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Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 4:31 pm
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I read this interview with Jessie Schell, of Schell Games. I was impressed with his pragmatic but optimistic approach to the world of gaming. Let me throw a few of my fave quotes at you.
Talking about social games on sites like facebook - "There's a weird paradox that everyone is going to have to face up to, this collision between fantasy and reality. In a lot of ways, the idea of the single-player video game is a weird anomaly. If you look at the history of games going back thousands of years, those games are multiplayer 99% of the time. You might have solitaire, but most of the time games are about connecting with other people. Computer tech of 20 or 30 years ago didn't really permit that, so there was no choice but to have single-player games. I think the single-player thing is a bit of a blip on the history of games."
Can't say I agree or even want to believe it, but he may be right there.
Referring to a possible future in which CPUs are in everything we use and life becomes a macro video game - "Anything we can measure that people want to influence the behavior of, people are going to try to work into a game. Games are meaningful and powerful. It sounds weird, but if we can track you while you are reading a book, watching tv, what you are eating, and when you are walking, why won't people try to turn it into a game? It's going to influence behaviors. I have a name for this, for the time when game playing infiltrates every second of your life. I call it the Gamepocalypse. I started a blog about all these things that take us closer to it. Like uBoost, a system for teachers. Do you want to give out bonus points to your students for good grades or behavior? They can use the points to decorate their avatar or feed their virtual pets or trade them in for iTunes. There are so many things like that. These things are infiltrating everywhere."
Kinda scary.
On whether this would result in an Orwellian nightmare - "It's kind of like George Orwell (big brother stuff), but it's really more like Aldous Huxley and Brave New World. Orwell thought a cruel government would enslave its populace. But this isn't about the government. Huxley's premise was that we'd be enslaved by entertainment. It would be so interesting and so compelling that we wouldn't think about anything important, and it would be corporations taking advantage of us. That's the more real danger. Like 'Buy 20 cartons of Camels and unlock the Bentley in GTA' or 'Sign up for the US Army and we'll give you a battle fortress in WOW.' People are going to start to realize the power of these things to influence us. You see it now. People are figuring out better and better game structures to manipulate us. Some people have told me, 'People won't stand for that; they'll rebel.' But if you look at the examples, in 1950, 13% of TV was commercials. Now it's 36%. Did anyone rebel? Did anyone do anything? Think about google and gmail. A corporation is going to scan every email you send and form a picture of your buying patterns. But we think that's ok."
Scary stuff, eh?
On game designers being on the front lines for the battle over the way we are going to live - "If you're a game designer, you've got to pick what side you're on. I carve it up into four different areas. There are the persuaders, who are in it to just make money. We've always seen those folks in the game industry. There's a group I call the fulfillers; this is most of the game industry. These are people that are really into fulfilling people's wishes, fulfilling people's dreams and fantasies. Then there are the artists, who want to make things that are beautiful and revolutionary. They don't really care how many units it sells. And finally there are the humanitarians. Their goal is to use the incredible power that games have to make us better people-improve our minds, improve our bodies; improve our souls. You might think you're on one side, but someone else is going to be trying to manipulate you. I put out a call to say, 'You better pick what side you're on, because if you don't, someone else is going to pick for you.'
"We are battling for everyone's attention. But where an individual devotes their attention determines their character. What you give your attention to determines who you are; it determines who we are as humanity. It's a very meaningful question. It may turn out that it's a nightmare, and there's no winning this war. The government might come up with games to get you to go outside and stop smoking and be smarter; but who can win against Coca-Cola and Philip Morris? But the flip side of that is that when everything is measured all the time, people become more self-conscious. People become more aware. Maybe that will change people. Maybe they will say, 'This isn't how I want to be remembered.' Because it will be remembered - for 1,000 years or as long as your descendents choose to keep your data alive. It will be a permanent record of everything you've done. Maybe that will cause people to be better people and that will be the balancing force. But it's hard to say."
^That's my fave quote. If you read nothing else, read that. whee
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Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 7:02 pm
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Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 10:49 am
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Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 12:19 pm
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Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 8:50 am
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Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 9:45 am
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Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 12:07 pm
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Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 6:21 pm
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Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 7:31 pm
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Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 10:29 am
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Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 5:33 pm
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Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 11:24 am
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Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 7:11 pm
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Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 9:53 am
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Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 6:36 pm
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