"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.
This isn't a game!
So, I noticed the first response a la "People are dying from hunger in the world, and you dare to call this a game?!" to EVOKE.
I made a comment to the response with a link to Jane McGonical's paper on Engagement Economy.
Ok, all of this becomes quite meta, but you will have to excuse me.
The trick is to hook the attention of people who don't normally get involved with 'saving the world' to be interested in doing so. To grab the attention of some of those who, today, perhaps just sits in WoW or other games, or who is lost in Lost episodes.
There are a few ways to approach the Lost / WoW addicts:
1) "Why do you sit here on your butt playing and indulging yourself in endless cycles of entertainment when people are dying?"
This is the 'moralism' card, and it is played by many. It is to (maybe self-righteously, maybe not) make people aware that their actions are wrong. That they should have more empathy with the world. That they should feel ashamed for not doing more to save the world.
2) "Hey, there is a very important workshop by Professor X who will give us a presentation of WHO projects around the world.".
This is the 'educate card' and it is also played by many. The hope is that as soon as people are educated about some of the problems around the world (saving millions of children in Africa using bed-nets) and what is being done to redeem those problems, they will want to get involved.
Whether this workshop or series of lectures is entertainment or not is seen as more or less irrelevant. The point is not to entertain, but educate.
Of course, sometimes workshops are done in ways which truly use some of the 'entertainment hooks', but that is beside this point.
3) "Here is an alternative to your WoW / Lost. It includes missions, achievements, and maybe a mystery or two. Come take a look!"
This is the 'edutainment' card and it is also played by some. Not many, but some. Here is a quote from the edutatinment article:
The major communication theories that influence Entertainment-Education include:
- Persuasion Theory: (Aristotle, Petty, Cacioppo) Psychological characteristics affect the response of a person to messages.[3] Also indicates the message and source factors that influence a person's response such as the credibility, attractiveness, and expertise of the source.
- Theory of Reasoned Action: (Ajzen, Fishbein) Social influences affect behavior, including beliefs and perceived social norms.[4]
- Social Learning Theory: (Bandura) People learn by observing others and the consequences of their behavior. If the person so chooses, they then emulate the behavior by rehearsing the action, taking action, comparing their experiences to the experiences of others, and then adopting the new behavior.[5]
- Diffusion Theory: (Rogers) Behavior spreads through a community or group over a period of time. Television may plant the idea, but social networks reinforce it and cause it to grow. [6]
**
As a person who have been dealing with political issues for quite a while within organizations, I saw how participation got lower by just using the shame or educate cards. Other times they have worked, of course - by also feeding the masochistic urge which exist in some people people will also work at times, that isn't a problem.
The days I have explored EVOKE, I have seen quite a few examples of people who have stated "I never used to get involved with things, this is new for me". For me, that is golden. By speaking to the choir, you mostly only get the choir to listen.
So, what gains do we get by taking an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) approach to the poverty in the world? I don't know, yet, but we are figuring it out, daily, here on EVOKE.
To me, 'serious games' is about using the entertainment hook, while we educate. The hook is what draws people in, keeps their attention, while the education side of things is what hopefully, over time, will lead to a change in their actions.
So what do you think? Is this a game? Is it correct to take the ARG approach to 'serious issues' such as ending world poverty? Or is the 'game' aspects just bullocks that muddies the water and makes people confused?
Views: 55
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Comment by Liza Davis on March 9, 2010 at 4:46am
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Insightful post. I go back and forth trying to define exactly what EVOKE is - I guess, for me, I think of it as a "social networking experiment in education" a definition that I can relate to and would probably bum most people out : P- because I am NOT one of those WoW people ... I think of spending hours playing video game as a HUGE waste of time for me - let me re-iterate - for ME - I spend my downtime in other ways, that other people might judge to be a HUGE waste of time for them .... different strokes. Anywhoo, I am participating not for points, but to actually for the sake of increasing my knowledge of how to actively participate in solving some of these world issues ... I could care less about points. What is great about ARGs is that they work on a variety of levels ... let's not worry about how we actually define EVOKE but be open to the game/experiment/ process/whatever and see where it leads us : )
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Comment by Brian Ballsun-Stanton on March 9, 2010 at 4:54am
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Amusingly, this /is/ a game. It just has poorly defined rules and unknown participants with unknown power.
The trick is in the ontological assumption that a game is meaningless/valueless. I saw that in the response to my query about making an EVOKE RPG on the forums. The tone was... condescending at best.
In short, EVOKE is a game. It has the potential to be a useful game, but we're not seeing that potential due to a lack of feedback and transparency in mechanics. I wish I could fiddle with those latter ones to make it more useful... but cest la vie.
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Comment by Raymond M. Kristiansen on March 9, 2010 at 5:28am
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@Liza: Exactly. This experience can be utilized in so many different ways. When that happens, then is when something interesting can take place. Unexpected synthesis.
@Brian: Feedback systems is tricky, but yeah, the lack of system feedback - or seeing your own content within its wider context - is a bit troubling. Actually, I will try work on that today, and have something published tonight European time. :)
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Comment by cameron michael keys on March 9, 2010 at 10:38am
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The lack of feedback is due to a lack of sophisticated algorithms to organize the obviously HUGE amounts of data the gamers are producing. I remember seeing that 8600 blog posts appeared on the first day the Urgent Evoke site went online (if I remember correctly...which may not be so, since I was browsing without thinking it was important) -- and that was in January! We're talking about a lot of information here. If you saw a list of the personnel involved with the "game" you didn't see a long cast. They simply cannot respond to our blog posts in 24 hours as they'd hoped. The game designers could request emergency funding from the World Bank -- perhaps for the first time in its history it could give a loan without charging us interest! This way they could pay an adequate team of mediators to dish out Evoke points and communicate with users. We could really use a team of Cultural Analytics people on this one, to entertain us with interesting graphs and interactive databases for sifting through the deluge of blog posts, photos, and videos. I didn't know what to expect entering the Evoke design space. I found out about UrgentEvoke through the blog of a Harvard student (the evoke post is February 16 2010). I read some of Jane McGonigal's essays -- although not the one Raymond cited, which is great [more to read!] -- and waited another two weeks to actually start "playing". I've suggested a few ways the Evoke experience could be enhanced, in sketch form, toward the end of my ACT1 Blog. Think of the future of collective play, my friends! It's extraordinary!
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Cameron, the requirement isn't sophisticated algorithms, it's anticipating the need in the first place. Any kind of game that's designed to be massively multiplayer must be designed to self-scale. (Note, this is not quite the same as scale free.) We should have been allowed to form communities of interest and locality and peer review each other's work.
My nextstep response.
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wow, okay -- I think an entire world just opened up to me through the hyperlinks in your response. Global Guerillas, whoa, what a blog. I only know a wee-bit, especially when it comes to software and gaming, which is in keeping with the verve of a song by the Avett Brothers I've been enjoying today. Thanks for being such a solid voice on here, it makes my speculation and guessing seem for real. If y'all keep talking and hypertexting, I'll keep following your leads. For me, Urgent Evoke is like a graduate seminar without the headaches.
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@Cameron Excellent. ::rubs hands evilly:: I'm glad I'm opening brains.
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Comment by Amos Meeks on March 10, 2010 at 1:41am
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My mom got me into this by selling it to me as an "alternative to starcraft" (the computer game I'd been playing on my free time at the time). It certainly worked (I've been extremely addicted to EVOKE, partially because of what it is and how it directly relates to what I want to do with my life, and partially because of the game aspect.)
Also, I'd like to link you to Caroline Meeks's blog relating to the subject. I encourage you to watch the video she links to.
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Comment by Dan Plukhin on March 10, 2010 at 2:06am
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Well done, this idea on the game had never really occurred to me! I only saw it with potential from a practical, possibly real-world perspective; the "edutainment" idea indeed does seem to motivate people..
The only problem is that many people take it in a way I'm sure the developers never intended; spamming RSS feeds with statuses advertising some mediocre blog post with a fancy title, or randomly friend-requesting every name they see in order to make you notice them. Significance has died as far as real-world applications are concerned.
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@Amos: I am happy that you are here. Your comments and perspective is interesting, and I hope you continue to gain value from it.
Actually, last night, after I got home from a long day, I wanted to relax a bit, and I logged on to WoW to do some heroics with my paladin, just chill. After the first heroic, I looked at the monitor and said to myself "such trite..." and logged off. As such, I started looking at ways I can explore EVOKE, come up with minigames for this network. Thanks for the link to Caroline's blog! I've added her and will comment on her blog entry.
@Dan: I agree with you about the spamming, even though I must admit I also do it myself. It's funny, thats something that 'social media experts' are touting a lot "Pick a good title!" re: blogs and how to make your blogs more noticed.
In fact, many of the points that I mentioned in my How to beat the game blog is something that real life social media mavericks are advising. How to get ahead, how to get those thousands of subscribers, how to get that Google Ranking. Whereas my post was seen by a few as 'gaming the system' in a negative way, the real problem are those who have this approach to things in the real. Or maybe it's not really a problem, just different approaches to the same issue.
I don't agree with you in your view that 'significance has died as far as real-world applications are concerned". I think there is still a ton of potential in this. The spammers will do their game, possibly sending out mass emails to friends for every blog post or video they make. It will balance itself out. We will find other success criteria than attention or being on the leaderboard. For instance in our Awake guild, we will slowly start alternative games.
An alternative game could be "Find at least three people interested in the same general topic, and having an approach to it that could complement each other. Write a blog post about the three of them and how you think they should work together, and work with others. Then make them aware of this by sending a message if you are friends, or giving a comment to their profile otherwise". I am not sure yet if this would work, but a challenge such as this could work in bringing forces together.". A game could also be to envision collaboration a month from now - 4 weeks. Write it out like sci-fi (i.e. 10 years from now), but make it something that could happen in 4 weeks. I will actually do that myself.
I have sort of given up trying to get to the top of the leaderboard. The closest I got was #3 for a few hours. I am now #5. Oh well, lots of other mini-games to get into here.
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