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Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games

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Re: Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games

#21

Post by dantheman »

smallblacksun wrote: post #11
dantheman wrote: post #7

I've been thinking along the lines of the thoughts he presents at the end of the presentation. Once data collection becomes easy, more people will live a reflective life and make better choices. We will also see less hypocrisy as the illusion of their perceived self, how they see themselves, is contrasted by their real behavior. A trivial example would be, X is my favorite food and Y is my favorite band. Well accordi…

I don't buy it. Data collection is much easier today than even 10 years ago, and I don't see any evidence that "more people will live a reflective life and make better choices."

We are not there yet; most people can't go to their computer and see exactly what they've done in the past week, month, year -- how it compares to others; and does it match goals that they've set etc. The trick is that it has to be automatic.

Re: Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games

#22

Post by misuba »

nickpp wrote: post #12

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.

Damn, I've been trying to accumulate happiness points. Is there a patch I didn't download?

Re: Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games

#23

Post by jfarmer »

sjsivak wrote: post #3

The talk is the excellent, the video is terrible and does not show the slides at all. You can view the slides here: http://www.slideshare.net/jesseschell/beyond-facebook

Those slides are incomprehensible without the accompanying video.

Not a critique -- just an FYI for anyone who goes to read the slides rather than watch the video.

Re: Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games

#24

Post by est »

nickpp wrote: post #12

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.

It's funny because games originally derives from real life competitions and adventures, now people are pushing the ideologies in modern games back into real life.

Re: Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games

#25

Post by andywood »

nickpp wrote: post #12

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.

You point to existing structure that guides human behavior. One of the points of the talk is that game designers can create additional structure that will guide behavior differently.

Re: Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games

#26

Post by artagnon »

I know many people manually track what they eat, how much they spend, how long they spend in the gym, which books they read, and which movies they watch on a daily basis. I think it'll just be a matter of time before people make all this information public in a semantic format. When there's enough information with numbers attached to it, everything can potentially become a game. Schell is right in this aspect.

However, I think Schell goes a little over the top towards the end though- won't humans be sick of all the gaming? There are some information they'd want to use to game, other information they want to keep private. Also, I don't think there'd be that many real-world benefits attached to data mined off people: they'd always find a way to cheat then.

Re: Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games

#27

Post by _delirium »

andywood wrote: post #25
nickpp wrote: post #12

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.

You point to existing structure that guides human behavior. One of the points of the talk is that game designers can create additional structure that will guide behavior differently.

Indeed, and marketers have been taking advantage of that quite well (the frequent-flyer mile system works much like the sorts of games he describes).

Re: Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games

#28

Post by waterlesscloud »

smallblacksun wrote: post #11
dantheman wrote: post #7

I've been thinking along the lines of the thoughts he presents at the end of the presentation. Once data collection becomes easy, more people will live a reflective life and make better choices. We will also see less hypocrisy as the illusion of their perceived self, how they see themselves, is contrasted by their real behavior. A trivial example would be, X is my favorite food and Y is my favorite band. Well accordi…

I don't buy it. Data collection is much easier today than even 10 years ago, and I don't see any evidence that "more people will live a reflective life and make better choices."

I'm pretty convinced the Prius dashboard changes the way people drive already.

Watch a Prius driver, they just drive differently from the rest.

Re: Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games

#29

Post by waterlesscloud »

lsd5you wrote: post #16
klon wrote: post #13

Sounds like a pretty dark future to me.

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, rheto…

His ideas were not particularly well presented, but they had a real value.

His point, as I understood it, was to encourage the people in that room (ie the people who actually design the games we all play) to take the responsibility for making this coming world more than just commercialized crap. He starts that section talking about how much opportunity there is in current points systems, and encourages skilled designers to move in that direction and influence the shape of the field.

He doesn't express it as clearly as he might, but I believe that was the goal of his talk.

Re: Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games

#30

Post by supermetroid »

nickpp wrote: post #12

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.

Sounds sort of boring.

A great video with a lot of exciting ideas (even if they're articulated somewhat stormily at times). This is definitely a viable advertising platform--one that makes good use of the attractive qualities of capitalism, by inspiring competition and desire for collection within consumers, trading exposure--and (hopefully) real human currency--for fabricated (yet, if implemented correctly, completely desirable) points.

nickpp's point is off the mark. Human currency carries with it an unfortunate (but absolutely and obviously necessary) burden of seriousness. If you spend it foolishly, there's a chance you'll "Game Over"--and (as my mom always used to tell me) there's no reset button in real life, sorry. Implementing a system where individuals apply a certain (limited) extent of value to a new, less dire, capitalistic system, is a win-win for everyone involved.

Blow all of your points on a retinal-based bar-code scanner that barely works? Oh well, at least you can still make rent.

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