Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games

You know, I've been playing the game he's describing since I was born. Is called REAL LIFE and its point system uses money. Spend on upgrades (education) get new powers and eventually earn more. Spend in shops, get new toys. Etc.

This is not the future, it is the present.

hey wow thanks it was a very inspiring talk. but wait a minute before you shout privacy leaks and etc. I think the sharing of everything we do, under our real name will be boring after a while and people will get new alteregos (khm, "avatars", hm...maybenot) because they can leave their real self out there and jump in to the world like somebody else. Then meet new people, do crazy stuff and then share it again like we do it now on the net it will be just much more integrated to our life... the phrase: "the internet is coming to our life" is finaly getting some new meaning.

Yes. It was pretty weak when he tried to tie the whole thing together with an optimistic message at the end...

His plan for a better future is mindlessly optimistic: everybody is observed -> everybody behaves better. Apart from being bad in and of itself, it is actually pretty unlikely to come about in any way like he described (if you think about it), and it is fairly insidious to place it on an equal footing, rhetorically with all the other outcomes.

The reality is that people are having their own psychology increasingly 'gamed' by corporations and this is not a good thing. I predict that the ready supply of instant gratification will be as or more harmful than fast food and the obesity epidemic. One day we may find an easy way to overcome or sidestep our unwanted proclivities (assuming we're still in charge of ourselves enough to make this happen) and that will be a different story, albeit possibly an extremely dull one.

Somewhat ironic as he's just giving the viewer 'what they want' - a positive message.

The swiss army kitchen knife cracked me up, however!

My problem with the last couple minutes is one of framing. I feel like there's probably some real name for this, but the scenario he dreams up can be easily presented favoring either side with minimal actual changes.

On one hand, you have the grim, over-commercialized future where you're being watched and tracked all the time and everything you do is only to accumulate soulless omnipoints that mean any number of things that don't necessarily improve your quality of life. HOWEVER, there's a potential for positive behavior modification through ubiquitous tracking.

On the other hand, we have a wild and fanciful future where you never have to read a bad book because everything you've read and watched has been tracked, logged, and analyzed by incredibly accurate recommendation engines. Everything I encounter is tailor-made to maximize my enjoyment specifically - and all for the small price of embedded ads. HOWEVER, I can no longer finish playing a game and trade it for my friend's finished game because, unless I register the game, I can't earn points. And, of course, my friend registered it because, without earning points, why bother playing the game?

Bottom line is it's a brave new world and we can't really tell where it's going to end up. It may be oppressive and commercial, it may be a utopian, pleasure-maximized dreamworld. But it will be based on the millions of decisions made along the way - so just try and be mindful of the consequences, I guess.

yup