

Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games - bd
http://fury.com/2010/02/jesse-shells-mindblowing-talk-on-the-future-of-games-dice-2010/

======
nickpp
You know, I've been playing the game he's describing since I was born. Is
called REAL LIFE and its point system uses money. Spend on upgrades
(education) get new powers and eventually earn more. Spend in shops, get new
toys. Etc.

This is not the future, it is the present.

~~~
misuba
Damn, I've been trying to accumulate happiness points. Is there a patch I
didn't download?

~~~
nickpp
For happiness points, spend your money on personal improvements and your time
on other players.

------
sjsivak
The talk is the excellent, the video is terrible and does not show the slides
at all. You can view the slides here:
<http://www.slideshare.net/jesseschell/beyond-facebook>

~~~
jfarmer
Those slides are incomprehensible without the accompanying video.

Not a critique -- just an FYI for anyone who goes to read the slides rather
than watch the video.

------
bjplink
If you decide to watch this and during the last few minutes decide it's a bit
over the top and want to stop I suggest you hold on until the last 30 seconds.
I almost gave up before then but I'm glad I finished.

~~~
amohr
My problem with the last couple minutes is one of framing. I feel like there's
probably some real name for this, but the scenario he dreams up can be easily
presented favoring either side with minimal actual changes.

On one hand, you have the grim, over-commercialized future where you're being
watched and tracked all the time and everything you do is only to accumulate
soulless omnipoints that mean any number of things that don't necessarily
improve your quality of life. HOWEVER, there's a potential for positive
behavior modification through ubiquitous tracking.

On the other hand, we have a wild and fanciful future where you never have to
read a bad book because everything you've read and watched has been tracked,
logged, and analyzed by incredibly accurate recommendation engines. Everything
I encounter is tailor-made to maximize my enjoyment specifically - and all for
the small price of embedded ads. HOWEVER, I can no longer finish playing a
game and trade it for my friend's finished game because, unless I register the
game, I can't earn points. And, of course, my friend registered it because,
without earning points, why bother playing the game?

Bottom line is it's a brave new world and we can't really tell where it's
going to end up. It may be oppressive and commercial, it may be a utopian,
pleasure-maximized dreamworld. But it will be based on the millions of
decisions made along the way - so just try and be mindful of the consequences,
I guess.

------
artagnon
I know many people manually track what they eat, how much they spend, how long
they spend in the gym, which books they read, and which movies they watch on a
daily basis. I think it'll just be a matter of time before people make all
this information public in a semantic format. When there's enough information
with numbers attached to it, everything can potentially become a game. Schell
is right in this aspect.

However, I think Schell goes a little over the top towards the end though-
won't humans be sick of all the gaming? There are some information they'd
_want_ to use to game, other information they want to keep private. Also, I
don't think there'd be _that_ many real-world benefits attached to data mined
off people: they'd always find a way to cheat then.

------
timf
Was posted here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1138142>

Awesome talk. He points out a number of psychological hooks that games are now
using to interweave real life. And takes that to its logical conclusion (I
won't spoil what this is) which actually seems mostly plausible and maybe even
welcome to me -- _given that one is able to anonymously opt-out of all the
games/location-data publishing._

~~~
stakent
Opt-out?

Well, this person needs our special attention. We sholud protect the society
from all this "opt-outs".

------
joshu
Reminds me vaguely of Mitch Hedberg. Anyone else get that?

~~~
joshu
Finished watching the video.

I can't tell if it was inspiring or intensely dystopic.

I can already imagine the anti-point backlash and the giant secretive forums
for gaming the system.

------
klon
Sounds like a pretty dark future to me.

~~~
lsd5you
Yes. It was pretty weak when he tried to tie the whole thing together with an
optimistic message at the end...

His plan for a better future is mindlessly optimistic: everybody is observed
-> everybody behaves better. Apart from being bad in and of itself, it is
actually pretty unlikely to come about in any way like he described (if you
think about it), and it is fairly insidious to place it on an equal footing,
rhetorically with all the other outcomes.

The reality is that people are having their own psychology increasingly
'gamed' by corporations and this is not a good thing. I predict that the ready
supply of instant gratification will be as or more harmful than fast food and
the obesity epidemic. One day we may find an easy way to overcome or sidestep
our unwanted proclivities (assuming we're still in charge of ourselves enough
to make this happen) and that will be a different story, albeit possibly an
extremely dull one.

Somewhat ironic as he's just giving the viewer 'what they want' - a positive
message.

The swiss army kitchen knife cracked me up, however!

~~~
nas
I laughed that the iPad joke even though I think he missed the point of it.
The iPad represents the iPhone software model applied to personal (netbook
like) computers. Installing software and keeping a computer is beyond the
average person. The draconian control Apple exerts over iTunes is seen as a
solution.

Anyhow, back to current topic, I too see his predicted future as a bad thing.
It is a scientific fact that people are fairly easily manipulated by certain
reward schemes[1]. With current technology, marketing people are getting good
at applying those theories. With all due respect to honest people doing a job,
those people don't give a shit about making the world a better place.

1\. Sorry, I'm too lazy to dig up papers. Basically frequent small rewards
given over randomized intervals are extremely compelling to people. This
theory is applied to (or explains the success of) many gambling games.

------
dantheman
I've been thinking along the lines of the thoughts he presents at the end of
the presentation. Once data collection becomes easy, more people will live a
reflective life and make better choices. We will also see less hypocrisy as
the illusion of their perceived self, how they see themselves, is contrasted
by their real behavior. A trivial example would be, X is my favorite food and
Y is my favorite band. Well according to this data you eat Z instead of X, and
you listen to B at a much greater frequency than you do Y.

~~~
smallblacksun
I don't buy it. Data collection is much easier today than even 10 years ago,
and I don't see any evidence that "more people will live a reflective life and
make better choices."

~~~
dantheman
We are not there yet; most people can't go to their computer and see exactly
what they've done in the past week, month, year -- how it compares to others;
and does it match goals that they've set etc. The trick is that it has to be
automatic.

------
tcarnell
AWESOME TALK (thanks for posting)

------
daralthus
hey wow thanks it was a very inspiring talk. but wait a minute before you
shout privacy leaks and etc. I think the sharing of everything we do, under
our real name will be boring after a while and people will get new alteregos
(khm, "avatars", hm...maybenot) because they can leave their real self out
there and jump in to the world like somebody else. Then meet new people, do
crazy stuff and then share it again like we do it now on the net it will be
just much more integrated to our life... the phrase: "the internet is coming
to our life" is finaly getting some new meaning.

