[Air-L] Visions of the Gamepocalypse (Jesse Schell SALT talk)

[Jonathan Marshall]

Absolutely agree with Natalya here.  

Not only would having every moment of your life being structured by some program leave you blind to chaos and challenge - hey we could completely ignore everything which does not work out the way we want it to or have some deeper pre-agreeed meaning - but it would be a great way to 'brainwash' a whole population - guess what game economies always work the way that capitalism is supposed to work! and we don't have to explore any new systems, or have any basis to criticise the real world.

imagine having the foxnews game plugged into all your apps - now there is an inviting reward system - imagine having that in your dreams.

Indeed only the incurious will win

jon 

________________________________________
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org [air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of natalya godbold [ngodbold at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, 30 July 2010 10:16 AM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Visions of the Gamepocalypse (Jesse Schell SALT talk)

I like games but I don't want to live my *life *on the basis of clear
progress and being offered feedback.  I love the complexity and occasional
stillness of life.
This is all a bit gee whiz to me.
I like the following typo:

* Beauty---everything is getting goreous.

Yes.  Its all so beautiful its/I'm just about bleeding.
n



On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 3:37 PM, Santosh Kumar <santoshkumar at gmail.com>wrote:

> *Jesse Schell (Author of The art of game design
> http://artofgamedesign.com/) gave a talk as part of  their seminars
> about long term thinking (SALT)
> http://www.longnow.org/seminars/ . Stewart brand wrote the transcript. It
> turns out that our future is constant play, and we may well be passing our
> WOW avatars on to our children and grandchildren. How’s that for a
> heirloom?
> *
>
> *-----------------------------*
>
>
>
> In a glee-filled evening, Schell declared that games and real life are
> reaching out to each other with such force that we might come to a condition
> of "gamepocalypse---where every second of your life you're playing a game  in
> some way.  He expects smart toothbrushes and buses that give us
> good-behavior points, and eye-tracking sensors that reward us for noticing
> ads, and subtle tests that confirm whether product placement in our dreams
> has worked.
>
>
>
> The reason games are so inviting is that they offer: clear feedback, a sense
> of progress, the possibility of success, mental and physical exercise, a
> chance to satisfy curiousity, a chance to solve problems, and a great
> feeling of freedom.
>
>
>
> Accelerating technology has made some people give up on predicting the
> future, Schell said, but in fact it should make us much better predictors,
> because we get so much practice in finding out so quickly whether our
> predictions are right or wrong.  He feels confident in predicting a number
> of driving forces that will make games subsume all other media and occupy
> ever more of real life.  They are:
>
> * Nooks & crannies---new niches for games in people's time, in specialty
> groups, in various world cultures.
>
> * Microtransactions---which will really take off when they blend with social
> networking.
>
> * New sensors---tilty smart phones are a glimpse of what disposable sensors
> everywhere might bring.
>
> * New screens---live displays on everything.
>
> * REM-tainment---lucid dreams as a play field.
>
> * AdverGaming---commercialization money drives powerful innovation.
>
>
> * Beauty---everything is getting goreous.
>
> * Customization---you can already get personalized M&Ms.
>
> * Eye and face tracking---universal face recognition is coming, and so is
> having your avatar reflect your real-face expressions.
>
> * The curious will win---games so reward curiosity and fast learning that
> the incurious will be left behind.
>
> * Authenticity---"real" constantly pushes toward* real*.
>
> * Social networking---Facebook!
>
> * Transmedia worlds---Pokémon showed the way, embracing a game, TV, cards,
> and toys.
>
> * Speech recognition---soon you will have to persuade a computer charactor
> to do something.
>
> * Geotracking---the real world becomes the screen.
>
> * Sharing---Wikipedia showed its power.
>
> * Quantitative design---detailed real-time analysis of what works in games
> drives exquisite adaptation.
>
> * Extrinsic rewards---gold stars everywhere, but Schell recommends the book*Punished by Rewards
> * and believes that intrinsic rewards are better to promote because they last.
>
> * Whole life tracking---the endpoint is immersion.  Hopefully in what James
> Carse calls "the infinite game"---where the point is not in winning but in
> always improving the game.
>
> Asked in the Q&A about short versus long games, Schell noted that massive
> multiplayer games have such scale and scope and offer such endless new goals
> and progress along with their social intensity that World of Warcraft now
> has 10 million players.  We may well be passing our avatars on to our
> children and grandchildren.
>
>                                        --Stewart Brand
>
> --
>
> Stewart Brand -- sb at gbn.org

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