11/21 Reading Response 9.0

Chapter 14 – Saving the Real World
Conclusion

McGonigal wraps up her book’s final chapter by actually providing some worthwhile examples of games to help the real world. Unlike in the past, some of her ideas are realistic enough to actually influence the real world in the future. Her games in this chapter put certain interested individuals into situations where their objective is to try and find solutions for future scenarios. One of the examples is based on a scenario where the world runs out of oil and it is the player’s responsibility to think up ways to improve living in this situation. It wasn’t extremely far reaching, and in the beginning, many people thought up really dark responses and imagined the worst outcomes. However, as time went on, optimism started to take over and players started coming up with really beneficial ideas of ways to adapt and manage living in situations without oil. One crucial difference between this and McGonigal’s other experiments, is that the game is not meant to make life more fun. These are games whose purpose is to engage people so that they are more willing to put effort into a serious task. It is what is called a Serious Game.

Over the course McGonigal’s book is mainly dominated by the Gamification theme and most of her ideas are based around making life into a game. As has been mentioned before though, though some of her ideas in this field are a little too unrealistic. Later on, McGonigal brings up more Serious Games as she speaks more about the future of our planet and here some of her ideas really shine through. In her experiments, it is clear that there have been many successes when it comes to using games for inciting collaboration, simulating future scenarios, and for situational prevention. Some people really seem eager to try and make a difference. There is something interesting to be said about this observation. Whenever McGonigal tries too hard to make life or games fun, it just doesn’t seem like it would be appealing. However, when her games contribute toward a real life result, she seems to get quite a good response. I’m reminded of an old educational game called “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.” This game was extremely popular despite the fact that it was educational. Other companies put forth numerous attempts at educational games as time went by, but none even came close to the popularity. It was almost like an accident.

As I see it, not all games are what one would call fun. In reality though, they don’t have to be to be engaging. The players and participants in McGonigal’s serious games worked hard at what they were doing, trying to make life better in a fictional situation that could very well have been real. What they were doing was engaging for them and from their point of view might even be described as fun. McGonigal’s main mistake may have been in trying to make the whole world fun. Fun is in the eye of the beholder and there is nothing out there that is fun for everyone.