RIB 7 & 8 Response

In Chapter 7 and 8, McGonigal talks a lot about alternate reality games (ARGs) and their many benefits to society. In Chapter 7, she gave three examples of different ARGs, but none of her examples actually create “alternate” realities. Instead, they attempt to transform the more undesirable parts of reality into something better, like turning lemons into lemonade or Mary Poppins’ “Spoon Full of Sugar” mentality. Maybe I have incorrect associations with the term “alternate reality”, but I think her examples are better described as a form of positivity and creativity rather than altering reality because it’s just putting a rose-colored lens in front of undesirable tasks.

Also in Chapter 7, McGonigal identifies a lack of wholehearted participation in reality as an issue that ARG would solve, but as many people have identified in earlier chapters, it is impossible to be one-hundred percent into every aspect of life. While I do recognize that Chore Wars, Quest to Learn, and SuperBetter are designed to improve the areas that you are disinterested in, I still think there are certain things that you have do just get done and it’s actually more efficient to just get through them opposed to creating a game around the task. She then ends the Chapter with the idea of “New Game philosophy” where everyone should be allowed to participate and games aren’t all about winning. McGonigal believes this philosophy should be the basis of game design and ARGs moving forward. When I think of this New Game philosophy, I usually associate it with sports, where I think coddling can be harmful to the game, but in terms of video game design, I agree. One thing that makes video games unique is that literally anyone can play them, and the skills and strategies used in the game can be taught, learned, and developed. If the idea of exclusion enters video games, I think their purpose and appeal would diminish.

In Chapter 8, McGonigal identifies reality as “pointless and unrewarding” and that games make us feel more rewarded. Yes, there are parts of reality that are terrible and bring us no joy, but again, they need to be done. Using the games she identified in Chapter 7 can ease the unrewarding aspect of the things we dislike, but it does not entirely replace it. Also, she emphasizes a need for intrinsic rewards, but a lot of methods used in games are actually using extrinsic motivation such as points, XP, and levels. McGonigal herself sought out points for public speaking and praised PlusOnMe for moving electronic game rewards into reality, but wouldn’t it be better to receive those rewards from yourself? To feel a great sense of internal pride?

All in all, I took some sort of issue with the majority of these two chapters. Maybe I’m being too harsh though. What were all of your thoughts on the two chapters? Do you agree with some of the things I brought up? Am I missing a piece that would make all her ideas seem more practical or realistic?

Posted on by Alexandra Smith
Categories: Uncategorized

5 Responses

  1. Josephine Bossidy says:
    September 23, 2018 at 8:34 pm

    I agree with your opinion on the argument addressed in chapter 8. I disagree with McGonigal in the sense that we shouldn’t rely on games to provide us with the rewards we need. If games became the only place we could find these rewards then why would anyone ever look up from a screen? I understand that life doesn’t always offer us trophies for trying our best, but at the end of the day I don’t think it should. If we were consistently rewarded I think people would lose their motivation to try.

  2. Micaela Willoughby says:
    September 23, 2018 at 9:11 pm

    I understand your issues with the idea of needing a game for validation. It sounds like an outlandish concept that could make us forget what it’s like to do things for ourselves. We already live in a society that is so focused on what others think and this idea of awarding points seems like another way to fixate on that. People may grow self conscious about not being given points, not having talents or skills that can be displayed easily.

  3. Rachel Helbling says:
    September 23, 2018 at 10:05 pm

    I agree with your opinions, especially the point you brought up about it being hard to get full participation in a game and the fact that sometimes it may just be easier to get the tasks done directly rather than make a game out of them all the time. Overall, I think the points McGonigal made in this chapter were more realistic than the previous chapters. I think these examples of ARG games may actually be able to make life better in some ways if everyone were to use them. However, like the previous chapters I feel as though McGonigals points are a little exaggerated and impractical.

  4. Hyewon Hong says:
    September 24, 2018 at 10:22 am

    I fully agree with your opinion that games are not the answer to reality, and fully disagree with McGonigal’s claim that reality is pointless and unrewarding. It is profoundly ridiculous of her to discount every human emotion, interaction, achievement, and desire as “pointless and unrewarding” and reading it made me do a double take. Having games in our lives is fun, using them to make our lives better in meaningful ways is good, but when she goes so far as to say that reality is useless and that games are the only way to fix it, I have to take a step back like woaaaaah.

  5. Shanay Amin says:
    September 24, 2018 at 2:46 pm

    I agree that games make us feel much more rewarded with everything we do, any little good thing you do you gain something in a game, and I don’t think thats always true in life. For example you could study endlessly for a test but if you get one ore two bad question you won’t even be slightly rewarded, just hurt. I feel that her ideas could be realistic but that practicality isn’t good enough to be integrated in the real world.