Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal
The introduction to Reality is Broken was a turbulent vacillation of approval and rejection for me, as I struggled to reconcile some of the points Jane McGonigal presented about video and computer gaming. Although she was quickly able to have my agreement when it came to her insistence that games have the power to effect reality, her portrayal of gaming in general as something other than a distraction from reality is what caused me some confusion. Although I do believe that games have the potential to make the world a better place in very real terms, at the same time, I believe that games in their most base form are pure distractions from reality. This “distraction” is precisely something that Ms. McGonigal stresses as a function of gaming. So how can a distraction be a game-changing, forgive the pun, force for positive social change? The “escapism” that gaming provides could be characterized as a Harry Potter-esque invisibility cloak, to be used when real life gets too hard, too boring, too real. How then do we use an escapism tool as a resource for social change?
Okay, now I’m finished the book. I am not exactly the same person that I was in the previous paragraph, although I am now more confused about who I actually am…
The educational potential for Alternate Reality Games seems truly limitless! I want to check out every single game that she mentioned and get a grip on this world.
Perhaps she has cringed once or twice since Lance Armstrong’s world has become a new reality. Pun again, sorry.
I do think that her reference to the Lydians was interesting. Eat today, play games tomorrow. Sounds like bread and circuses. Perhaps gaming is just that. I would like to believe that gaming has the potential to fix reality, but it would require that a very different group of people play the games. Perhaps CEO’s and heads of state need to play MMOG’s, then maybe the potential of gaming to fix our broken reality could be realized.
I suggest they try Top Secret Dance Off.
Questions.
Isn’t this all just another example of bread and circuses?
How else can crowd sourcing, as in the Guardian case, be used for good? This may be one very real way that gaming can fix reality. Or at least keep a few people honest.
Tony Vieira
I also for the most part was torn throughout the book as to how to feel about the subject of McGonigal’s research. Like yourself, the more I read, the more I was convinced about her topic being a force for good, the main focus of which could be used to create a massive movement within the education system. She does mention in her book that some CEOs of major companies are gamers, but casual gamers at best. I worry still that having a CEO compete (in life or death virtual simulations) on a continual basis could possibly create a tyrant. One of the major focuses of positive peace conflict resolution does away with competition. Perhaps having a CEO play the right MMOG would be a good idea, but I shutter at the thought that any HALO squad leader could be a CEO of a fortune 500 company.
One significant quote comes to mind while I read McGonigal’s book: “The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a heaven that it shows itself cloddish. -Evelyn Waugh
I feel this quote also provides some insight in response to your first question; whether or not gamification is an example of bread and circuses? I think McGonigal’s crusade for gamification is attempting to introduce structure and mechanisms that go beyond appeasement and/or distraction, but her pollyannaish manner of presenting her arguments appear to overshadow her sophisticated ideas and oversimplify human desires and needs. Do I believe gaming culture can save the world? No. But I do believe they provide users with a way of grappling with the intricacies and ambiguities of reality. And while McGonigal’s rhetoric might lead the reader to regard gaming culture as a solution to keep society happy and their attention diverted away from the problems they face in the real world, ultimately the mechanics of ARGs are demonstrating the first step in the shifting landscape of gaming culture: an awareness and involvement in the real world that reconfigures the act of gaming as participatory rather than a form of solipsistic retreat.