Some very very provocative thoughts on the current crop of Facebook "games".
M -----Original Message----- Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2010 11:00 PM To: Michael Gurstein Subject: Farmville and the Protestant Reformation The value and role of hard work in Farmville. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Winston Wolff" <[email protected]> To: "Discussion of games addressing social issues" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 12:41 AM Subject: Re: [socialissuegames] An excellent critique of Farmville Nice points. One of the things Ralph Koster posits is that "the human brain enjoys eating tasty patters". It likes to develop a mental model of a phenomenon, and then exercise that model. When the mental model works, the brain produces positive feedback (endorphin rush) which is pleasurable. It would be the pleasure one gets from using one's finely honed skill at cooking or wood carving to produce a product "just so". I do think this could be harnessed to teach--if the same sense of reward was felt for solving math problems or programming problems for that matter. Winston Wolff Stratolab - Games for Learning tel: (646) 827-2242 web: www.stratolab.com On Apr 29, 2010, at 5:14 PM, William Huber wrote: > This generation of games generally removes the high-tension elements - > the ones that, according to theorists-of-fun like Raph Koster should > be the most appealing ones, and leaves (outside of simple tech-tree > mechanics) only the "grind." Why do people enjoy the grind, then? Why > do more people enjoy the grind than enjoy, say, high-tension, > high-frustration activities like raids in World of Warcraft or playing > "Through the Fire and Flames" on expert mode in Guitar Hero? > > I don't think that it's universally appealing, either historically or > demographically. But what I think the grind - the repetition of very > easy tasks for predictable rewards - offers is compensation. In the > United States, until the 1970s, and in Japan unti the 1990s, working > class and lower-middle class people had been generally persuaded that > with hard work - not with "innovation," not with constant > self-reinvention and re-training, not with "lateral promotions," but > with straightforward diligent work. What FarmVille offers is nostalgia > - not (just) for agrarian life, but for the valorization of an > uncomplicated work ethic. Games based on risk, on the possibility of a > public failure (who was it who described the two outcomes for a > successful social game as "win" and "win big"?) might be unpopular > among those for whom the specter of real-life failure is looming. So: > grind without risk, in a community setting. > > I do not see how this motivation could be harnessed to produce games > that challenge, teach or inspire. --- You are currently subscribed to socialissuegames as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [email protected] _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
