Dillon Waugh
Hayes
English 100 – 9:10
5/5/2013
Word Count:
Book Club Response –
Review Draft
Entertainment media is a silly thing, or so it’s considered – a
frivolity, a way to shift one’s mood or blow off a bit of steam. Nonetheless,
real quality entertainment is inherently elegantly and complexly produced. To
entertain, after all, one must understand the directions in which human thought
moves. To entertain, an entertainer needs to give their audience what they want
and strike the right buttons. A game developer like Jane McGonigal would know,
especially as an interactive medium such as video gaming is obliged to draw a
particular investment and engagement from players. In her book Reality is Broken: Why Games
Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, she explains
simplistically what it is that a gamer seeks from a game – and steps forward to
pose ways in which the insight into human happiness psychology provided by
observing games can enhance real life.
McGonigal’s book is divided into three parts, the first of which centers
on the profound appeal of video games to their players. As the author
describes, video games are not appealing as an excuse to detach from life and
laze as is a non-gamer misconception – in fact, they are appealing because of
the fantastic sense of productivity that they instill through inclusion and
particulars of what McGonigal presents as “the
four defining traits of a game”: firstly, all video games have goals to
which progress is measureable and never impossible and that provide a sense of
meaning; for a task to be a game, it must present challenges and rules (often
arbitrary – McGonigal points out that Scrabble would be less of a game if
participants couldn’t only use seven tiles or weren’t required to build off of
words already on the board); a feedback system acknowledges success and
progress, ideally encouraging the player to apply themselves to a game’s tasks
and explorable worlds and old scores to beat keep them further and
fantastically busy; finally, games remain enjoyable by the voluntary nature of
their participation – an activity that a person partakes in due to obligation
and not choice is oppressive, not recreational. A good video game (or any other
sort of game, for that matter) may, therefore, be considered “work” – and a
human being craves work over so-called relaxation, something to challenge and demand
application of skill and testing of limits, as long as it is “theirs.”
This insight into the psychology of
fun is, at many points, bemusing and liable to set one’s figurative lightbulbs
sparking. It’s true that a game that allows its player to do absolutely
anything that they want is hardly a game at all, and McGonigal quotes
psychologist Brian Sutton-Smith in that “The opposite of play isn’t work – it’s
depression” – both playing a game and performing intense work stoke the spirit
and feeling of productivity. And McGonigal’s theories on what draws a human
into wanting work is supported by the arguably classic theories of others.
Parallels stand between her defining features of games and workplace theories
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Frederick Herzberg’s motivational vs. hygiene
theory: the first suggests that a person whose survival demands are satisfied
will seek out action that brings them friendship and belonging,
self-affirmation, and growth; video games provide a platform for bonding,
including with those a player may never have met on their own in person, and
the quests to mark off and old scores to beat that account for feedback systems
praises one’s performance while encouraging self-one-upping, so to speak. The
second states that a job must meet
certain requirements to content a worker in such areas as pay rate and
workplace safety, but that job satisfaction comes from variety, challenge,
independence, and clarity of a job’s efficacy and purpose; McGonigal claims
that video games provide a satisfaction that general real life does not, and
that it does so through presenting surmountable obstacles for a challenge,
independence afforded through choice in participation and approach, and
feedback through score, milestones, or environment to show players their
performance’s quality and impact. The bottom line is that humans are happiest
and most engaged when performing work that they want – think of
middle-schoolers wheezing laps around a football field before picturing teams
of volunteers training enthusiastically for a marathon. Voluntary exertion,
whether of mind or body, is fun, and fun is voluntary exertion.
The second and third sections of
the book, meanwhile, proceeds through describing and proffering examples of the
application of knowledge of what makes a game fun to enhancing and developing
real-life tasks, from helping flight-shy passengers stomach plane rides to
“crowdsourcing” anti-cancer research with protein-folding puzzle games. Any
insight, needless to say, has its practical uses, especially where the feeling
of human fulfillment is concerned – although the ARGs (“Alternate Reality
Games” – games played on the set of the real world) that she presents, while
intriguing in their right, seem like slow steps into turning reality into a fantastic
and fulfilling game. Would a person think to sign up for the
adventures-in-chores game Chore Wars if they didn’t derive some enjoyment from
– or at least maintain a commitment to – their chores even without having their
motions described in fantasy euphemisms and receiving abstract points for their
completion? Meanwhile, the “productive games” such as Foldit given are
repetitive and formulaic with little incentive or reward for commitment,
leaving wonder that whether their drawing in players proves that playing games
for the greater good is as fun as playing ordinary ones or that people will
happily perform easily-accessible volunteer work. On the other hand, a museum
found a level of success in creating and presenting a plotted ARG to members
that prompted them to design works of art and museum exhibits along the path to
solving a mystery story, and frivolous ARGs such as the infamous Ben Drowned
also held attention by sending players on or at least tasking them to assist on
an adventure. This would, however, tie back to McGonigal’s description of the
importance of the concept of “epicness” to gamer culture: the greater the
scale, the greater the meaning; beating one’s old score in a game of Tetris in
the car is triumphant, while slaying beast after rampaging beast culminating in
banishing their dreaded god in an RPG is much more so. Tucked all around media
are tiny games fitted for bits and pieces of real life – it would be quite a
thing to imagine it all woven together into one big, truly “epic” game (or two,
or three) running through reality to chase.
While McGonigal’s examples may be proof of potential rather than fact,
her arguments are clear, her language is easily digestible, and her quotations
by psychologists and other such figures draw their fingers over pressure points
and drive their keys home. She makes her case in a way that isn’t difficult to
grasp by any means – except, perhaps, to those unfamiliar with game lingo and
titles. World of Warcraft certainly can’t be painted well in broad strokes, and
her use of the term “achievement” is nonsensical out of terms of gaming (it
refers to a merit badge of sorts awarded for completing certain specific tasks
in a game, for those out of the know). In addition, on a sheerly technical
level, her section formatting is inconsistent – yet her argument continues to
read smoothly.
Overall, Reality is Broken
comes recommended, as a book overall – but not for a book club in every class.
Once again, McGonigal’s book is an easy read, and ease of reading may be best
compensated for with ease of discussion. A group of gamers will easily find
plenty to say around McGonigal’s claims and her observations, while a group
consisting partially of gamers may likewise generate respectable amounts of
discussion after explanations of terms; strict non-gamers may read
dispassionately and with too little context to make connections and speak
freely. As McGonigal herself reminds, what good comes out of involuntary work
irrelevant to one’s interests? Accordingly, however, even those less familiar
with gaming, however, may get a bit out of indulging any curiosity by making it
into a subject of pleasure reading, as might anyone else, for a take on the
psychology of happiness and invitation to introspection on why we enjoy what we
enjoy.
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