"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
John Robb meets Jane McGonigal Eye to Eye.
I found this interesting article where my hero John Robb talks
about my hero Jane McGonigal.
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Here's a video of Jane McGonigal at the 2010 TED (the conference for tech, entertainment, and Wall Street elites to rub elbows) conference.
In it she talks about the power of online games. Worth watching.
Some useful stats from the presentation include:
- Active online gamers spend 10,000 hours of play by the time they are 21 (almost as much as the time spent in school).
- There are 500 million active online gamers worldwide (that will grow to 1.5 billion in the next 10 years).
- 3 billion hours a week are spent playing online games.
She also hits on some useful observations: people game to this degree because it makes more sense than real life and that gaming is a form of personal super empowerment.
However, at this point the presentation breaks down. McGonigal then proceeds to think of ways gamers can be used to do things (which plays well with the users at TED). While I give her props for thinking about ways to generate ideas on how to fix global problems, she entirely misses the big idea.
Here's the big idea. For active online gamers real life is broken. It doesn't make any sense. Effort isn't connected to reward. The path forward is confused, convoluted, and contradictory. Worse, there's a growing sense that the entire game is being corrupted to ensure failure.
So, why play it?
They don't. They retreat to online games. Why? Online games provide an environment that connects what you do (work, problem solving, effort, motivation level, merit) in the game to rewards (status, capabilities, etc.). These games also make it simple to get better
(learn, skill up, etc.) through an intuitive just-in-time training system.
The problem is that this is virtual fantasy.
So the really big idea isn't figuring out how to USE online gamers for real world purposes (as in the dirty word: crowdsourcing -- the act of other people to do work for you for FREE -- blech!).
Instead, it's about finding a way to use online games to make
real life better for the gamers. In short, turn games into economic
darknets that work in parallel and better than the broken status quo
systems. As in: economic games that connect effort with reward.
Economic games with transparent rules that tangibly improve the lives
of all of the players in the REAL WORLD.
This isn't tech utopian. It's reality. The global electronic marketplace
and the political system that currently dominates our lives is at root a
game but with hidden rule sets. As a result, it's a game that is being run
for the benefit of the game designers to the detriment of the players.
The reason we keep playing is that we don't have any choice. Let's invent
something better and compete with it. Let's provide people with a choice.
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/03/online...
Views: 36
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Comment by A.V.Koshy on April 30, 2010 at 6:05pm
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sarah
i had a long talk with michele where i explained all these things to her about how gamers wont bite for this kind of a bait.
not because i knew what john robb had said about it but because my students all young people are all gamers and none of them wanted to play evoke and they told me why
they dont want a game that has people in it telling them what to do
they prefer a game in which there are only in-built co-ordinates
and to work together where leaders emerge naturally
the cross over for those for whom reality is broken doesnt happen as you said by their being asked
to save the world but by being asked to use their skills in gmaing and being rewarded for it with as you said something concrete that can bring them back to otuch with reality and give them their self esteem back like money
cant talk about money here its like the ultimate shibboleth
your post makes complete sense to me
hope it doesn to others too
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Comment by Catherine Gentry on April 30, 2010 at 7:05pm
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I say this Ted talk and it's how I found my way to Evoke. I'd never gamed before.
I've even an idea about a game that might help Jane win her Nobel prize. Smile.Still working on perfecting the concept before I approach her.
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elicit...illicit, lol...
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she logs in
did once
commented on a blog
left
all in a trice
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Comment by Samiran Roy on April 30, 2010 at 7:56pm
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I hope it will be something special.
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oh no there is -alpha romeo episode
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Comment by Jeremy Laird Hogg on April 30, 2010 at 9:04pm
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I like this line:
"The global electronic marketplace and the political system that currently dominates our lives is at root a game but with hidden rule sets. As a result, it's a game that is being run for the benefit of the game designers to the detriment of the players. "
Given our evolving knowledge of economics, it might even be fair to say that there are some rule sets that no one is even aware of yet! Same goes for human nature. But I do agree - rulemakers making non-transparent rules = sucks for the non-rulemakers.
About EVOKE as a game: I'm not surprised that A.V.'s students were turned off. A game with really wide appeal needs A LOT of eye candy (and huge simplicity). EVOKE design clearly takes eye-candy into account which is one of the reasons I take it so seriously (strange to say perhaps) - it shows me that the designers are serious about the game element of the EVOKE experience. But for many you need eye-candy levels like Mario Bros. which is like 95% eye candy and 5% cognition or something.
However, there is an established niche for graphic-lite games that require heavy research and analysis. I used to play this game, and it's always been a distant cousin in design with EVOKE in my mind:
http://www.the-reincarnation.com/
But don't expect to learn how to play by looking at it. It's learning curve is way more severe than EVOKE's. But it strings people along from the start with lots of neat things to look at and opine/try out. Like the start of this server, it let's you in easy and gives you a sense of 'there's cool stuff to try' and 'I can do this / i have an opinion of what might be a good idea to try'.
The game also has a slow feedback loop - like hour-day ranges for significant feedback. Like EVOKE. One thing that Reincarnation has, and most games have, that EVOKE does not, are observable resources or capabilities that you have to wait to use/get until you've worked enough. (unlocking resources is different than unlocking achievements). And this can dovetail with the idea of having an economic element in an EVOKE game, as Sarah has suggested.
@Jane - take a look at the reincarnation - if only to market there for future EVOKE like games. Also: consider framing the ability to gain resources in some way, perhaps a la Sarah's line of thought.
And most importantly, see my top ten finish on the reincarnation server a long time ago:
http://www.the-reincarnation.com/hof.php?GameServer=Arch
****[ctrl+f 'Hogg']****
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Comment by MichalHuller on April 30, 2010 at 10:47pm
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Interesting thoughts you bring here, Sara, thanks for bringing.
I never gamed before but my kids do.
When I see what my son doing on games, is that he has set of tools, some "money" and other equipment, some rules to follow and that's all.
The game creatore never knows nor influence on the game evolovment, and so all participants.
There are lot's of surprises and he gains lot's of army, gold and money and become very rich, and then can have influence on others to manage groups.
This Evoke game is ment to be a course, it's more like study a new skill and gaining a new knowledge, so it's different, and I think it is too much like school and less like a game.
This is how i feal about it.
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Comment by Michele Baron on May 1, 2010 at 4:39am
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I do think gaming at appropriate levels could improve learning curves for students and elderly, in addition to "mainstream" gaming individuals and virtuosi... thanks for the post
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