Can Video Games Make the World a Better Place?

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/10/16/Long_Conversation_with_Tiffany_Shlain_and_Jane_McGo...

Game designer Jane McGonigal and filmmaker Tiffany Schlain discuss how video games make people better, and can help change the world. McGonigal describes the "epic win," a special skill gamers develop to help them solve difficult problems and how that skill can be used as an amazing human resource in the physical world.

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Long Conversation, an epic relay of one-to-one conversations among some of the Bay Area's most interesting minds, took place over 6 hours in San Francisco on Saturday October 16, 02010. Interpreting the Long Conversation in real time was a data visualization performance by Sosolimited; an art and technology studio out of M.I.T.

Long Conversation was presented with a live performance of 1,000 minutes of composer Jem Finer's Longplayer. - The Long Now Foundation

Jane McGonigal is the Director of Games Research and Development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California. She has created and deployed games and missions in more than 30 countries on six continents. She specializes in games that help gamers enjoy their real lives more -- and games that challenge players to tackle real-world problems, through planetary-scale collaboration.

Honored as one of Newsweek's "Women Shaping the 21st Century," Tiffany Shlain is the founder and ambassador of The Webby Awards and an award-winning filmmaker. Tiffany's career is guided by a passion for unraveling complex ideas in unorthodox ways. Her work covers an array of topics, from the internet to politics to religion. She has directed eight films including "Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness," a Sundance Film Festival selection 2003 and broadcast on TV on The Sundance Channel.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• games
• gaming
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• technology
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• social
• networks
• benefit
• society
• culture
• resources
• gamers
• players
• crowd
• sourcing
• foratv
• fora.tv
• fora
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• Jane
• McGonigal
• Tiffany
• Schlain
• long
• now
• foundation

[jjaggers]

2 major difference between games and life:

the rules of a game are simple and open to all players

the rules of the social order are convoluted and hidden

the system controlling the rules in a game is disinterested in who wins/loses

the system controlling the rules in society are controlled by players who ultimately and primarily serve their own interests

is it no wonder reality is broken?

[claytongault]

Games do solve problems, particularly the problem of boredom. Having fun is a good in itself, not something that needs to be justified.

[JamesTR4]

Gaming is the art of combining the Arts together and with people...

[Linniek100]

This is fascinating. The world definitely needs fixing and with the discovery of neuroplasticity of our brains, anything is possible which means we can change and help open minded children grow up with much more knowledge about what is really going on in the minds of people other than their immediate family unit...so therefore they start to think for themselves and they learn how to make decisions , hopefully more rational than those based on fear of differences, and therefore hatred and violenc

[HUNAdamus94]

im ready to start thinking with portals!!!

[befranklintoo]

the lost cost and life is good without a wife and video game losers.

[angelwhite]

Big difference is that in video games, all it costs you is time, and there is usually a very small loop to try again and again (ie if you die, you start at the beginning of the level, not the beginning of the game). In the real world, it costs money and takes people and is a big endeavour to try and accomplish something. You don't get 50 tries a day until you achieve your epic win.

[Darkhorse21x]

@666norton420

Your poor muddled mind is trying so hard to sound intelligent.

If the roads are built with citizens tax dollars then the roads belong to the citizens. You speak like a boy who is willing to hand over his lunch money to a bully and then thank him for it.

I have the right to travel freely on planet earth. The only statutes which apply to me are those that govern my commercial actions.

You know so little, it's hard to imagine where I should begin your education.

[SomethingSea1]

@Darkhorse21x "If I know nothing of your position it is because you have FAILED to state clearly your position."

You're in favor of the new TSA airport security digital strip search machines, aren't you? You act like the gov't, while at the same time decrying what the gov't does. Are you a schizo?

[SomethingSea1]

@Darkhorse21x "If I know nothing of your position it is because you have FAILED to state clearly your position."

So? It's about the arguments, not the positions. Often, far too often, labels get in the way of discussions.

"It is your inability to accept a society where usefull video games could flourish in the consumer driven society you live in."

I give you the same challenge that you gave me. Answer mine, and I might answer yours.