MUST WATCH: Analytical TED talk about MMO's

[Happyfeet]

http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_chatfield_7_ways_games_reward_the_brain.html
If you've never watched TED talks you're missing out, I watch them almost everyday.
Anyways, this one is about MMO's and how the mechanics can be applied to the real world. EQ and DKP are mentioned @ the 12:00 marker, but watch the entire video.
They also talk about converting virtual items into RL currency, God knows I paid for my college with EQ plat...

Give it a watch.

[purist]

God knows I paid for my college with EQ plat...

Teach me your secrets.

[Zereh]

If you've never watched TED talks you're missing out

/agree!

[Ravhin]

Interesting talk, though it is much more qualitative than quantitative. I thought his best idea was re: realtime energy meters.

[fastboy21]

i think the points he raises are interesting.

it's pretty clear that mmos (and even 1-player games) are very good at engaging people and motivating them to do things that superficially are not just "fun" (like camping vox for 12 hours, for example). so, i agree with him that there are lessons from the gaming industry that translate into other areas where motivation and engagement are critical (liked education, for example).

Imagine a classroom where a teacher has kids as motivated about calculus as they are about playing COD. Could be very powerful stuff.

[Pimask]

He mentioned Jesse Schell who had a real cool presentation on g4.

[oldhead]

will check out.. love ted talks.

[stormlord]

To preface this reply I have to say I have not watched the TED talk yet.

But I have thought about this issue. Sometimes I ask myself what life would be like if we enjoyed reading science and math books as much as we enjoy playing games. Games can often require a lot of structured strategical thinking in order to win. And many times you lose and lose and lose until you finally get into a pattern where you win. It's almost like finding the combination for a lock. I just wish that winning in a game (consistently) was more valuable in the same way that reading science or math books would be.

Anyone think it's possible to combine real world knowledge in a game world? The idea here is that it would have the same motivational mechanics as games but would have real world knowledge built-in and that you would learn this real world knowledge indirectly from playing the game. I've thought about this for the past few years, but I just don't see a lot of game makers doing it. I don't think it would be fun to play a game that's too burdened with real world knowledge, but I think that if it's in the background and not too visible then it'll be picked up with minimal frustrations. I'm thinking of names, terms, basic concepts, and so on. You might not be able to get a degree in calculus this way, but you may learn what calculus means and what some of the basic lessons are and how mathematics helps our world in various ways.

I think it's pivotal to understand that games employ the use of many of the same things that're present in the real world. There's things to explore, wear (clothes), kill (hunting), learn (skills, crafts, interfaces, etc), people to talk to (social), trade (economy), and so on. There's the effort and there's the reward too. You don't get the reward automatically, and it's not as simple as pressing a button. The harder you push yourself to learn and keep ahead of the pack the better you'll be. Some games are more successful at this than others. And some "even the playing field" more so than others to ensure everyone has an equal experience despite different skill and time invested. In the real world, people get rewarded more for greater effort and skill. In games, this is less so because developers want to ensure an equal experience, but their attempts are not perfect and it's still very much like the real world. This is one of the areas of the real world we might not want to copy too much, but generally, competition acts as a motivational aide and it would work equally well in a game, but making sure that everyone has an equal experience is very difficult if your primary motivational aide is competition. (one related study was recently released. it showed that it wasn't just competition that moved people forward (evolution), it was also living space. essentially, what this said was that releasing new land/space for people to expand into is a much stronger motivational/evolutionary aide than previously thought compared to the likes of competition)

Where games and the real world differ is in detail and risk. The real world has far more detail and risk. Effort requires much more ooommmppph in reality. You have to try harder in the real world to get a reward. And you can die. The real world has perma-death, so you have to be careful. It can be brutal out there! Games have developers that make sure players are happy, the real world has government to make sure things are fair, but ultimately, it's every man for himself in the real world a lot more than it's in games.

There's got to be a way to learn real world knowledge indirectly in a game in a way that's not obtrusive. And I think someone will eventually figure it out. Perhaps they could copy (rough) the world as it was in 1990 and put it into a virtual world? So the entire planet earth would be running on the server as it was known in 1990. So when you played this hypothetical MMO you would AT LEAST learn about earths geography because you would travel via cars/planes/boats/etc and see countries in the game. Assuming the game is not too harsh and there's plenty to do people should have fun. I think it's plausible and reasonable that they would AT LEAST learn geography! This is just a start, though. I think there're many other indirect things that they could learn while trying to RULE THE WORLD. I'm also assuming that the world would eventually change some things so maybe it would be an alternate reality eventually of 1991, 1992, 1993, or maybe not? A world frozen in 1990? Or could be a copy of OUR WORLD in 1991,1992,1993, but only a very rough copy of events as they unfolded. Players would be like participants in this much larger unleashing of events. Maybe we could allow for some changes to the timeline, but the more it becomes alternate the less players would learn about the real world. There would need to be an acceptable in between where players learn some and can also create alternate events.

I'm picturing the first version of this game as "simulating" a part of the united states at first (input/output of the active regions would be equivalent to their 1990 counterparts). As they create new land areas (representing earth) they would add these in content patches. So maybe you're in san francisco and they open up chicago in a patch and you travel there via the airport to expand your business and open up to chicago interests. My guess is that level would be your financial worth or your number of friends (friends are assets). So getting max level would be like being bill gates or being hte most popular man alive.

If players are allowed to be too powerful it would threaten the value of the information that's indirectly learned. If players change the time-line too much, then the value of the knowledge gained would reduce. It's a shaky thing to consider, but I think there's a middle-ground somewhere in that mess. Perhaps making it a simulation is the wrong direction to go as that's what opens up this can of worms. I'm thinking of Star Wars Galaxy or historical MMO. In SWG you couldn't kill Darth Vader, so to speak, or kill Luke Skywalker. If you could, they would just respawn. Something like that would likely happen, except it would be Bill Gates that respawns.

We'd also have to figure out what we want players to learn. Is it history, is it science, is it math, is it everything (roughly), is it social in nature, what is it? The rest of the things could be pure fantasy.

In a way, games are like the real world with training wheels. Everything is easier to get into. The vast volume of processes are shrunk to something manageable (comparatively) and enhanced for entertainment purposes. Not to say that the real world as it is can't be entertaining. It can be! Some things don't even need to be enhanced for enjoyment, they're just naturally fun. And not everyone has the same attention span. Some people love vast volumes of information and processes to pour over. For them that's fun. So not all games are equal in how they're manufactured for consumption, but it follows a pattern. On average, the pattern is: games are simpler than RL and maximized for enjoyment. They're idealistic and artistic and memorable and made for an audience.

Here's an interesting link for Real Lives (educational software):
Real Lives 2010 (http://www.educationalsimulations.com/index.php)

The problem with a lot of educational software is it doesn't have the talent that big budget entertainment does. It hasn't really had a fair chance. That's why I think it should be looked at some more for its potential.