Jane McGonigal Reading

I think this is probably my favorite reading so far. McGonigal is a great writer with a lot of interesting thing to say.

I think the most interesting point she made and the one that stuck me the hardest is when she us Csikszentmihalyi's study and he points out that we will spend most of our lives feeling bored and unhappy. And why should we when games have proved that there is a better alternative. My knee jerk reaction was to resist this, because the idea that reality should be as it is. It's, well it's reality. But throughout her writing she makes the very good case that we do not play games because they are fun. We play games because they present us obstacles that we voluntarily face. I face obstacles in life all the time. Very few of them are faced voluntary. And I've always just assumed that's been a part of life. So many times in school - both k-12 and university - taking a class because I have to. And no class is worse then the on that I pass but don't feel like I actually got anything out of passing that obstacle. Yet, I get something out of the obstacles in the games I choose to play. I've spent hours trying to jump over one whole because damn it, that plumber is getting to that final castle. I've trekked for hours through treacherous landscapes filled to the brim with stuff that wants to kill me and looked forward to it. I've even enjoyed some obstacles that games have given me that I had no way to prepare for and, in truth, no real way to avoid. But I still enjoyed it.

The idea that I could enjoy my education - all of it, not just the pieces that make it worth it - should not be surprising to me. I want to take a test, fail, and still feel like I got something out of it. I want to feel like I'm actually doing something with the information being given to me.

This reading made me wonder, though. Has it always been this way? Have people always lived in a reality that is broken. Have people always had such a problem with getting a positive engagement from the world around them? I mean, videogames did stem from games, and games have been around for ages. McGonigal herself brings up golf, and how little since it makes that people enjoy getting a tiny ball in a tiny hole in the most convoluted way possible. The amount of games based around cards is staggering, and yet the concept of a card deck is amazingly simple and straightforward. Csikszentmihalyi's was working in the 70s, so he must have had something to notice.

I guess the difference between then and now is that most other games work in the real world. Videogames is the first time I think people are actually leaving. I think of this as a I try to explain to Professor Gale - the professor I'm doing my independent study with - some of the simplest aspects of gaming. He keeps coming up with a very simple, yet very confounding, yet very important question. "Why?" He keeps asking this because he is applying his logic, the logic of someone who has never played a videogame, any kind, every, and trying to understand why we would do anything in the realm of a videogame; and he's coming up with nothing. Since I don't think he is doing this to make fun of me or annoy me he must have some bases for this question. I also don't think he would ask "Why do you hit a ball into a tiny hole" if he was talking with a golfer.

This is why I find McGonigal's point so interesting. I like the idea of having videogames not break us from this reality, but to effect, expand, or even make this reality better. I will fully admit I have absolutely no clue how to do this, but that still doesn't stop me from being excited.