Jane McGonigal
Summary
This paper describes the concept of immersive gaming. In order to convey this concept, the author gives an example of an online group of gamers known as the Cloudmakers. This online group of gamers were a group of people who enjoy games that involve solving puzzles. As described in the paper, this group proudly adapted the theory of being a collective detective who employed all of the resources at their disposal to solve any mystery/puzzle that was presented to them (no matter how obscure). It was around this time that a massive immersive game was created that catered to groups of people with similar interests: The Beast. This game created an effective means of virtual immersion. The entire point of this game was to make it as close to reality as possible. The creators of this game went as far as denying the existence of the game itself in order to promote its underlying theme of a conspiracy. This game’s popularity was stemmed from the fact that it went beyond strictly online gaming and offline lives of its players in order to promote the augmented reality of this game. It facilitated the need for collaboration among all of its players because it created such a complex network of puzzles that one person alone could not possibly solve all the problems.
Next, this paper gave a brief section on the difference between immersive and pervasive gaming. Although they have many similar characteristics, these two differ in one fundamental manner: immersive games attempt to disguise the existence of the game to create a more realistic sense of a conspiracy, whereas a pervasive game is promoted and openly marketed to gain attraction. In addition, immersive games encourage collaboration whereas the (Nokia Game) provided incentives to solvers of the game (which implicitly limited collaboration). The Beast was a very complex network of puzzles, whereas the Nokia Game was simple enough that a single player could solve the game.
This paper then states some of the side effects of creating such immersive games. It briefly tells of games as becoming too addictive and could potentially harm peoples’ lives. However, it also emphasizes the players’ burning desire to keep the game play going and them consistently trying to make a conspiracy when one simply does not exist. It makes the case that if these players have such a burning desire to solve complex puzzles, why not utilize their expertise and intelligence on real world problems? Instead of fabricating conspiracies, why not apply them to the problems that governments currently face in order to come up with solutions?
Reflections
This paper was very interesting because I didn’t know that communities such as this existed. I have heard of clans and groups forming in MMORPG’s such as World of Warcraft, however, never a game whose sole purpose was to be disguised so much as to make players question whether it was “not just a game”. I appreciate the fact that the author pointed out some of the downfalls of this type of gaming. These types of games can become highly addictive and cause massive amounts of personal damage to the gamers’ lives. In addition, it can help to create a sense of paranoia to an already flustered society that we currently live in. The fact that players are so willing to jump into the flames to solve any problem that is being thrown at them means that they may be manipulated at any point to solve real world problems without them ever knowing it. However, this seems to be a double-edged sword. If communities such as the Cloudmakers were put to solve a real-world task, they might stumble upon something that was not meant for the public, causing mass hysteria and/or as Rheingold stated: create a mob mentality. I know that this example is a bit of a stretch, but one could almost consider Anonymous roughly similar to Cloudmaker. They are a group of hackers/activists who are actively working on solving a problem and/or uncovering some truth that is meant to stay hidden. I believe that if we were to employ these type of games, it could quickly turn into a form of attack. For example, if there was a task published to hack into company X’s website (part of the game), and the players succeeded, this could potentially cause much harm to the company. But who would be the person to get blamed? Would it be the person who got tricked into hacking the website in the first place or the pseudo game designer that left a vague clue that may or may not be interpreted. This paper stated that the online community is very intelligent and that it greatly surpassed the game-maker’s expectations, if this intelligence was put to malicious use, it could have some potentially disastrous results. A great example of this could be the users of Reddit who falsely accused someone of being behind the Boston bombing.
Questions
- How do you draw a line to distinguish game from reality
- Should such an addicting type of game be banned
- Is it wise to employ online intelligence to solve sensitive problems
- Wouldn’t this create a constant sense of paranoia and eventually lose faith in the government?
