BA6 CS Report Can Games Change The World

Can Games Change The World? What potential do games have beyond entertainment as an influence on society?

This essay will look into how games can develop and change in the future. It will pose the question ‘Can digital games change the world?’ I want to look at the development of cinema as a parallel to games growth. For example advancements in film production over the last 100 years, have led to a Television in every home, connected to a global network.
In this document, I want to explore other phenomena which have shaped our lives, such as the mobile phone and the internet, also the development of games in so far as they have developed as a “non-serious” arm of media, concluding with a look at the practical application for games in the near future.

Film began with a camera solely observing everyday life, documenting it and playing back to an audience. Louis Lumiere is the person mostly credited with the invention of the first motion picture camera in 1895, although several others had made similar inventions around the same time. Lumiere and his brother, Auguste, created some of the very first moving pictures including one of the first public displays of film: L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat or The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film. The audience, in first watching this film were so overwhelmed by the moving image they ran away, screamed, had similar reactions, in fact, that the 4D experience has today. “The film had a particularly lasting impact; yes, it caused fear, terror, even panic." (Karasek 13/5/12 for Der Spiegel magazine). Whether this actually happened is not confirmed, but there is no doubt it caused an intense reaction among its audience. This story just goes to prove how far the development of films has progressed from the days of Two Dimensions.

Like films, games began in a basic way from humble beginnings. Early examples were puzzle games, arcade form; simple video games usually based on sports and old traditional games which had been around for hundreds of years, the aim of the game being to gain the highest score. The first creation which could be called a computer game was programmed by A.S Douglas in 1952 for his PhD at Cambridge University; it was a version of noughts and crosses and was created on an EDSAC vacuum tube computer.

Film has been around since the early 1900s, it has been in our culture for over a century. Compare that to the games industry, which is only been with us a few decades, is often viewed with suspicion, and is rarely considered an art form. But the Games industry has had the necessary technological advances needed to evolve much faster, all made within the last 30 years, I feel the popularity and growth it is also down to the immersion and sense of agency that people get when playing a game, it is a sense of interaction that you wouldn't normally get from any other kind of medium.

“The fastest way to improve someone's everyday quality-of-life is to bestow on a person a specific goal, something to do and look forward.” (McGonigal 2011)

This is what games give to people; they give people that specific goal, that something hard to work for that part of an epic meaning. It's a way for people to escape the humdrum of their day-to-day lives and be a part of something bigger; this is the nature of games.

"The cinema is an invention without a future" (Louis Lumière) perhaps games are in a similar developmental position.

The future of games

Just like many of the phenomena of the 20th-century (radio, film, television, mobile phones and the Internet), in a relatively short period, games started to play a very big part in our lives The industry already makes more profit than both the film and music industries (Neil Long 03/03/08) and has created its very own social phenomenon, where millions of people all over the world chat and play together in a virtual universe. There are many different aspects to the games industry and each or any one of them could potentially generate new inventions. For example: “scientists are making contact lenses that can contain a television screen within the next ten years” (The Telegraph 09 Feb 2009), therefore providing the user with their very own HUD. This route alone has the potential to enable people to be able to enter a digital world whilst going about their daily business, thus creating an extension of the internet in our own lives. Obviously this is something hypothetical, for the future, but even today I feel that there is a very real prospect that games could be transformed into practical applications, for example; education, documenting, medicine, surgery, training, rehabilitation and physiotherapy. I want to explore what games could potentially do for us now and in the near future, other than just as a source of entertainment.

Jane McGonigal, (author of reality is broken 2011) a world renowned games developer and Director of Games research and development at the Institute of the Future, has been an adviser to companies such as Microsoft, Intel and Disney. Her aim is to make the world a better place using games. The Institute of the Future has created several alternative reality games in an attempt to aid in the training of people across the globe. I am beginning to see McGonigal’s endeavours as the future of games.

“By the age of 21, the average young American has spent more than 10,000 hours playing videogames to put this in perspective 10,000 hours is almost exactly the same amount of time and average American student spends in the classroom if they have perfect attendance.” (McGonigal 2011)

McGonigal refers to Malcolm Gladwell’s theory that any person who is extraordinary in their field has spent a cumulative 10,000 hours in the practise of said field. According to this theory, every gamer who has spent 10,000 hours gaming has the potential to be as good as Bill Gates is in his field.

“Malcolm Gladwell first proposed the 10,000 hour theory in his best-selling book outliers: the story of success. In the outliers, Gladwell reports on the life stories of high achieving individuals, from violin virtuoso to all-star hockey players to Bill Gates, and he finds that they all have one autobiographical fact in common. By the age of 20 the top performer in any given field had each accumulated at least 10,000 hours of practice at the one thing that eventually made them superstars.” (McGonigal 2011)

Based on this observation, we have to wonder whether; if a game can be engaging enough for its subject, can we teach anybody about anything by using games? Could games be used alongside regular study? There is a really interesting documentary on Channel 4 at the moment called ‘Hidden Talent’ (presented by Richard Bacon 24/4/12), which puts a group of people through challenges to discover if they have a natural ability for that subject, from being an Opera Singer to a human lie detector (Hidden Talent, Channel 4, Tuesdays at 9:00pm). Thus demonstrating, if you put a person through training regime there is the potential to unleash a natural talent for that subject.

So if games could be used for educational purposes, where would they fit in? I feel that the research and theories of Jane McGonigal hold a significant truth. Maybe people do become the best that they can be when they are in a game and, if we could harness the mind set of people who are gaming, and recreate it in the real world, would it mean that instead of just accepting life’s difficulties and traumas, people could be empowered to improve and to search for the ultimate meaning in their lives and strive to be the best that they can. Could this be an answer to ending the benefit culture we see today and giving people back their self-respect?

As an example of how McGonigal’s theory could work, we can look at the “Pokémon phenomenon”. There was a study (David Ng 27/1/07) in a primary school where children were asked to name the Pokémon and to list their skills, they were also asked to do the same with animals that we have in the real world. In nearly every instance the children were able to name nearly every Pokémon and list their strengths, but when it came to listing the animals, a very small proportion of them could even name all the animals, let alone their attributes.

All very interesting, but how does this change the world? McGonigal created a series of games set in an alternate reality; one example was “World Without Oil”, an online game played from April 30, 2007 to June 1, 2007. The game used social media, news feeds, player’s videos and forums to make the game as immersive as possible. The aim of the game was for ‘regular people’ (the players) to invent creative, alternative solutions to survive an oil shortage. Hundreds of solutions were created, but a happy and unexpected consequence was that the players changed their entire attitude and often their long term real world lives, in accordance with the Oil shortage game.

This is a fantastic way to bridge the gap between games and reality and bring with it the benefits of forward thinking. Games could be used as a way of “reprogramming” people to think differently and possibly ‘Save the World’.

“By design, every computer and video game puzzle is meant to be solvable, every mission accomplishable, and every level possible by a gamer with enough time and motivation.” (McGonigal 2011)

Games have a sense of fulfilment that reality can’t always give, reality doesn’t constantly reward you for your experience, you don’t ‘level up’ in the real world, also games are used to escape social pressures and downfalls-anyone can become a hero.

“What the world needs now are more epic wins: opportunities for ordinary people to do extraordinary things-like change or save someone's life-everyday. “Epic win”is a gamer term. It is used to describe a big, and unusual surprising, success: come-from-behind victory, an orthodox strategy that works out spectacularly well.” (McGonigal 2011)

So how do we use games to change people’s attitude to life? Pokémon’s creator, Satoshi Tajiri, was inspired as a child to create Pokémon from his hobby of insect collecting. Once he was unable to collect insects, his attention turned to videogames, and it was the love of these two things which helped him to create the Pokémon characters. Tajiri has an amazing ability to categorise and create these characters, harnessing his own particular vision of the world and his enthusiasm for collecting insects.

Research shows that the Pokémon phenomenon was so clever in delivering its game, that people became experts in it, learning more about Pokémon than they do real life animals. If there was a game with a similar format and addiction to Pokémon which used real life animals, or even real-life geographical locations, or any number of academic subjects, then people would be able to start bridging the gap from the game world and bring its benefits into the real world.

As a counterpoint however; going back to my point about TV’s in contact lenses- if this was applied to the psychological state of schizophrenia, the merging of the internet world and the real world for someone with this condition would be problematic, as it would be too difficult to define boundaries. This though, is an evolutionary step humans would have to take, but it cannot be rushed.

Conclusion

I think humanity really does have the potential to improve and fix the human condition, by discovering how games can create parallel learning. Just like the studies of Pokémon demonstrate, if we could make an educational version of a game, with real subjects that have real skills, then we can utilise them and to bring these traits out of people to create a more positive, educated and enlightened individual. McGonigal’s theory could work if just half the population of the world applied themselves the way we do when gaming, that would create an entire generation of optimistic and intelligent people. We are at our happiest when we are working hard and achieving, so if our lives were filled with the fundamental skills that games can teach us, we will be happier as people because life would give us purpose. We need to streamline this into education, give people their own sense of agency or ‘epic win’ so that they can achieve from life and in turn, achieve blissful productivity.

Why should we have to escape reality through games when games could make our own world better, wiping out the need for a fantasy world?

Bibliography
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Primary:

Jane McGonigal reality is broken 2011

Secondary:

www.about.com http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmotionpictures.html  2012 viewed 13/5/12

http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/history/higinbotham.asp  viewed 13/5/12

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/4566704/Televisions-to-be-fitted-in-contact-lenses-within-ten-years.html  made 09/02/09, viewed 16/05/12

http://www.indiegamethemovie.com/  viewed 18/05/12

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html  viewed 18/05/12

http://www.mayslesfilms.com/films/index.html  viewed 18/05/12

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Tajiri   viewed 19/05/12

Channel 4 http://www.channel4.com/programmes/hidden-talent/4od 24/4/12 Viewed 15/5/12

David Ng  http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/2007/01/true_or_false_with_regards_to.php  26/1/07 viewed 20/05/12

Neil Long http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/its-official-games-revenues-overtake-music-at-retail/016316  03/03/08 viewed 20/05/12

The Guardian http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/technology/gamesblog/2011/oct/10/tiga-richard-wilson-interview?post_gdp=true  10/10/11 viewed 20/5/12

Research
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“It is games that give us something to do when there is nothing to do. We thus call games “pastimes” and regard them as trifling fillers of our lives. But they are much more important than that. They are clues to the future. And they're serious cultivation now is perhaps our only salvation”. (Bernard Suits 2011 quoted in Jane McGonigal's book reality is broken)

“Playing World of Warcraft is such a satisfying job, gamers have collectively spend 5.9 3 million years doing it”. (Jane McGonigal reality is broken 2011)

“The fastest way to improve someone's everyday quality-of-life is to bestow on a person a specific goal, something to do and look forward.” (Jane McGonigal reality is broken 2011)

“The design of the workflow is key here: the game constantly challenging you to try something just a little bit more difficult than what you've just accomplished. These microincreases in challenge are just big enough to keep sparking your interest and motivation-but never big enough to createanxiety or the sense of an ability gap. As one long-time World of Warcraft player explains, "when accepting a quest, you really have to question if you can complete it; you just need to figure out when you can fit it into your jam-packed hero schedule" the endless series of goals and actionable steps is exactly what makes water war craft so invigorating.” (Jane McGonigal reality is broken 2011)

“With 10,000 hours under their belts by the age of 21 most of these young people will be more than just good gamers they'll be exceptionally good gamers. That's because 10,000 hours of practice before the age of 21, according to at least one theory, is the number of one predictor of extraordinary success in life.” (Jane McGonigal reality is broken 2011)

“We’re witnessing what amounts to no less than a mass exodus to virtual worlds and online game environment”   (Economist Edward Castronover)

“What the world needs now are more epic wins: opportunities for ordinary people to do extraordinary things-like change or save someone's life-everyday. “Epic win”is a gamer term. It is used to describe a big, and unusual surprising, success: come-from-behind victory, an orthodox strategy that works out spectacularly well.” (Jane McGonigal reality is broken 2011)

“By design, every computer and video game puzzle is meant to be solvable, every mission accomplishable, and every level possible by a gamer with enough time and motivation.” (Jane McGonigal reality is broken 2011)

“Malcolm Gladwell first proposed the 10,000 hour theory in his best-selling book outliers: the story of success. In the outliers, Gladwell reports on the life stories of high achieving individuals, from violin virtuoso to all-star hockey players to Bill Gates, and he finds that they all have one autobiographical fact in common. By the age of 20 the top performer in any given field had each accumulated at least 10,000 hours of practice at the one thing that eventually made them superstars.” (McGonigal 2011)

“By the age of 21, the average young American has has spent more than 10,000 hours playing videogames to put this in perspective 10,000 hours is almost exactly the same amount of time and average American student spends in the classroom if they have perfect attendance.” (McGonigal 2011)

Jane McGonigal reality is broken 2011