[A Game Called School...] Using Game Design Outside of Gaming
happysmellyfish:
Games are optional. Work seems mandatory.
I've just started my first full time job, and it's absolutely grinding my will to live. I feel as if I don't have any say in my life. I get up at 6am and I get home at 6pm, absolutely wrecked. But I have to do it; this whole series of events is forcing me to get a real job. Games, on the other hand, are frivolous. They're a time sink and a money sink and the whole endeavour is just something I'm doing for the heck of it. It's like, no matter how messed up the world is, I've going to spend my Saturday afternoon pretending to be Batman. How could that not be MY decision?
The reality, of course, is that I do have a choice about my job. I found it, I secured it, and I make the second-by-second choice to stay there instead of playing basketball. Unfortunately, I've also fallen into "bad faith" by believing I'm forced to be at work. Those moments when I remember I do have a say, I feel a little less like an object, like some piece of crap kicked around by the world.
I'm at work because I want to be, damn it, and I'm going to clock off and go home wrecked because I've made that decision. This brings a lot of psychological stuff into play - pride, ego, responsibility. All more interesting than my earlier sense of grinding predetermination.
We always choose what we do, it's just easier to identify that a choice has been made in some activities. Games are so obviously frivolous that the outside world CAN'T be forcing them on me. They must be something I really, truly want to do.
Try reminding people that they've chosen to be at work or university or wherever. They'll rethink that decision, and (presumably) reaffirm it. Which is to say, Sartre is Smartrer.
Natespank:
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We always choose what we do, it's just easier to identify that a choice has been made in some activities. Games are so obviously frivolous that the outside world CAN'T be forcing them on me. They must be something I really, truly want to do.
That's true.
There's a motivation structure in work and in games. In the case of work it takes the threat of homelessness and the incentive of pay to bring you in- and, usually, people do it. There's a concrete, hour-by-hour reward (though often NOT pay-by-quality mechanics). It mostly works by punishment.
Games, by contrast, can't easily punish you for not playing. Many people will pay to play them, and sacrifice other activities. My D&D group keeps cancelling their other activities to play, and one is arguing with her boss so she can get sundays free for out weekly games. Games succeed brilliantly with their motivation structures.
I think at first I was mistaken to use WoW as a model for a study schedule. WoW rewards you for investment- not for accumulated ability. In the case of school specifically, you're rewarded mostly for ability and performance- with a lot of investment as well.
I think games like Warcraft 2/3, Starcraft, Quake Live, and other "skill" games might pose better models. I'm starting with Quake Live.
contracycle:
Well there is soimne research indicating that rewards don't really work. An experiment in the UK giving students money or what amounts to toys to study was abandoned after it nhad no discernable effect. I think that the "reward" structure that applies in most games is the ability to exert control over your own actions and to make your own decisions - precisely the experience we don't get in school or in work.
The problem with with happysmellyfish's argument is that you can rationalise any formm of compulsion that way. If you were mugged at knife-point you could choose to say that you voluntarily gave up your wallet rather than be stabbed, but I think most people would experience that as coercion. Much the same applies to most employment; you work or you starve, that's not exactly a free choice.
happysmellyfish:
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The problem with with happysmellyfish's argument is that you can rationalise any formm of compulsion that way. If you were mugged at knife-point you could choose to say that you voluntarily gave up your wallet rather than be stabbed, but I think most people would experience that as coercion. Much the same applies to most employment; you work or you starve, that's not exactly a free choice.
You're right, the whole argument rests on accepting existentialism's claims about free will. (For what it's worth, Sartre would just say "Stiff crap, you always have a choice. Stop making excuses.") But that's not really what I was bringing up. Rather, my point was that because games are so clearly disconnected from daily necessity, they are a rare moment to reassert ourselves as decision makers. I believe this sense of meaning-making is hugely rewarding in itself, and something missing from most work places.
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I think that the "reward" structure that applies in most games is the ability to exert control over your own actions and to make your own decisions - precisely the experience we don't get in school or in work.
You seem to be agreeing with me here.
On the whole "work as game" front, I can't help but feel our society is a little impoverished these days. We used to have a whole bunch of systems - apprenticeship, craft, masterpiece, tutelage - that made the process exciting and meaningful. They're just ideals, sure, and olden-day workplaces would have been hellish places. But the ideals still exist: as guides, treasures, everything they always were. It's a way to make work fulfilling.
I guess in practical terms, what I mean is you could possibly research old fashioned ideas about work, before we all became alienated from our labour. There might be some proven motivational tools there. At a guess, I'd say the master-apprentice relationship is super important.
contracycle:
Well, I'm agreeing with your second last paragraph, and disagreeing with everything else. And it is fair to say that there may be structures in pre-industrialised forms that play a more positive roll, although I would agree that you shouldn't get carried away with over-romanticising them.
I suppose what I was trying to say is that there is a big difference between doing something you really choose to do, and doing something becuase you have to do it. There is a much higher success rate in adult education than in school education, because adults who return to education usually do so with clear goals and personal motives, rather than experiencing school as an imposition over which they have no control and to which they do not actively consent.
So in this sense I agree that is worth bearing in mind the bigger picture, even if you struggling with something you are obliged to do here and now. But I just don't accept the rhetoric that everything and anything is a choice to which we consent; other humans are indeed capable of imposing compulsion, and for most of us that is the dominant experience of life and work, for which escapism serves as a substitute.
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