to keep that one glistening piece of rock we found in the river bank.
• Most video games need an object of desire that can be collected.
• The game collectibles that cause most craving are both beautiful and rare.
• Gold can be exploited as a game mechanic, by adding function to the rare item, or by making it represent an achievement.
• Gold can also be exploited as a way to make the player want to play the game.
• These objects of desire in the game have a great impact on how much I enjoy a game.