{"id":108,"date":"2012-10-05T13:40:58","date_gmt":"2012-10-05T20:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/cic138\/?p=108"},"modified":"2012-10-06T20:31:47","modified_gmt":"2012-10-07T03:31:47","slug":"is-reality-broken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/cic138\/2012\/10\/05\/is-reality-broken\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Reality Broken?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I read the excerpt from \u201cReality is Broken\u201d by Jane McGonigal with great skepticism. I thought this lady must be joking about her crusade to expand the number of people and hours on gaming for the good of the world. It seems to be a contradictory cause to fix her early points of, the more time people devote to gaming, the more they feel like something is missing in the real world, and reality does not motivate gamers because reality was not designed to \u201cmake us happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGonigal says the book is meant to inform gamers and non-gamers that virtual experiences develop cognitive, behavioral, and organizational skills and can be interpreted to reveal personal core strengths and motivations. Readers will better understand gamers, the benefits of games, and how they can fix real-world problems.<\/p>\n

The essence her message was, people should spend time gaming to learn collaborative and cooperative skills, engage in critical thinking activities, and adopt cyberworld habits to make the real world a better place. Among the miraculous changes she claims gaming\u00a0 will bring about are, fixing our educational systems, treating mental disorders like anxiety, obesity, depression, and managing global problems like climate change and poverty.<\/p>\n

I must admit to being tempted several times to get on my soap box and lecture on the joys of living in real life with real relationships, goals, experiences, and the fulfillment of volunteerism and being a productive member of society but then I realize I\u2019m channeling my father. Since I have little experience and knowledge about gaming and her theory I did a little research.<\/p>\n

In aTED presentation Jane McGonigal<\/a> explained how Games like World of Warcraft (WoW) and others inspire players to live in real life like the heroes they are in alternate realities. Character traits like optimism, perseverance, citizenship, fairness, and more are transferable to real life. I looked at two games she used in her presentation to support her theory.<\/p>\n

World Without Oil<\/a><\/strong> (WWO)<\/p>\n

Concept: Imagine the world in 2019 during the first 32 weeks of a global oil crisis<\/p>\n

60,000 participants engaged in serious issues in the context of an alternate reality game. However, WWO is no Wow. There is no role playing, super powers, levels, et., only real players living the fiction and reporting their lives and collaborating with other players by phone messages, e-mail, blog, video, and images.<\/p>\n

I found countless videos by WWO participants<\/strong><\/a> that support McGonigal\u2019 theory that games can be a teaching tool and bring out the best in people and in communities<\/p>\n

Superstruct<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was a multiplayer forecasting game that tells of a fictional future world (2019) using video news reports. Players choose a mission from one of five threats: Quarantine, Ravenous, Power Struggle, Outlaw Planet, and Generation Exile, and work on ways to organize the human race and solve the problems.<\/p>\n

The game is no longer live, but you can still learn about how the game was played and explore some of the archived game content. I think Superstruct\u00a0 is much less educational than WWO.<\/p>\n

McGonigal\u2019 theory comes with a huge downside. If she is correct that gaming provides teaching tools that are world changing and character building it also stands to reason games promote negative character traits, thoughts, and behaviors; One game may make a hero another makes a villain. I plan to read Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World in hopes of learning how and why gaming is such a powerful magnet for so many people. Next time I get up on my soapbox I\u2019ll know what I\u2019m talking about.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read the excerpt from \u201cReality is Broken\u201d by Jane McGonigal with great skepticism. I thought this lady must be joking about her crusade to expand the number of people and hours on gaming for the good of the world. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":1,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"kbrinkman","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/cic138\/author\/kbrinkman\/"},"qubely_comment":1,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"I read the excerpt from \u201cReality is Broken\u201d by Jane McGonigal with great skepticism. I thought this lady must be joking about her crusade to expand the number of people and hours on gaming for the good of the world. … Continue reading →","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/cic138\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/cic138\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/cic138\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/cic138\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/cic138\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/cic138\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/cic138\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/cic138\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/cic138\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/cic138\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}