

Andrew Klavan on "Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better" By Jane McGonigal - skmurphy
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954004576089871685098158.html

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scotty79
> "Meaning is the feeling that we're a part of something bigger than
> ourselves. It's the belief that our actions matter beyond our own individual
> lives." But no, actually, that's not what meaning is at all. Meaning is when
> those feelings and beliefs refer to something that is true.

How do you know if feelings associated with meaning refer to something true?

Is the meaning of life effort, of mother who singlehandedly raises two
children who will live mediocre lives and die childless, really true or she
just thinks it is?

Is the meaning of the sacrifice of a soldier at war true? Or just some people
think it is while he is actually just meat for the grinder?

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istjohn
Much of life would be improved if it were more video-game-like. Work, school,
and daily chores could all benefit from a structure that reliably rewards
sustained effort in the way a video game does. On the other hand, I don't
think video games can provide a useful solution to existential angst.

~~~
andolanra
My school rewarded sustained effort on a letter scale, A through F, which I
guess they must have borrowed from Dance Dance Revolution. I never did get the
AA grade, myself.

Richard Feynman once wrote a great article called Cargo Cult Science[1], where
he defined cargo cult science to be something that takes up the trappings of
science (journals, jargon, lab-coats, &c) without taking up the thing that
makes science what it is (the scientific method.) In a lot of these
"videogamification" ideas, I feel like there's a kind of "cargo cult gaming"
going on, where people focus more on the trappings of video games (levels,
points, reward structures, &c) without getting at the real meat of what makes
video games fun (which I would argue can be _enhanced by_ the reward structure
but broadly speaking is something _apart from_ the rewards structure.) You can
hand out points all you want, but my experience is that points won't make
schools or chores into a game any more than adding big black spots will turn a
sheep into a cow.

[1] <http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm>

~~~
xiaoma
Recently there have been a number of experimental programs that actually do
use experience points and leveling in lieu of normal grading procedures for
younger students, with good results for all I've heard of so far. There was a
TED talk that mentioned this last year, but I don't remember which one.

There's also at least one college prof doing this, Lee Sheldon at
Bloomington's Indiana University. His course is related to computer games,
though.

~~~
andolanra
I would hypothesize wildly that younger students might respond well to this
for the same reason that young children prefer the Kraft macaroni in the
shapes of cartoon characters—it's a kind of association, "This is fun because
it is like the video games I play!" I suspect both that a. it would become
less effective as the students aged, especially towards the end of
primary/elementary school, where students might see it as a kind of trick, and
b. it would become far less effective if it became the standard way of running
a school, because it's no longer "like a video game," it is "like a school."
Which all is to say that it's not the experience points that are improving the
experiences, it's the mental association with video games. I'd be happy to be
proved wrong, though, and I don't think that the experiments with this
shouldn't be done—I'm just skeptical.

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dragons
Snippet from the article: > "The book's thesis is essentially that real life
isn't as fun or rewarding as videogames, and so life should be "fixed" to be
more like the games. This would be achieved by applying gaming scenarios and
game logic to real-life interactions, ranging from doing the laundry to saving
the world."

That idea is not new; the science fiction novel "Ender's Game", by Orson Scott
Card, came out in 1985. It sounds like a similar concept to me.

I think the proposal to solve real problems during video game play is
interesting, in any case. The article quotes McGonigal's book as saying large
groups of video game players could be involved in > "a whole-planetary
mission... to raise global quality of life... and to sustain our earth for the
next millennium and beyond."

The reviewer responds: > "Sounds dreadful, I know, but I wouldn't worry about
it."

Does this idea sound so dreadful? I don't think so. Hm.

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hugh3
While I certainly have nothing against computer games in general, I'd say that
Ms McGonigal's idea that real life would be much better if only we could make
it more like a computer game is sufficiently silly that I'm not sure what else
I can say about it once I've pointed out its silliness.

~~~
nightski
I enjoy video games very much, but tend to agree with you.

Speaking purely from my own naive experience, for many in America life is
simply great. Within the context of my day to day life I cannot say that there
are any great struggles. When life is so good, one starts to question its
purpose. But games are not the answer to this question imho. There is a great
deal of purpose to be had in this world, one just has to get out and seek it.

