Reality is Broken….and McGonigal broke it
Reality is Broken
In JM’s ambitious exploration into game culture and it’s importance in our society, she touches on numerous topics from the pure joys of gaming, the use of alternate realities and benefits of grand scale games. But at the core of her text lies her desire to push the importance of gaming in general, to the advancement of society as a whole. She is definitely quite adamant about gaming in our culture and how she believes that everyone should be a gamer in their own lives. She argues that the trails and tribulations of real life are nowhere near as enjoyable or rewarding as those found in video games.
In researching into some reviews of the text, I feel critic Andrew Klaven best describes my feelings on the book:
“…At their best, videogames strike me as a form of art. Like all art, they can augment outer reality and shape our inner reality—but they do this by the very nature of the fact that they are not reality but a Place Apart. Being awestruck at “Halo” does not entail awe any more than “grieving” for Cordelia entails grief. Rather, art at its most serious is a sort of exercise, a formative practice for life—like meditation, only more fun.”
I could be wrong, but I really feel this speaks a lot to what we are attempting to tackle in this course and the Future Cinema Lab in general. There seems to be almost this combination of this augmented outer reality with our inner desires for expression. In this land of the “Place Apart” we can investigate and think about ways in which to create new forms and content that may get us closer to a reality or closer to an artistic expression. Getting back to JM, I think this is indeed an issue she fails to comprehend in her refusal or lack of understanding of reality.
It seems she mentions a lot about the time investing in games and how much work we’re putting into them and we are evolving as species because we’re putting it towards game solving. But how does that translate to real life? It seems she just says gamers are extremely good solving problems. But I still have no idea how that translates into real life. And I don’t think she knows either. Just that we should live in the gaming world and not in reality. Furthermore I think this stems from her believing that all games act similar. There is however a strong difference between the games she’s saying help solve real world issues like “Chore Wars” or “World Without Oil” and entertainment based games like “Halo” or “World of Warcraft”. Something I think she fails to acknowledge. Or maybe she just forgot after she bumped her head.
Questions I thought of while reading:
How does McGonigal translate the problem solving efforts of gamers to reality?
Is there a place for real world games (or games that matter), entertainment games and artistic games to all co-exist?
Can a gamer engage with a game out of strict desire for catharsis?
Can a gamer engage with a game out of strict desire for catharsis?
Yes and no. Popular, narrative film aims to provoke catharsis, an emotional release through identification with a main character.
When an emotional scene happens in a film it is often unexpected, in a game its a series of events that you slowly failed at that lead to cathartic moments. Additionally the consequences in games are marginal, when in doubt start over, you can redo your destiny. A film manipulates you, you have no control of the outcome and there is no starting over, thus the consequences feel more real.
Also for me the big difference is when a film makes you angry or emotional its the character you hate, you say things like “Why did Jack cheat on Kayla, she treated him so well”. In video games the cathartic moments sound more like “F@$k!, why did I just do that!”.
Again the difference being the statment “why did I” and “why did they”. Catharsis being a kind of provocation, it is something you don’t have control over and thus it is more difficult to engage with a game out of strict desire for catharsis because the gamer is in so much in control of the outcome.