Response To Chapters 13 and 14

I believe that McGonigal makes a lot of interesting points, but her examples and reasons seem a bit stale and not necessarily true. In chapter 13, she talks about how 10,000 hours will make a person a master of something. This seemed interesting to me at first, but I feel like you have to also have to have a certain objective to something before you can master a game. If you played a game without a specific purpose, I believe you will not master anything. I also did not agree with her point that online gamers are more cooperative than solo gamers. Online gamers can be, at times, some of the least cooperative people. It all depends on their playstyle. If a gamer decides to play the game by trolling his teammates, he is not being cooperative. Instead, he is working in his own self-interest to make the other teammates miserable. Some solo gamers are worried about these kinds of people, including modders and instead just wants to play a game by himself to ensure a fair gameplay.

Collaboration could be in single player games as well. Even though its not with a real person, the player can collaborate with an AI by making a trade or doing a task for them to help you later on. In my opinion, this can be just as beneficial as playing online with other people.

One thing I do appreciate McConigal writing about are superstructures. I found the definition to be clear and easy to comprehend. She also gives examples about superstructures just to make sure the reader fully understands.The more I read about superstructures, the more I realized about how common they are in the business world. Companies are always making partnerships and combining forces to tackle one big issue. This made me more interested to read about this chapter because I am considering a career in business and thought this would be a useful thing to know.

Posted on by Jeremy Mednik
Categories: Uncategorized

5 Responses

  1. Joseph Sterling says:
    October 7, 2018 at 9:49 pm

    I found it very funny how positive McGonigal’s view of online communities was. In small doses, like just a group of friends, online communities can be very helpful and positive. When you open yourself up to the larger communities, you only end up with the horribleness of humanity. The concept of “trolling” in a competitive, team based online game is similar to the stag hunt, one person puts their own wants above the groups. This leads to the stag (winning the game) getting away.

    The concept of superstructures reminded me of the saying, “There are no more original ideas.” Many “new” thing now are just improvement or a new take on old ideas and technologies.

  2. Micaela Willoughby says:
    October 8, 2018 at 12:12 am

    That’s a really good point, about collaborating with the AIs. I hadn’t even thought about it, but it’s very true! Also, I feel she kind of leaves purely single player games out of the picture, or at least makes them seem less beneficial than MMORGS or MSORGS.

    I don’t mean to keep roasting her though. I was actually thinking that maybe, rather than trying to fix the world with games, she could benefit the advertising world with games. Or something like that. I feel that a lot of her thinking on what’s appealing to gamers could work in advertising (like The Lost Ring thing… could get children more involved with the Olympics rather than adults or something)

  3. Josephine Bossidy says:
    October 8, 2018 at 12:56 pm

    I agree with your opinion on Mcgongials perspective in chapter 13. I too at the beginning was starting to believe her perspective on the notion that if you put a lot of time into something, in her example 10,000 hours, you will master that skill. But when I started to think about how many years people work at a job and never get promoted, I started to doubt her proposal. I think it is going to take someone a lot more than just 10,000 hours to become a master of something.

  4. Shanay Amin says:
    October 8, 2018 at 1:18 pm

    I agree and I think collaboration is necessary in most games just to improve the overall experience. Even collaboration with the AI can be beneficial to advance the games and add to the experience. Working with other people for me adds to the game and makes it more fun.

  5. Hyewon Hong says:
    October 8, 2018 at 2:05 pm

    I agree that in the beginning I was really interested by her stating that it takes 10000 hours to master a task. It’s a pretty famous phrase and I was both skeptical and intrigued how she would use it to talk about games in general. Unfortunately, like most of her examples it falls flat and seems more to dance around the issue then put forth any real original claim.