Manage updates with the Download AppMarch 28, 2007 4:00 AM PDT
Provocative politics in virtual games
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That could describe the philosophy of a new alternate-reality game called World Without Oil, which will launch April 30.
Funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a backer of PBS, the game will essentially encourage people to envision a world in which the United States has been cut off from oil imports. Then, visitors will be urged to participate in the game by writing their own stories, creating videos or even by conjuring so-called flash mobs in U.S. cities.
Alternate-reality games (ARGs) are interactive story lines that draw on the real and virtual worlds--as well as players' actions--to unfurl the narrative. In recent years, the increasingly popular games have even been used in elaborate marketing campaigns, such as the recent launch of Microsoft's Windows Vista.
Jane McGonigal, a game designer for the research group Institute for the Future and one of the lead designers of the game, said at the ETech Emerging Technology Conference here Tuesday that World Without Oil is the first nonprofit-backed game designed for "social good."
"It's like: play before you live it," McGonigal said in an interview with CNET News.com, following a talk on developing ARGs.
McGonigal said that although she has worked on several such games, World Without Oil is the first developed with nonprofit funding. She said the budget was roughly that of a major documentary work, or in the low six figures. The development team hopes the game will draw at least 100,000 players in the United States.
Jane McGonigal
McGonigal delivered a keynote speech on the first day of general sessions at ETech, a 6-year-old conference on emerging technology. Much of her talk was centered on developing games with a bent toward people's general happiness. She said that all technology developed today should pass the "deathbed test," or the idea that everyday tech should be judged beforehand for its value and contribution to people's quality of life.
"I predict by 2012 that technologists will become 'happiness hackers,' creating alternate realities we can live in: best-case scenarios that help people in their daily lives," she said.
The driver for this change? Recent scientific research has set a basis for happiness or positive psychology in humans. A number of books, such as Stumbling on Happiness and The Science of Happiness, lay out the scientific findings in the field, for example. That research, combined with growing public awareness on the subject, will create demand in game development, McGonigal said.
"The public expects technology companies to have a clear vision for a life worth living," she said. "Games improving quality of life should be a top priority."
She said game designers should be looking at three things: the pleasure people gain from a game; their engagement with it; and whether it brings meaning to their real world. Popular multiplayer environments such as Second Life are already showing how virtual worlds are affecting change in real life. For example, a newsletter in Second Life regularly discusses the relationship between a first and "second life," showing how experiences are trickling back to people's "first life," she said.
But there's still a long way to go before ubiquitous games are built to better people's lives.
McGonigal has developed several small ARGs. One, called the Ministry of Reshelving, was designed to play with so-called folksonomies, or user-generated taxonomies, on the Web to see how they worked in the real world. Developed in 2005, when McGonigal was concerned with the political climate in the U.S., the game called on players to re-shelve George Orwell's 1984 from the "fiction" section of the bookstore to "current affairs" and "politics." She said that roughly 40,000 people did this in bookstores around the country.
She's also developed a game called Cruel 2 Be Kind, which calls on players to "attack" strangers with random acts of kindness (in real life). Instructions are sent via cell phone.
McGonigal also has been evangelizing her ideas in the game community. She said she called on 11 game designers in the San Francisco Bay Area to get a sense of what they value in games. She compiled these thoughts in a "Cut-up Manifesto."
Some highlights from the designers: "games can improve the life that is boring or routine," "games can change someone who is work-obsessed," and they "can wake you up if you are sleepwalking through life and give you a shared social experience."
She ended the talk by asking the technologists in the room to invest a portion of their time to understanding and innovating products that promote happiness. "Make sure your technology is not only designed to feel good, but also to do good and expose good," she said. "Please hack happiness."
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Jane McGonigal, Second Life, virtual worlds, designer, games
25 comments
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But, what always concerns me about these computer/web based initiatives is the fact that they go nowhere. They are just a talking shop. Like minded people communicating with like minded people all showing how great they are for caring to people who will pat them on the back for it.
Unless they have an impact on the real world it is just a game.
As for coal liquifaction. The technology has production costs around $60 US/barrel, and the product itself is incompatible with existing U.S. refining capacity. (thats why refineries can only accept a limited (approx ~10% of feed)amount of oil from Canada's oil sands. It would take several years to retool to make use of this feed source properly. The new alternate energy options, (solar, wave, wind, geothermal) haven't had the development that they need to become mainstream technologies. while the old alternates (hydro, and nuclear) are already being used at full capacity and would take extensive amounts of time to ramp up. Add to that, vehicles that can't make effective use of these alternate energies and you have a recipe for social collapse.
I only wonder if the game will let those outside the U.S. participate. It would be interesting to see the Canadian response to the U.S. acting to "secure" is supply of oil from Western Canada.
I don't care how many people scream and demand that we withdrawl from Iraq, or how many shout that somehow we should stop using oil... now!
The month oil stops flowing, damned near ever American would suddenly start screaming for the President to "warm up the missile silos if you have to and get us some oil, damnit!" (esp. once everything that relies on transport starts getting really, really expensive...)
c'mon - we already know the scenario. How about a game that has players discover and implement unique ways to transition away from fossil fuels, like a Sim-City sort of game?
/P
be better one. Already there are electric cars
and solar power improvements.
One small solar generator could eventually power
and rechrarge itself....
And besides there are people living primitive
out there. So do we really need it?
---------
Take the refrigerator for example.
Can't people just live on dried goods?
Luke warm water.
After all, it would be rather hard to get hold of even dried food in the city, if there were no way to transport it from the farm.
Also, a sustainable primitive existence for 6 billion people would require more land and natural resources (read: animals + plants) to support them than ten Planet Earths would have available, let alone the one we do have.
Basically, we would have to kill 5.5 billion people, in order to sustain the other 500 million globally. Anyone care to volunteer to be among the 5.5 bn?
/P
something like 40 years and child mortality rates were around 50%.
That would solve ALL of the problems on earth in about 1 to 2
generations.
Welcome to the "Eco-Religious" Garden of Eden.
Yep
"3. Why would any country stop selling oil to the US? They love those petrol dollars!"
Double yep. It'd hurt them in the end more than us, as their economies ALSO depend on the relationship.
Well, dont ignore that. The whole thing is a retarded. Even if every other country that sells us oil stopped - we'd still have it. It'd be more expensive, certainly, but we'd adapt pretty quickly by increasing domestic production and other means. We'd be far, far better off than a lot of other countries would be in a similar circumstance (China, for ex).
Nothing like an empty belly to break an ideology, no?
/P
We'll call the game 'Utopia'.
Coming to PC and Playstation 3 this fall. Rated 'B' for 'must have a brain to play'.
:-)
All this fearmongering is to get control of people's minds so they will sell out their country for global government and false sense of "security", before Christ comes and wipes the devil, and all his works, off the planet.
Now that i have the ability i bought a hybrid, and am saving for solar panels for the house.... This makes me think that i am part of the solution. At least through funding, support.