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Co-op, yes. Competitive gaming...NO! x Infinity | |
I think she could be right, but if people will actually bother working together and actually think about what they're doing remains to be seen, I am slightly doubtful, what with teams of lonewolf k/d morons infesting my dear Bad Company 2. TEAMWORK, YOU F-! *Cough* Issues, you know... | |
Well whenever I'm playing MW2 I get teamed up with people who want to win and try their best. The result is awesome matches where everything comes down to one kill. So it really depends on people's attitudes. | |
This is a pleasant surprise. It's nice to see someone in the news who doesn't think that gamers are secretly psychopaths and will kill everyone around them for a Klondike bar. | |
Clearly someone who has no real world experience. Games have puzzles with known, pre-ordained solutions(it's called programming, after all). | |
*raises a skeptical eyebrow* Yeah right, online games can save the world, sure. You'll have to pardon my skepticism, but I think the only skill sets being honed during online games are how to be self-centred twats and how to curse and swear at each other in new and exotic ways. | |
One problem: We're also not IN real life...so our achievements and our collaborations don't actually 'achieve' anything more than our own self-image...which tends to create the mewling "I killed you first, faggot!" that we get in other games. Equally, you don't tend to get teamkillers or serial griefers in real life, unless they're in politics ;) | |
Keep dreaming lady. Sure it might teach people to cooperate more and better but to keep all those consoles and PC's turned on you will need a lot of energy. And playing at the levels she proposes, we would burn up all our oil and gas much much faster. imagine 10 times the people, doing 10 times as much gaming combined with that as well. Starting an energy war for resources as a result. The internet alone allready uses 5-9% of all power worldwide these days.source so much for world peace! | |
Gradual increase of gaming means that the power demands go up slowly. If demand increases, surely supply has to follow. | |
I hate MMO's, at least No-lifes will have a purpose in life... isn't that paradoxal? | |
Wouldn't it be better if we simply removed the heavy onus that failure carries these days? Too many people believe it's better to never try than to try and fail, and those who do fail are scorned and mocked far out of proportion to their failure. We need to dump this "win or don't bother showing up" mentality. Whatever happened to "Hey, that was a good try"? You may call this impossible. I say it's far more likely to happen than getting rid of teamkilling lone-wolf nitwits in online FPS games. | |
Am I the only one who looked at her name and was reminded of the professor from Harry Potter? | |
Clearly someone who has little gaming experience. The developers of WoW have stated before that they have purposefully made some raid bosses "impossible" because they like to see what strategies players come up with. Not to mention there's the whole phenomenon of game exploits (IE finding better solution that was not pre-programmed into the game). | |
You are not, though the spelling is different.
What about co-op competitive gameplay? What then, smart guy? | |
If it's "impossible", there is no solution, so what's the strategy for that? And game exploits are cheating, just like inside trading. Well, bloody, heck, it is like the real world. | |
Or how to counter them! OT: Hurray for a non video-gaming hate thread in the News! | |
This is unrealistically optimistic, but then again, such a bright outlook can bring to light new possibilities. | |
People who call this unrealistic need to be smacked upside the head. Tell me where games come from, please. They are a virtual representation of the real world. She doesn't literally mean that "online gaming can save the world", but that it can learn people things and set forward skills that might become important in real-life at a later point in time. Which is something which is fairly likely, rather than 'completely unrealistic'. | |
I disagree because I think people who spend that much on online games would never do anything in the real world anyway, or have motivation to walk away from their computer screen. | |
Realistic expectations or not, one thing is certain - we need more games based purely on cooperation, including MMOs. I once thought of online game with community features (not quite a MMO, but not just multiplayer either) which would rely on players helping each other out with missions. For example, if a player gets cornered by enemies, he can send out an SOS signal. Everyone in his immideate vicinity will be notified, as will the players on his friends list (if they are currently running the game). Someone then can fly in a Big Damn Gunship and airlift that player out of a sticky situation. For that the rescuer recieves a positive reputation, which provides some kind of advantage. This is just a general outline of an implausible concept, so please don't hate on me. | |
Perfect now when my mom asks me why I didn't go outside I can say it was for science, to save the world. | |
I can certainly see where she is coming from. Ive been involved in some online events with 50+ people all working and doing here best to achieve a single goal, putting everything they can into to make it happen. So, the truth in her arguement is there. However, aplying it to a real-life situation may be something very different. | |
What. People are at their worst in online games. At least, I really really hope all those cursing, cheating, ragequitting verbally abusive assholes on Xbox LIVE don't also act that way in real life... now there's a scary thought... | |
I'm surprised it hasn't mentioned the Year Zero ARG to promote the Nine Inch Nails concept album of the same name. It was really interesting. | |
Acting that way when there are no consequences just means you think that way when there are. The people who don't, on the other hand... | |
I'm pretty sure if people switched the computers off and spent 5.39 million years actually trying to solve the problems you'd get a better result than everyone playing WoW. For starters, think of all of the power being saved when you take 5.39 million years of computer time away. You don't have to be a genius. Im sure there is paper work, logistics, cleaning, even making coffee involved in solving climate change, you could do some of this even if you were dumb as a post. As far as fostering co-operation, I'll remember that next time some subnormal 12 year old does nothing but team kill all round on MW2, when no one can be bothered to switch their mic on BBC2 and when someone runs straight for the helicopter only to crash it straight away. I enjoy gaming, its no more harmful than watching TV or playing a boardgame but I don't buy into the "wonderful benefits" some people believe it passes on to the gamer. | |
I can sort of see where she's coming from, as long as she means co-op games. Competitive games, at least from my experience, don't seem to bring out the best in people as much as co-op. | |
I disagree with you sir, i believe that people who post useless **** on forums are just as bad:) If your neglecting the important parts of your life why does it matter how you do it? It seems to me that online gaming gets a bad rep, mostly from; immature, bad mannered, selfish, impatient....kids. Even if they're not children, acting that way online (where we are mostly ageless) is a shame. Forget the specific benifits of gaming. Thats a grey area. This is about the opertunities it offers. (i know it's just people sat in front of their systems playing games but thats not much different to anyone reading or posting here) | |
Awesome. | |
Funny that was the first thing that popped into my mind as well. It's nice to make a game where teamwork will get you everywhere. It's another thing altogether when you assume players will recognize how and why teamwork is effective compared to working alone. BFBC2 is a great example of how a large majority of a population is more interested in personal self proclaimed glory than an imposed set of accomplishments. There is a fundamental culture of individualism built into the capitalist society that tends to override our desires to sacrifice for the group, especially if there is little or no personal gain attached. The personal risk reward is unfavorable for the individual at a superficial level. These people end up defaulting to K/D ratio padding via camping and sniping. This can all be traced back to the whole Communism vs Capitalism argument. Which is better for the individual and which is better for the whole? Ideally it's impossible to tell since people are far from ideal. Corruption tends to consume both from the inside and the lure of power and wealth by taking advantage of either system's flaws are too enticing for any one or group of people to stave off forever. Does that make even trying a form of naivete or just a way of staying sane in the face of certain doom? Perhaps someone can start working on a mass brainwashing machine that turns us all Roddenberrian. | |
What online games does she play and does she even know about shooters or xbox live? | |
I LOVE TED. Thanks for another excuse to delve into that site =o | |
There is so much, untrue, wrong and stupid in what she said, that I don't want to even begin analyzing it. Any and all credibility, this "lady" had in the few seconds, that I learned of her existence, were vaporized, in the instance she uttered the words: climate change. | |
Is it ironic that it's the choice of the individual even when they're not being an individual? Being an individual isn't something special, all teamwork really happens to be is focused individuality. | |
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ARG Designer Believes Online Gaming Can Save the World
Online videogames may be the world's saving grace due to the skills and mindsets they impart to their players.
After playing a game of Modern Warfare 2 with a group of teenagers that horrify you with expletives and hatred you didn't previously know existed, it may be hard to imagine that online gaming could change the world. However, alternate reality game designer Jane McGonigal believes it can, and she justifies her belief very convincingly in a talk being shown over on TED.
McGonigal has been making games for 10 years, working on ARGs such as Halo 2's I Love Bees and McDonald's The Lost Ring. She's currently directing research and development at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit research group. She says her goal is: "To make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games."
Humanity currently plays 3 billion hours of online games a week, but that's not nearly enough according to McGonigal. To save the world, she says we need to be playing 21 billion hours a week, and there's a legitimate reason behind this opinion. Think about how you feel when playing an online game like Halo 3 or World of Warcraft. Against all odds, it's still easy to be optimistic, and cooperation with others is often the only way to survive. Even when victory seems slim, it's easy to keep trying for an "Epic Win," as McGonigal calls it, in an online game.
McGonigal believes that the best versions of ourselves are expressed in online gaming. We're not as anxious or scared of failure as we are in real life, so we're more likely to achieve, and we're also more likely to learn how to collaborate with others in challenging situations. On a grand scale, the 5.93 million years that McGonigal points out the world has spent playing World of Warcraft is affecting our cooperative abilities, which could easily transfer to solving the problems of world hunger, poverty, or climate change.
Another interesting statistic McGonigal relates is that the average person will play 10,000 hours of online games by the time he/she hits the age of 21, which is approximately the amount of time it takes to go from 5th grade to the completion of high school. Online gaming is a "parallel track of education" according to McGonigal, which creates "virtuosos" of collaboration and problem solving. The problem is that people seem to believe they only have the power to change virtual worlds, rather than the real world too.
Alternate reality games such as McGonigal's World Without Oil and Superstruct challenge players to use these collaborative skills to make an impact on the world, including coming up with solutions to an oil crisis or figuring out how to solve the problems of 2019. Whether you're playing games such as these, or putting 40 hours a week into World of Warcraft, it ultimately doesn't matter, because the skill sets subconsciously taught in both are creating a population more capable of working together to save the world. McGonigal's full talk is only around 20 minutes and a pretty interesting view.
(Via: RockPaperShotgun)
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