Reality is Broken CHP 1-2

McGonigal argues in Chapter 1, that the game industry (in part) succeeds because it meets a need for “better hard work”. In other words, she claims that games provide work that is both challenging, fun, and something that the player can be invested in (all things that the real world “lacks”). When she later goes onto describe the various types of work: high stakes work, busy work, mental work, physical work, discovery work, and creative work, I found myself arguing that all of those exist in some capacity in the real world as well. There exist many people who love what they do (maybe not a 100% of the time AHH I LOVE WHAT I DO kind of way but), and McGonigal argues that there exist games that would draw these people in more and I kind of disagree with that. For example, concert pianists (or violinists, celloists, what have you), experience a great deal of stress during that work which would be “high stakes work”. They have to face the constant pressures to perform, to memorize their music, to sync everything perfectly with their conductor and their orchestra; yet most still love doing it. Why? Well for some it is the satisfaction they earn for being able to play, for other’s the rush they experience during an audiences applause, and still other, varied, reasons why one would love the feeling of playing music. In my opinion, for this admittedly specific scenario of a concert musician who loves what they do, no game would be able to replicate this feeling. Sure, in the future we might have perfectly immersive VMMO’s like the ones in SAO or Ready Player 1, but I feel like they would still lack something…. even if I personally can’t put my finger on what.

To call reality fundamentally broken both seems true and yet rings false to me at the same time. At this specific moment in time, there are things possible in video games which are impossible in the real world; and yet the opposite holds true as well. Romance is one example, no matter how some role playing games (“capture games” I think they’re called) attempt to create a fictional romance, it is no match for the real thing. And sure, I know that is a subjective statement open to personal interpretation and there may be people who feel the exact opposite; but I guess what I’m trying to get at is that games by themselves do not form the same sense of relationship and companionship that another living person can provide.

-Hyewon Hong

Posted on by Hyewon Hong
Categories: Uncategorized

3 Responses

  1. Alexander Clinton says:
    September 5, 2018 at 12:09 am

    I respectfully disagree with your point that people who love their job could never have a game that would give them the same feeling. Taking any musician for instance, look at Rockband and Guitar hero. They provided “high stakes reward” as you discuss to any player. The high stakes reward being that if you didn’t miss a note/key your score would be perfect. Yes it may not have a physical audience, but with the evolution in video games and virtual reality I think it is to hard to say you think that there could never be a game created that satisfies these people.

  2. Alexandra Smith says:
    September 5, 2018 at 1:51 pm

    I like how you brought up potential overlap between the different types of work that McGonigal mentioned. I played sports in high school, and when on the field, I was physically exhausting myself while doing the mental/creative/discovery work of running and learning new plays and moves. Sometimes in practice, our coaches would have us run laps; sometimes it felt like they did this just to have us pass time (busy work). Finally, even though it was just a high school lacrosse game, the stakes felt very high because I had worked so hard and wanted to succeed more than anything. All the different types of work existed within the same game, a game that I still love with all my heart. Basically, I am trying to say that, even in games, there is no such thing as the perfect challenging/fun/invested work because all these different types and definitions of work need the others to exist.

  3. Wogan Snyder says:
    September 5, 2018 at 2:09 pm

    I appreciate your address on the duality of how reality may broken but so are games in the context of romantic relationships. We can’t be fully satisfied by games or life alone: each presents their own unique offerings. On a similar note, without actual real work, there would be no differentiation between the “hard work” we create for ourselves through games and the real thing. In the words of Dolly Parton, “if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”