Seth says in his talk that he doesn’t want to lose competitive advantage by revealing too many of the game dynamics that SCVNGR uses, but you can actually get the entire Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck over on TechCrunch.
I’m sure I don’t have to point out to the average Mission to Learn reader that this is powerful stuff from a teaching and learning standpoint. The ability to wield influence – which is what these dynamics are all about – has always played a significant role in effective teaching, and skilled learners should be able to recognize and manage influence. Of course, as social networks become more and more pervasive, the importance of these abilities multiplies dramatically. At a minimum, we need to be able to recognize game mechanics whenever and wherever they are used, and determine whether the intent behind them is for good or evil. Yet another layer of complexity in the massive, multi-player game of life.
Jeff
P.S. – If you have not ever read it – or haven’t read it lately – I highly recommend Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. As far as I am concerned, it should be read in high school, college, and multiple additional times throughout life.
Somewhere along the way I began to write less about games here on Mission to Learn, but my interest in them as an approach to learning has never faded, and after seeing the Jane McGonigal video below it has multiplied many times over.
McGonigal begins with the startling – and no doubt disturbing to some – news that we now spend around 3 billion hours weekly playing games. Where she takes that statistic, however, is what is most fascinating about this video. From McGonigal’s point of view, we need to multiply the number of hours we spend gaming by 7 (yes, that means 21 billion hours weekly), if we want to solve big problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, and obesity.
Why all this game play?
Because it is practice. It is learning in a virtual world the types of skills and behaviors we need to solve the seemingly intractable problems of the real world. For example, collectively all of the players of the highly popular World of Warcraft multi-player online game have spent 5.93 million years solving the problems of that world. In perhaps the most provocative turn of her talk, McGonigal frames this amount of time in evolutionary terms – human beings “stood up” approximately 5.93 million years ago, and everything else has happened since.
I’ll stop there, because I think you really need to see the entire video to appreciate McGonigal’s thinking fully. The video runs about 20 minutes, and I guarantee you that if you are the least interested in how we learn and change on a large scale, it will be worth your time.
I’m eager to hear your thoughts once you have watched it. Do you buy the evolutionary analogy and the potential for transferring the benefits of gaming into the real world? Please comment and share your views.
Jeff
P.S. – If you like this post, you may also be interested in an article I did a while back for WE magazine called Playing for Change.
I put out a new edition of the Free Learning Monitor yesterday, and as part of an effort to attract new subscribers (may as well be up front about it, eh?), I thought I’d highlight the 10 items in it that have received the most clicks from readers. Here they are, starting with the most popular.
Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself.
- John Dewey from Democracy and Education
I’ve come across a number of interesting items on the Web and in my inbox lately. Many of them I will be sharing in a new edition of the Free [...]
[tweetmeme] Here’s a simple (though perhaps not easy) proposition: Let’s value schools based on their ability to help produce happy adults. Not adults who can pass certain tests, or display mastery of those skills that we (in the U.S.) are worried other countries are trouncing us in, or even adults who possess college degrees, but [...]
