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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
Very true, but most people don't realize it. Or worse, people will admit that money and time and effort on eduction produces rewards, but they don't equate those short term indications (grades) with the long term rewards (options in life, potential stability and/or self-determination). Amusingly enough, something that is a reward for reward sake (XBox Achievements) is accepted without question...
It's funny because games originally derives from real life competitions and adventures, now people are pushing the ideologies in modern games back into real life.
You point to existing structure that guides human behavior. One of the points of the talk is that game designers can create additional structure that will guide behavior differently.
A great video with a lot of exciting ideas (even if they're articulated somewhat stormily at times). This is definitely a viable advertising platform--one that makes good use of the attractive qualities of capitalism, by inspiring competition and desire for collection within consumers, trading exposure--and (hopefully) real human currency--for fabricated (yet, if implemented correctly, completely desirable) points.
nickpp's point is off the mark. Human currency carries with it an unfortunate (but absolutely and obviously necessary) burden of seriousness. If you spend it foolishly, there's a chance you'll "Game Over"--and (as my mom always used to tell me) there's no reset button in real life, sorry. Implementing a system where individuals apply a certain (limited) extent of value to a new, less dire, capitalistic system, is a win-win for everyone involved.
Blow all of your points on a retinal-based bar-code scanner that barely works? Oh well, at least you can still make rent.
Actually, the current efforts with Universal Health Care and general Social Security in developed countries are trying to make sure there is no "Game Over".
And as for boring - I guess it depends on the player. Personally I find video games incredibly unfulfilling. Lots of fun while playing but leaving an empty feeling afterward, of time completely wasted. While real life is AWESOME! Everything I do and create improves my life and that of the people around me.
Explicit, short-term rewards trump implicit or long-term rewards. Immediate feedback with points will enable much faster & more effective behavior change.
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!
His ideas were not particularly well presented, but they had a real value.
His point, as I understood it, was to encourage the people in that room (ie the people who actually design the games we all play) to take the responsibility for making this coming world more than just commercialized crap. He starts that section talking about how much opportunity there is in current points systems, and encourages skilled designers to move in that direction and influence the shape of the field.
He doesn't express it as clearly as he might, but I believe that was the goal of his talk.
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.
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.
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.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 84.0 ms ] threadAwesome 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.
Well, this person needs our special attention. We sholud protect the society from all this "opt-outs".
Not a critique -- just an FYI for anyone who goes to read the slides rather than watch the video.
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.
Watch a Prius driver, they just drive differently from the rest.
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.
This is not the future, it is the present.
A great video with a lot of exciting ideas (even if they're articulated somewhat stormily at times). This is definitely a viable advertising platform--one that makes good use of the attractive qualities of capitalism, by inspiring competition and desire for collection within consumers, trading exposure--and (hopefully) real human currency--for fabricated (yet, if implemented correctly, completely desirable) points.
nickpp's point is off the mark. Human currency carries with it an unfortunate (but absolutely and obviously necessary) burden of seriousness. If you spend it foolishly, there's a chance you'll "Game Over"--and (as my mom always used to tell me) there's no reset button in real life, sorry. Implementing a system where individuals apply a certain (limited) extent of value to a new, less dire, capitalistic system, is a win-win for everyone involved.
Blow all of your points on a retinal-based bar-code scanner that barely works? Oh well, at least you can still make rent.
And as for boring - I guess it depends on the player. Personally I find video games incredibly unfulfilling. Lots of fun while playing but leaving an empty feeling afterward, of time completely wasted. While real life is AWESOME! Everything I do and create improves my life and that of the people around me.
But again - it depends on the person.
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!
His point, as I understood it, was to encourage the people in that room (ie the people who actually design the games we all play) to take the responsibility for making this coming world more than just commercialized crap. He starts that section talking about how much opportunity there is in current points systems, and encourages skilled designers to move in that direction and influence the shape of the field.
He doesn't express it as clearly as he might, but I believe that was the goal of his talk.
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.
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.