For this weeks assignment I was really unsure of what we were going to be diving into. After watching the TED talk (which I watched a total of four times) I am still so unsure of what all of this means. Hearing that gamers in the year of 2010 spent 3 billion hours a week playing video games astonished me. And to follow that up with the suggestion that we should increase that SEVEN times in order to help world issues like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict and even obesity shocked me. To be quite honest even after watching this TED talk I can’t make much sense of Mcgonigal’s reasoning. I think that through the means of technology many of these issues can be helped, maybe never fully solved, but definitely on that track. I do not see most, if hardly any of the gamers of the world being the next generation to make a difference however. I give Mcgonigal credit in her research and optimistic view of the gamer population, but I’d really like to know where her research and steps in her 10 year plan to make a difference through gaming stands now 4 years later.
I enjoyed reading your post as I also posted about the TED talk. I agree with you, it seems absurd that gamers are to be the ones to solve our world issues. I think, however, that she was using gamers attitude as a metaphor for what our problem solvers should feel. When someone is “gaming” the tend to get a positive, exciting feeling as she liked to call an “epic win”. This feeling is very powerful and can help grow our society to where we want it. People feel comfortable with the people they play against in video games. It creates a bond like no other that isn’t seen very often today. Although I think this is a smart connection, i don’t agree with the actual physicality of playing more video games. May be it makes us feel a different way, but it also can be see as a waist of time, and something to turn your brain to mush. It is useless, unproductive technology, that takes away from playing outside and experiencing the reality of the world.
I love what you had to say in response to my post. I think I better understand what she was trying to portray to audiences about the benefits of playing video games, and I think you’re right. It makes sense that to have that kind of attitude towards life would help solve a lot of the problems we see in the world today. I think that most of us feel helpless or like the things that we do won’t contribute in any way to solving an issue, because an issue may be much larger than we are. So in turn we do nothing about it at all, because our outlook on the circumstances and the issue that we most certainly could be a part in helping to end, is so negative. Maybe we do all need a gamers optimistic point of view, but I do not by any means think we need to do so by turning away from what is around us in the real world to that that is happening in the gamer world.