Taking Advantage of Gaming's 'Addictive' Qualities

I’d like to pick up on Lydia’s thread about how games and ‘gamification’ could possibly be used to help society, and how this relates to their immersive, compelling (’addicting’) properties. Earlier on, I’d read Sam’s post on the same video, and I mostly agree with his perspective. Whilst Jane McGonigal’s point of view is perhaps overly optimistic, I think it has infinitely more productive potential than the various moral panic/violence/addiction discourses that we are so used to seeing in mainstream media. Perhaps one of the most telling points is that the question of how is presented, but not adequately answered. Whilst games encourage gamers to develop the positive qualities Jane McGonigal talks about in-game, they don’t seem to translate to real life. I agree with Sam’s point about games ‘nurturing players better than real life’. This also relates to our lecture on addiction. Games are immersive. They provide a space where the player’s efforts are rewarded in a reliable fashion. Like other media forms, they can present worlds which people love to get lost in. In short, they can be an appealing form of escapism. I’d like to note here that I don’t see escapism in itself is as a negative thing, however, escapism which has a negative impact on one’s life (a.k.a problematic use) is. This is something which James from Extra Credits draws on in this episode, where he tells his personal story of gaming compulsion. I think one of the most interesting points he makes in here is that he found ways (mostly unspecified) to apply some of the qualities he had, which games valued, to real life in a beneficial way.

Returning to less philosophical territory, Lydia points out that there could be ways to turn the immersive properties of games that the industry has honed over many years to real world problems. As the video and other posts have pointed out, there have been a few efforts at making games which help with real-world issues, such as the ones Jane McGonigal works on, or Foldit, or even Freerice. Whilst these games are certainly not World of Warcraft sized, there’s no doubt that they are an innovative and positive development for games and society. (Yet another Extra Credits episode proposed the idea that scientific background applications, which make silent use of spare processing power, could be incorporated into regular games, which I thought seems like a very good, plausible idea.)

Other notable areas which have taken steps to harness the immersive properties of games are education and fitness. I don’t think educational games are entirely unsuccessful; some of my favourite titles from childhood were educational. I do think that they have yet to find a consistent, truly successful formula, perhaps because of their dual purpose and divided target audience (parents and kids). And whilst exercise and games are most commonly thought of in terms of Wii fitness games, I found that simply combining the two through multitasking was a far more common (albeit ridiculous looking) idea than I expected. The concept is sound: find a way of doing something which is necessary but unengaging, whilst in the time-vortex of an immersive game.

All in all, ‘gamification’ and using games to help in other areas of life is an appealing concept, but a few things should be kept in mind when attempting this. Not even all games succeed at being good games, or at being immersive and engaging. So you can’t simply tack on game frameworks to another concept and expect it to work. Blending the different elements smoothly is the key, as well as making sure that the end product still retains qualities of a good game, not just the qualities desirable for the particular endeavour.