11/14 Reading Response 8.0

Chapter 12 – Missions Impossible
Chapter 13 – Collaboration Superpowers

McGonigal’s 12th Chapter brings up a new genre of games called Social Participation Games. It’s an interesting idea to try and give gamers the sense of an epic win through a real world task. The two games introduced first, The Extraordinaries and Groundcrew really caught my interest. The Extraordinaries is a great example of a way that the gaming attitude can be used to provide real good in the world. The defibrillator example was a cool idea and has proven to be successful. The Groundcrew idea was also cool to think about but it has some major problems. It sounds all amazing in theory, but in reality it’s a privacy nightmare. The game’s first function is to show to the player every single person in the vicinity who has a wish to be fulfilled. The people with wishes can also see all the people around them who are available for tasking. It’s basically a radar for wishes. The idea is innocent enough but knowing that kind of information seems a bit dangerous. Sure everyone wants their wishes to come true and there are times when a helping hand is really appreciated. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be able to get a latte when they really need one? People are still broadcasting their whereabouts for the world to see as soon as they connect to the network. The scale can’t even be compared to McGonigal’s Chapter 8 ARG example: the Check-In game “Foursquare.” Still seems like a Mission Impossible or at least improbable.

Chapter 13 of Reality is Broken doesn’t bring any really controversial ideas to the table. It more emphasizes again that gaming encompasses many skills and gamers who put in large amounts of hours are on the fast track to mastering those skills. The focus of this chapter was on collaboration though and that is a clear pick. These days, every other game has some kind of collaborative function integrated with its online multiplayer. For example, Uncharted 3, which was released this month, has both a split-screen online function as well as a Cooperative Game mode all in addition to its already impressive online multiplayer. Uncharted has received honorable mention on simply its single player campaign in the past and now they have all these new systems to keep up with the trends of today. Modern Warfare 3, another of this month’s hot releases has brought back the popular Spec Ops mode where two players can work together to complete missions both online and in offline split-screen. Game developers have clearly realized that cooperative action is a hook for gamers and McGonigal’s idea to use collaboration more often in the real world actually seems like a smart decision.