While watching the video named “Gaming can make a better world: Jane Mcgonigal on TED.com”, I found it really interesting that gaming can solve such problems in real life such as hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, and obesity. Jane, the speaker, connects the game life and real life. She mentions that there is epic win that always gives the players positive outcomes and make them more productive. With reasonable amount of work or problems that anyone can overcome with their reasonable amount of efforts, players become can have four core forces: urgent optimism, social fabric, business productivity, and epic meaning. In the game, there are many characters with world saving mission, and the missions are epic and always give positive feedback to the players, which they do not usually get in their real life. With these, people who spend more time in playing games can be successful with the experiences and the feedback that they got from the game. Since the players know that there are always someone who are willing to collaborate and work with them, they can build the faith for co-workers in real life. In addition, players become more willing to work hard by playing game. She mentions that people build a lot of trust by playing games together and that people are happier working hard than people are relaxing or hanging around if they are given a right work.
Thanks for sharing your respective. I also love the TED presentation, it is powerful and convincing. Honestly, I did not believe playing online games would ever and never save the world one day, but my opinion just changed afterwards. Like what you “gaming can solve such problems in real life such as hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, and obesity”(Tae, 2014), I noticed later that people were more capable in online games than in reality, as our cooperation ability in games gradually became stronger during the process of finishing different cases. Moreover, I want state one thing you did not talk but is worth thinking. Jane (TED, 2010) said “Gamers are the human resource that we can use to do real-world work, that games are a powerful platform for change”, I think we should not oversimplify the impact of online games. That is to say, people may normally think it is bad for playing online game as it is time-consuming. However, the advantage of online gaming would not be ignored, the human source in gaming need to be used for more efficient real world issues.
I enjoyed reading the take you took on the Ted talk and I felt that the Ted talk addressed more of the positive results video games can have on people lives rather than focusing on all the negatives. Honestly I never really saw any positive sides of playing video games. Every news site or popular magazine always focuses on the negative aspects that video games lead to. Such as childhood obesity, and children isolating themselves and indulging themselves into their video games. I felt this showed that not all kids that play video games will be susceptible to the negative affects of playing video games.
I want to discuss one section of your work I found particularly interesting. You said:
“Since the players know that there are always someone who are willing to collaborate and work with them, they can build the faith for co-workers in real life. In addition, players become more willing to work hard by playing game”
I watched this video and happened to think differently about it. I understood what she was saying but I think that video gamers do not have the mentality of wanting to work together like you predict. I believe that video gamers continuously look for competition and this actually causes more harm than not. Although competition is good, too much can lead to negative actions and even result in violence. Players work hard but in what way? I just think it is a dangerous route to go to use such technology as a way to get people to work together in the work place. Although they learn to work hard, they do this in a solo matter most of the time that leads them to compete with everyone and see that they must outplay their opponents.