Technology
While watching the video it made me think a lot about technology and how it is impacting the future. I do believe that video games are important, but I do not believe that they are the solution to our problems. As an active video game player, and what she said in the video, I came up with some ideas about video games somewhat counter to what she said but at the same time agree with some of her ideas. I feel like playing more video games isn’t the solution. As said in the TED talk, “So far, we’ve spent 5.93 million years playing World of Warcraft”(McGonigal). If that much time has already been used for one game, the amount of time that could have been used for work or real world applications from all games is unimaginable. A lot of the time people who play video games are trying to get away from real life, and I personally don’t think those kinds of people are going to change the world. I do think video games could be beneficial to critical problem solving and coming up with a solution though. From this I created my question. Is it possible to design a game, that players will enjoy, that will have real world problems simulated in a different medium? By this I mean could someone create a game like World of Warcraft with more real problems and quests that require critical thinking and team work to solve problems that they could also do in the real world, and through this actually make changes to the world? As well as that a game that going out and doing things in the real world help your virtual world character or game grow stronger or progress? These kinds of games are a way to change the world, but trying to make everyone start playing video games is not a sustainable or efficient solution in my mind, there is no point in trying to make someone new start playing games, while there are already so many people who want to be doing it.
You have got a very interesting idea where you question about can we create a World of Warcraft-like game that involve more of a real world problems and situations so that gamer can relate this to the real world. I don’t think this is possible. This is because when we play games, we will think as it is just a game where we do not have to care whether we can solve this or win this quest. It is just that the way games have been structured since the beginning. I don’t think that games can help with the real world situation but games can develop some humans skills.
I really enjoyed your opinion on how video games probably won’t change the world. I also had similar questions on how video games can achieve such a thing when the point of them is to “get away from the real world”. The examples of games she gave in her presentation were interesting cause one of them was how to live through an oil epidemic. What I found interesting was hoe you can easily ration things in a game, but it came to real life I’m not sure people are as willing to give up things they are so used to. In America, we live in a nation of excess and we feel like it is necessary to live this way to survive. So I’m not really sure how we would give up things we are so used to. I feel like these games definitely give the players an insight on what needs to happen, but do you think this would actually motivate people to change their ways? The speaker also talked a lot about how player get appraisal for completed challenged like level ups, or plus lives; can this be transferred over to real like and how so? I don’t play video games, so it interests me to see how people who play video games see how this can be carried over to solving world problems that desperately need to be solved.
I really like how you talked a lot about technology and how it relates to the future. I have been thinking about that a lot and how our future is affected by technology. Seeing how far it has come in the fast years and where it will be is pretty crazy to think about. Will we overrun by technology or will we beneficially be affected is the question. We are currently so dependent on technology that we may become overwhelmingly taken over by technology.