Game Rant recently had the opportunity to catch up with Elliott of TNgineers, one of two brothers (Jamie) bringing the indie beekeeping sim, Apico, to life. The cozy, casual game features bee collection and breeding, crafting, and building, all wrapped up in a charming pixel-art aesthetic. The game also carries a 'soft' message of conservation, but Apico's goal, first and foremost, is providing players with a charming escape.
Games are a powerful platform for education. Titles meant to deliver a message make their points with mechanics, accomplishing rhetorical feats that other forms storytelling would have trouble conveying. And while certain AAA titles are starting to wrestle with important issues, indie development is generally more free to explore topics and themes that could prove controversial for large publishers. It also must be said: fun and entertainment are not always the primary goal of serious games.
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Elliott made it clear that Apico has different aspirations. The game does not approach players with an obvious agenda and has no mission to turn its players apiological advocates. But that is not to say that TNgineers is indifferent to the issues its casual bee keeping sim touches upon.
Bees have had it rough lately. Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is a syndrome where worker bees abandon their colony for unknown reasons. Given bees important role in pollination, CCD has devastated a number of ecosystems all around the world. But did current events have any impact on Apico's development? Elliott explained:
"Not really, it just kind of came about. I mean, I’ve always loved bees. I was in favor of conservation efforts when the whole colony collapse scare came about. I remember when people were invited to head out to vandalize their local parks with these flower seed bombs that would attract bees, and I was like 'yeah, save the bees!' But that wasn’t what drove it. In the course of working on it, I realized it would be a very good platform for education. That said, we don’t want to be in people’s face with politics. "
TNgineers' motivations are humbler. Elliott and his friends enjoyed an early beekeeping mod for Minecraft, and found that it was a wonderful way to unwind. Realizing that experience could carry an entire game by itself, he set out to make it a reality. If people have a enjoyable experience with Apico, TNgineers has accomplished its mission, and if that experience leads players to activism, it is a marvelous bonus. Allowing people to interact with bees in a way that is serene, fun, and low-stress is more important than converting players to a cause, and ironically, it may also do a better job of recruiting people than something more didactic.
One could argue that this approach to conservation and education—introducing players to a topic in a fun, non-threatening way—is a more organic approach to engendering good will than a mechanical sermon. Not everyone who plays Apico will become a crusader for bee conservation, but if that were the game's goal, it would never deliver the cozy experience that Elliott and Jamie are shooting for.
When asked whether more games would benefit from having a 'message' behind their mechanics, Elliott had this to say:
"It’s kind of a joke with these indie games, that the first step is always deforesting the world. I think there’s definitely some fun stuff to be had in doing things the other way around. That said, we have a sort of system with achievements at both ends of conservation. Like, we track how many trees you chop down. But it’s not really good vs. evil, we don’t want the player to feel like we’re 'watching' them and again, you can’t lose or die, but actions have consequences."
Elliott wants players to be conscious of their actions' consequences, but he does not want them to feel like they are being judged for how they choose to play. A common problem with games that have messages, or moral choice systems of any kind, is that mechanics usually weight the in-game merit of a decision. Players who are penalized for being 'bad' have an artificial motivation to be good, even if it contradicts their normal inclinations. This is a poor tool for reaching would-be activists in the real world, however. These systems train players to do the right thing for the sake of direct benefit within the context of the game. If that benefit system does not exist outside the game, neither will the motivation.
TNgineers has also taken an extra step to ensure its game will contribute to bee conservation: philanthropy. A portion of every copy of Apico sold will be donated to charities focused on Bee Conservation. This ensures that every copy sold will help forward Elliott's personal mission, without putting any additional burden on his players.
Apico is currently in development for Linux, Mac, PC, and Switch.