RIB Ch. 13&14 (Wogan)

I don’t believe I’m alone when I say this, but the more I read Reality is Broken the more I disagree with McGonigal. She continues to attempt to add legitimacy to her points by citing well known and academic ideas but makes large leaps in logic that completely ruin them. For example, in chapter thirteen McGonigal uses Malcom Gladwell’s theory of 10,000 hours being the threshold for greatness in a given field to justify her assertion that spending 10,000 hours on games on a particular subject is more effective and constructive to the success of students than studying various subjects in school. I think it can be agreed upon that success in a traditional classroom setting and how much time one spends playing video games have little correlation to one’s personal greatness in the opposing field. Furthermore, in chapter thirteen she creates these bolded phrases for points that have little to no evidence to push that they are what she says they are or that they actually have any real substance to them. Examples of this include: “shared concentration” and “synchronized engagement” learned by concentrating on games and “mutual regard” taught by respect for one’s opponent in games.

My disagreement with McGonigal continues into chapter fourteen. Unfortunately, so does her habit of bolding phrases for emphasis to create false legitimacy. My favorite example of this from chapter fourteen is “taking a long view:” McGonigal identifies this as a “working at scales far larger than we would ordinarily encounter in our day-to-day lives.” She proceeds to relate this to “god games,” games in which players have enough power of the world to warrant a god-like status, and their players. Personally, in my experience playing “god games,” I have never felt as if I’m “taking a long view.”

In these two chapters, I’m just glad that McGonigal used games other than her own to attempt to argue her lackluster points.

Posted on by Wogan Snyder
Categories: Uncategorized

5 Responses

  1. James Bachmann says:
    October 7, 2018 at 3:29 pm

    I feel like the blog posts about RIB is slowing becoming roast sessions, but I can’t help but agree with Wogan. The leaps between ideas and connections are just massive and hard to believe. I feel that if she properly stated counter arguments and showed a more proper way of translating her ideas of games to reality, the book would have been a lot more fun to read.

  2. Joseph Sterling says:
    October 7, 2018 at 10:44 pm

    As I read more, the longer the book felt. McGonigal only has shameless self-promotion, claims with little to no evidence, and empty platitudes. Her point seems to be, “The world would be so much better if people were happy, worked together, and played games, more specifically my games.” She seems to mean well, but she can never get from theory to practice. If she did, I may have taken more what from this book.

  3. Josephine Bossidy says:
    October 8, 2018 at 1:18 pm

    I agree with your opinion on McGonigal’s large leaps in logic. When first beginning a chapter I try to leave all my prior judgment behind, but by halfway through the 30 or so pages she loses me. In chapter 14 I originally thought the idea of SEHI’s wasn’t bad, people who are motivated to create change sounded like a good idea. But as McGonigal continued she my interest was lost. Connecting SEHI’s to far too many things she made the validity of the concept far weaker.

  4. Ahsan Ahmad says:
    October 8, 2018 at 1:52 pm

    I can definitely see why McGonigal’s writing has started looking annoying to people. To me personally, Section 3 felt quite repetitive with a bunch of bolded phrases that she just defines herself to make her arguments feel more legit. However, the overly optimistic, absolute statements become kind of off-putting after a while. I understand that if she were to use too many qualifying statements, she would lose out on pizzazz but the alternative doesn’t feel like a good one either. That aside, I would agree that she had several good ideas that could be incorporated in our daily lives to make reality a bit better.

  5. Hyewon Hong says:
    October 8, 2018 at 2:14 pm

    While I feel like the added addition of actual evidence was welcome, it still needs to be good evidence. Most of the fault does lie with her inability to argue points in a clear logical and compelling fashion, but having stronger examples that don’t seem
    pulled out of nowhere could easily make this book more enjoyable.