Jesse Schell: When games invade real life

Found this talk from G4TV via the best of the web category on TED.



The first half is a good watch when you want to understand what the games industry thinks of the suprise success of social network games such as Mafia Wars or FarmVille among other innovations that came from off-field.

The second half is a quite scary vision of the near future informed by this current state of achievement driven online behaviour. It's also the second half that sparks the most discussion in the comments.

I agree that the described scenario is more dystopian than utopian. But I also can't argue against the fact that the rewards or achievement system is definately proving a giant hook for the gamer generation.

I believe there are three things to consider though:

1. The world is large and this achievement driven gamer behaviour is far from representative of all consumers today. My parents are still struggling with discount cards at supermarkets, and those are still monetary rather than achievement focussed.
2. Even if we were able to tap into this hook across all citizens (not just consumers), we need to look at ways to use it positively rather than leaving it to private capital to exploit. I liked the school idea for instance.
3. Our reward today is tradable money as opposed to points. Despite this, regulations and common societal sense manages to keep this in check most of the times.