"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" Really?

Conforming to Rules, following a path leading to a goal, that goal giving you a sense of accomplishment under our own authority. Is this not a game?

Jane McGonigal states that "all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation" (McGonigal 2011, p.21). This being said then is life not a game? Games are set out to have one of two paths, finite games and infinite games. Finite games with a beginning and ending with a chance of "winning" and Infinite games a never ending cycle of gaming. We crave satisfaction, a positivity through challenges. These satisfactions pull upon the four attributes of a game. 

We follow rules everyday why don't we believe its a game? Our need to follow rules and work hard at life crosses platforms with digital video games or gaming industry.McGonigal tells use to forget the old saying "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" (Mcgonigal 2011, p.29). According to McGonigal the game industry use our need to work hard, our fear of failure allows us to test real world problem without any consequences expect our time. We think its fun to play GTA and kills people, steal cars, have loads of money. The satisfactory element is when the basic rules of reality spill over onto imaginary plains but the system allows you beat reality without reality affected.

Nothing can be classified as a game without those there to create the rules, the feedback systems and aesthetics, the goal. Henry Jenkins suggests that "media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence" (Jenkins 2006 p.2) is new media, can that be said for all games? The feedback system, goal and rules designed by collective intelligence, the participatory culture falling between the category of voluntary participation and the media convergence of platforms and reality games.

Realities lines between games are blurred when you break them down into the four categories, it suggest that life is a game, and we are willing to play. 






Bibliography

McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, Penguin Press HC.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006,

The Game of Life

Millions of people prefer spending time in the virtual gaming world instead of in reality, leading to a great deal of moral debates on the value of games. However, the consequences of games should not be questioned, but rather reality itself. According to McGonigal (2011, p.20), there is something wrong with reality and games should be used to fix it.

In order to do this, there should be a clear understanding of what a game exactly is. Jane McGonigal proposes a definition that does not connect games to a certain medium. Rather, she argues that all games structure experience in a unique way (McGonigal, 2011, p.21). According to McGonigal (2011, p.21), “what defines a game are the goal, the rules, the feedback system, and voluntary participation. Everything else is an effort to reinforce and enhance these four core elements”. In this respect, gaming can be understood as accomplishing unnecessary hard work voluntarily. Doing nothing does not make people happy. Individuals need challenges or diverse kinds of hard work at the right time for the right person (McGonigal, 2011, p.29). This is something that reality cannot offer, but games can. Gaming makes a player experience positive stress and pride and this results in happiness.

To fix reality, parts of games should be included into our daily lives to make it more challenging. This phenomenon is called gamification and relies on the intrinsic motivation of an individual. An example of this is Foursquare, where people can check into locations. The goal is to become major of a certain place, while feedback is received through badges which function as rewards for users. In this way, gamification could also be used to create more engagement in education and organizations.

Nevertheless, this is a too idealistic prospect since problems can arise with the voluntarily aspect. Moreover, the main problem remains the ambiguity of the definition of games. There is disagreement on the term, resulting in the adoption of diverse strategies for solving cultural problems.

Bibliography

McGonigal, J., (2011). Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. Penguin Press HC.

Using Games To Our Advantage

McGonigal sets out that all games, no matter which medium they exist in or how complex or simple they are, consist of four traits that define them. These are “a goal, rules, a feedback system and voluntary participation.” (McGonigal, 2011, p.21) The goal is the end target the player wants to reach, the rules restrict how the player can go about completing these targets, making them harder than they would otherwise be. The feedback system is a way of showing how the player is doing or if they’re doing something correctly, from a point tally or rewards. The voluntary participation might be the most important aspect of games in that the player has no need to play if they don’t want to, this is what sets it apart from work that must be done and is a chore because of it.

This simple definition of what a game actually is makes it easier for us to understand them and how they do so well at making us complete tasks. “Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” (Suits, B. 2005: 54-55)

If every day work that has real world value, compared to todays games, can be altered to meet these four key traits to make them fun and effectively turn them into games, people would be happier and more productive at the same time. As a well known line from Mary Poppins says “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and - SNAP - the job's a game!” (Mary Poppins, 1964). This is gamification and it’s frequently something parents do to get their children to do chores. This would give us voluntary hard work that has real value to the world, but that people would actually like to complete rather than dreading and putting off for as long as possible “it turns out that almost nothing makes us happier than good, hard work.” (McGonigal, 2011, p.28) If this work also challenges us instead of always being the same, we enjoy it far more. Games challenge us in ways real life doesn’t and the challenge is something we enjoy the most which is why we enjoy games so much.

Bibliography
McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, Penguin Press HC.
Suits, B. (2005) The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, Broadview Press.

Filmography
Mary Poppins (1964) Directed by Robert Stevenson [DVD] Walt Disney Productions, USA

Gamification

Besides providing a definition for games, McGonigal (2011, pp.19-22) writes about stepping away from the negative bias on games and explains their usefulness in this first chapter of Reality is Broken. She argues that our everyday lives are rather boring (McGonigal, 2011, p.29), but games on the other hand are much more exciting with their intensive feedback and goals with reward systems. Our daily routine would be more interesting if it was more like a game: instead of "reminding each other: This isn't a game. We can actively start encouraging people (...): This could be a game" (McGonigal, 2011, p.34). Indeed it could be a good idea to see 'useful' things such as studying, charity work, recycling or our daily jobs more as games.

This is the idea of gamification. In his TEDx talk, author Gabe Zichermann describes this as "the process of using game thinking and game mechanics to engage audienes and solve problems" (TEDx Youth, 2011). An example of gamification could be Duolingo, a website on which people can learn a new language. Duolingo tries to make this difficult task more interesting by adding game elements that are also described by McGonigal (2011, p.21), such as an extensive feedback system and clear goals. By being able to compare your progress with friends or by receiving rewards for coming back every day, Duolingo users can also experience fiero (McGonigal, 2011, p.33), making learning more exciting and game-like.

However, the idea that this sort of gamification could for instance revolutionise eduction might be utopian, because it does not fit in McGonigal's (2011, p.21) definition of a game, namely when gamification is part of school or a job it is not voluntary participation anymore. We normally like a game because we can choose to do and to stop doing its work (McGonigal, 2011, pp.21-22). With educational or professional gamification this is not the case. Furthermore, in these cases the 'game' has real life consequences so the stress it produces is not eustress anymore (McGonigal, p.32). In other words: for now it seems that Gamification might help people do useful things, but only if they choose to do them, otherwise it does not classify as a game.

Bibliography

McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. Penguin Press HC.
TEDx Youth (2011) TEDxKids@Brussels - Gabe Zichermann - Gamification [online] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2N-5maKZ9Q (Accessed: 9 November 2013).