This week’s topic of Technology is one that significantly appeals to me for multiple reasons. Technology seems to be a growing industry as well as an essential part of people’s daily lives. The TED talk by Jane McGonigal, which was part of this week’s assigned material, was definitely one of the more interesting TED talks. She stated that she believes there needs to be more gaming in order to save the world’s most prevalent issues. My question for this post is do you agree with McGonigal’s idea that gaming can help solve important world problems? It seems fair fetched, but the more I think about it, the more I think it could be feasible.
I think that McGonigal’s ideas were interesting, and they are definitely relevant to today’s culture, but that video games isn’t the only thing she should focus on. Yes, I agree that video games teach problem solving skills and cooperation skills, but I think that there are other ways to get those skills as well. I do think that gaming can benefit the cause, but I don’t think that gaming is the only way to help solve world issues. I think she was over simplifying her topic in a way. Games can absolutely teach valuable life skills, but we shouldn’t rely on just games to learn them. Implementation is just as important as knowing them in the first place.
I think that is some ways McGonigal’s idea could be useful to a certain extent because video games are should a popular way that poeple spend their time. I think that it would be more feasible if there were video games that could become popular that actually have to do with problems in the world not just war games or sports game.
You bring up a good point about playing games with real world problems and not just war or sports games. I tried to think of other games that may deal with real world problems and I couldn’t pinpoint a great example, which is the point. Real world problems come from real world experiences and are hard to simulate in a game setting. This is why I think McGonigal’s points were definitely interesting, but not as practical.