Re:Against Gamification
by mindcrime on Thursday March 31, 2011 @02:37PM
(#2392987)
And McGonigal, whose games are filled with top-secret missions in which you get to play the superhero, says "reality is broken" because people don't get to feel "epic" often enough. This is a child's view of how the world works.
I disagree. There seems to be good reason to believe that the need to "feel epic" is a basic drive. Look at how an archetypal story like the "hero's quest" emerges in a wide variety of cultures over the millennia of time[1].
Do adults really need to pretend they're superheroes on secret missions to have meaning in their lives?
Very likely so. If you accept anything that evolutionary psychology suggests, then look at one of their fundamental tenets: Technology and culture "evolve" faster than humans do, and so we are evolutionarily "wired" for life in the Ancestral Environment... hunter / gatherer society in tribes of around 150 (or less) people. Modern life removes some of the challenges we are wired to face, and replaces them with different ones... it does not strike me as unreasonable to think that adults may actually have some inner drive / motivation that very naturally maps to the sensations we get from games; and that isn't easily found in "real life."
I disagree. There seems to be good reason to believe that the need to "feel epic" is a basic drive. Look at how an archetypal story like the "hero's quest" emerges in a wide variety of cultures over the millennia of time[1].
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces
Do adults really need to pretend they're superheroes on secret missions to have meaning in their lives?
Very likely so. If you accept anything that evolutionary psychology suggests, then look at one of their fundamental tenets: Technology and culture "evolve" faster than humans do, and so we are evolutionarily "wired" for life in the Ancestral Environment... hunter / gatherer society in tribes of around 150 (or less) people. Modern life removes some of the challenges we are wired to face, and replaces them with different ones... it does not strike me as unreasonable to think that adults may actually have some inner drive / motivation that very naturally maps to the sensations we get from games; and that isn't easily found in "real life."