Reality is broken - Chapter's 8&9

In chapter eight, Jane talks about “leveling up in life”. Specifically, she is referring to making even the most mundane of tasks fun and enjoyable. She is speaking about putting a point and reward system on our everyday live and turning it into a game. In this chapter she refers to three separate examples which she is suggests might work. Her first example talks about an online resource where you and your friends sign up and create a reward system based on tasks that require some form of motivation (plusoneme.com). In her example she was stating that she should be able to gain charisma and public speaking points for performing her lecture.  Although this idea does have some merit to it, there are some concerns which need to be addressed such as the willingness of the participants, or their ability to keep track and record vital information for game play. The second example that Jane talks about in this chapter is the adaptation of gamification relating to airlines. Specifically, she speaks about virgin airways and they’re new on board game that is played from plane to plane. This game is designed to give the passengers a sense of relief and get their minds of flying; as for most people it is quite an anxious ordeal. This game was not only said to relieve stress during flight, but as well it affords some passengers the ability to relieve some of their pre-flight stress as they spend most of their time focusing on how they are going to play the game and not on the upcoming flight which they will soon be boarding. She also speaks about this games social benefit’s, as it requires the players to work in coordination with one another in order to beat the opposing plane. I believe that it is games like this that provide the best chance to bridge the gap between real life and gameplay. It is taking a task that is mandatory for you at the time and making it fun. I don't believe that we have to make everything into a game in order to make the world a better place; we just have to turn the worst parts of it into a game in order to make the bearable. Instead of waiting in line to get your hamburger from Harveys give me a chance to win my burger for free.

Chapter nine of Reality Is Broken speaks about fun with strangers.  She states that “compared with games, reality is lonely and isolating. Games help us band together and create powerful communities from scratch.” She begins by talking about a game called Comfort of Strangers. This is an alternate reality game that encourages the user to get up and out of their house.  The objective of this game is to identify other players as either lovers or dancers. The Player is randomly assigned to either team and the game is won when there are no remaining members of the enemy team. Games such as this are great in a since they evoke a need for participation on its players, however it does seem to have some obvious fallbacks. Firstly, as Jane mentions it would be quite difficult to get the participation needed to get this game massively successful. Secondly this game appears to be lacking on a reward system, as such how can you expect the players to remain engaged in what they are doing.  She then begins to speak about a game called Bounce, a virtual reality game which requires the user to connect with someone of another generation. It is a phone based trivia game where the two participants must ask each other questions and find 10 commonalities between them. They then must devise a poem using the answers you had just established. By doing this both participants are gaining experience and leveling up. This game is meant to help establish stronger social skills from both participants.  However with this virtual reality game we do se some flaws that would need to be checked out. One flaw that immediately comes to mind would be the lack of participation from the older generations. This game could be easily market towards the younger generations, as they seem to always be searching for the newest coolest thing out there. However we do find that with the older generation we see more skepticism towards trying new things. Especially when they are so strongly associated with technology and “gaming”. All skepticism aside, a game such as this would have many social benefits for thousands of gamers out there. It would allow the newer generations to connect with older generations outside your families. It would also serve as an excellent source of information for both the older and newer generations.

Reality is broken - Chapter's 6&7

In chapter 6, Jane talks about “Becoming a part of something bigger than ourselves”. Specifically she is referring to gamers and their need to be a part of something better. She begins by giving the example of Halo 3, when they asked their players to begin the race to 10 billion covenant kills.  This seems like an impossible task, what they are asking is for every man woman and child on the earth to kill 2 bad guys each. What Bungie (creators of Halo) is counting on, is the gamers need for an epic win, they are expecting a few thousand hardcore dedicated gamers to step up to the plate and pull up the slack for those who either have no interest or are just unable to compete in this challenge. This is exactly the type of participation they received because in just 565 days they managed to complete this task. What Jane then goes on to discuss is the potential for this teamwork to benefit us in some tangible way. She talks about how we have been able to assemble the world’s largest army; they all just got a little sidetracked playing Halo. What Jane is suggesting is that instead of collaborating over fictional events we bring real world events into fictional environments and attempt to solve them. Instead of investing millions of dollars into the next Call of Duty franchise why not create a new game targeted at the mass videogame audiences. Call it “Mother Natures Revenge: An angry planet” and instead of teaching your participants to snipe off his enemies head, teach him how to communicate, how to brainstorm; teach them how to think.

In Chapter 7, Jane talks about the benefits of Alternate Reality. In this chapter what she is trying to establish are the benefits to living in a gamified world. She begins her argument by talking about an ARG known as Chore Wars. This is a game, which attempts to put a point and reward system on your everyday chores. The point of this Alternate reality is to improve the “dirty work” that you are forced to deal with every week. She states that a game such as this is fun at first but within the first couple of months your participation begins to fade. This is exactly what is hindering many of the mass ARG’s which people are trying to create. There is something, which draws you to a game such as this initially, but there is nothing to keep pulling you back in. She then begins to talk about ARG’s that you play out of necessity. Specifically she is speaking about a game that she created called super better. This is an ARG in which the participants must impose upon themselves. The game has a few set rules however it is for the most part up to the participant to clarify those rules and tailor the game to their specific needs.  It is a game that attempts to make your life a little easier and is meant to be played while you are ill or not feeling well. It allows the player to remove the stress from their lives, and allows the player an excuse to get people to care for them. Jane is looking for the perfect blend, using the problem solving skills we see used in ARG’s mixed with the mass connectivity we see in the big box games. She is looking for an idea that will not only change he world for gamers but for every man woman and child living on this planet.

Reality is Broken - Chapter's 4&5

In chapter 4, Jane McGonigal speaks about “fun failure, and the chance for success”. What she is trying to establish in this chapter is the emotional reasoning behind why exactly millions of people play videogames on a regular basis. She states that with games, learning is the drug. She believes that, the thing that keeps people coming back, time and time again is the need for self-improvement. She believes that within everybody there is a desire to constantly be changing for the better. What Jane is suggesting is that games are doing just this; they are setting people up for failure. However she is not suggesting that this failure is discouraging at all, in fact she believes that it is the very thing which keeps people coming back time and time again. She states, “ fun will always morph to boredom, once we pass the critical point of being reliably successful. “. This statement could not be truer; when we look to the real world we see these points reinforced.  As Jane mentions we see people who work desk jobs finding their work quite boring and meaningless. Whereas when we look at the other side of the spectrum we see people in the trades for the most part enjoying what they are doing. They get to see direct results from their work and quite often they work on different tasks from week to week. She then talks about the drive for success specifically she speaks about Rockband. She discusses the correlation between the rock star dream and the user experience. She explains that within everyone there is a desire to fulfill this “American dream” and Rockband allows you to do just this. As well she speaks about the social benefits of games such as this. Such as stronger social skills, better relationship and interpersonal skills.

In Chapter 5, Jane talks about “Stronger Social Connectivity”. At the beginning, Jane is discussing the benefits to games held on social media sites. Specifically she is referring to Lexulous. She speaks about the benefits to asynchronous play (players can participate when they feel like it.). Saying that this type of play requires the user to be both addicted and patient, seemingly quite a daunting task however as she explains there are games out there which are able to make us feel both. These games however are usually found on social media sites or other websites where the main objective is to get you to log on daily or in some cases every 10 minutes. She then speaks about games that are able to give you the blissful productivity from WoW with the easygoing user participation of Lexulous, Games such as Farmville and Café-world. She speaks about these games seemingly overnight success and how one in seventy-five people all across the world are playing Farmville. She also speaks about how these games are beginning to bridge the gap between our virtual and real lives by telling you that your real friends need help in their virtual world. This gives us a sense of agency for these games; it brings our real lives further into the game, making it hard to distinguish what is fact from what is fiction.

Reality is Broken - Chapter 2

As this chapter begins Jane Mcgonnigal is discussing flow "the satisfying, exhilarating feeling of creative accomplishment and heightened functioning" She discuses Csikszentmihalyi's observations on flow and how there is almost none in real life, yet in game worlds there is an abundance of this flow. Jane then goes on to talk about Gamifying the world. She thinks that, if there is such an abundance of flow in game worlds, why not make our world into one gigantic game and get rid of all the desperation and despair. She then goes on to talk about David Sudnow and too much flow. Here was a man who had his whole life ahead of him and yet here he was spending every waking moment playing a videogame, breakout too be exact. Sudnow sat as he played this game for three months until he had finally come as close as he ever would too beating the game. At that point he had experienced so much flow and so much fiero that he just stopped cold turkey. Finally, Jane goes on to talk about happiness and different ways in which we attain it. She speaks about both extrinsic rewards (money, material things) and intrinsic rewards (hard work, improving yourself). Jane suggests turning real life into a game,  while this sounds good, it would be too difficult time consuming and risky too pull off. Not only would we need to pull millions and millions of dollars out of our own pockets too see this idea come too fruition. But as well, who is too say it would even work. Sure there is some research to back up the claims, but who’s too say that after a year of living in this gameified world you wouldn't begin to become desensitized to it, leaving you right back where you left off a few million dollars ago. We could see extreme immersion like that of Sudnow's research but how long until they "beat" the game and completely disconnect. what if in this new gameified world there is such an abundance of feiro and flow that after a while you completely peak, and nothing is the same again. Of course this is all just negative speculation. we could see that if gameified, the world could greatly benefit, if people enjoyed what they were doing all the time we could see a definite correlation between the amount of work done and the time spent doing it. We would see many people hiking up their socks and increasing their overall productivity. Nobody truly knows how this idea would flourish if it was given the proper startup, there are two possible paths which this idea may wander. Down one of the paths, we see a future with a social disconnect, where the people of this world have experienced so much flow and so much fiero that nothing will ever be the same. They will never feel the same sense of joy and wonder again. Down the other path however is a new life, where the people of this reality are enjoying their lives too the fullest. This is a path down which games and gamification rule. Where even the most mundane and repetitive of tasks have become an enjoyable challenge. We don't know where these new and radical ideas will take us, all we know is that in our everyday lives we will soon be seeing the repercussions of these somewhat inspirational ideas.