Read Online Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal - Free Book Online
Authors: Jane McGonigal
Tags: General, Social Science, Computers, Essay/s, Technology & Engineering, Games, Social Aspects, Popular Culture, Video & Electronic, Games - Social aspects, Telecommunications
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favorite games. 12
Gamer addiction is a subject the industry takes seriously—it’s a frequent topic at industry conferences and on game developer forums: what causes gamer addiction, and how can you help your players avoid it? This might at first seem surprising: doesn’t the industry want gamers to spend more time (and money) playing games, not less? And it’s true: more gaming by more people is the primary goal of the industry. But the industry wants to create lifelong gamers : people who can balance their favorite games with full and active lives. And so we have what is perhaps the central dilemma of the game industry over the past thirty years: how to enable gamers to play more without diminishing their real lives. The industry knows that gamers crave flow and fiero—and the more game developers give it to them, the more time and money gamers will spend on their favorite games. But beyond a certain playing threshold—for most gamers, it seems to be somewhere around twenty hours a week—they start to wonder if they’re perhaps missing out on real life.
Technology journalist Clive Thompson has a name for this phenomenon: gamer regret . 13 And he’ll be the first to admit that he suffers from it as much as any other gamer. Thompson recalls checking his personal statistics one day—many games keep track of how many hours you’ve spent playing—and was shocked to see that he had clocked in thirty-six hours playing a single game in one week—as he described it, “a missing-time experience so vast one would normally require a UFO abduction to achieve it.” He found himself vacillating between pride in what he’d accomplished in the virtual game environment and wondering if all that hard work had really been worth it.
As Thompson writes: “The dirty secret of gamers is that we wrestle with this dilemma all the time. We’re often gripped by . . . a sudden, horrifying sense of emptiness when we muse on all the other things we could have done with our game time.” He admits: “The elation I feel when I finish a game is always slightly tinged with a worrisome sense of hollowness. Wouldn’t I have been better off doing something that was difficult and challenging and productive?”
This internal conflict plays out in discussion forums all over Web. The twin questions “How much time do you spend playing games?” and “How much time is too much?” are ubiquitous in the gaming community.
As a partial solution to gamer regret, many of the most addictive online games have implemented a “fatigue system.” These systems are most commonly used in online games in South Korea and China, where the rates of online gaming for young men can average up to forty hours a week. 14 After three hours of consecutive online play, gamers receive 50 percent fewer rewards (and half the fiero) for accomplishing the same amount of work. After five hours, it becomes impossible to earn any rewards. In the United States, a softer touch is more commonly employed: World of Warcraft players, for example, accumulate “resting bonuses” for every hour they spend not playing the game. When they log back in, their avatar can earn up to double rewards until it’s time to rest again.
But these measures are a stopgap at best. Trying to stop people from playing their favorite games will never work; motivated gamers hungry for flow and fiero will find a way around the restrictions and limitations. What’s needed instead is for games to go beyond flow and fiero, which make us happy in the moment, to provide a more lasting kind of emotional reward. We need games that make us happier even when we’re not playing. Only then will we find the right balance between playing our favorite games and making the most of our real lives.
Fortunately, that’s exactly what’s happening in the computer and video game market today. Games are increasingly teaching us the four secrets of how to make our own happiness—and they’re giving us the power
Gamer addiction is a subject the industry takes seriously—it’s a frequent topic at industry conferences and on game developer forums: what causes gamer addiction, and how can you help your players avoid it? This might at first seem surprising: doesn’t the industry want gamers to spend more time (and money) playing games, not less? And it’s true: more gaming by more people is the primary goal of the industry. But the industry wants to create lifelong gamers : people who can balance their favorite games with full and active lives. And so we have what is perhaps the central dilemma of the game industry over the past thirty years: how to enable gamers to play more without diminishing their real lives. The industry knows that gamers crave flow and fiero—and the more game developers give it to them, the more time and money gamers will spend on their favorite games. But beyond a certain playing threshold—for most gamers, it seems to be somewhere around twenty hours a week—they start to wonder if they’re perhaps missing out on real life.
Technology journalist Clive Thompson has a name for this phenomenon: gamer regret . 13 And he’ll be the first to admit that he suffers from it as much as any other gamer. Thompson recalls checking his personal statistics one day—many games keep track of how many hours you’ve spent playing—and was shocked to see that he had clocked in thirty-six hours playing a single game in one week—as he described it, “a missing-time experience so vast one would normally require a UFO abduction to achieve it.” He found himself vacillating between pride in what he’d accomplished in the virtual game environment and wondering if all that hard work had really been worth it.
As Thompson writes: “The dirty secret of gamers is that we wrestle with this dilemma all the time. We’re often gripped by . . . a sudden, horrifying sense of emptiness when we muse on all the other things we could have done with our game time.” He admits: “The elation I feel when I finish a game is always slightly tinged with a worrisome sense of hollowness. Wouldn’t I have been better off doing something that was difficult and challenging and productive?”
This internal conflict plays out in discussion forums all over Web. The twin questions “How much time do you spend playing games?” and “How much time is too much?” are ubiquitous in the gaming community.
As a partial solution to gamer regret, many of the most addictive online games have implemented a “fatigue system.” These systems are most commonly used in online games in South Korea and China, where the rates of online gaming for young men can average up to forty hours a week. 14 After three hours of consecutive online play, gamers receive 50 percent fewer rewards (and half the fiero) for accomplishing the same amount of work. After five hours, it becomes impossible to earn any rewards. In the United States, a softer touch is more commonly employed: World of Warcraft players, for example, accumulate “resting bonuses” for every hour they spend not playing the game. When they log back in, their avatar can earn up to double rewards until it’s time to rest again.
But these measures are a stopgap at best. Trying to stop people from playing their favorite games will never work; motivated gamers hungry for flow and fiero will find a way around the restrictions and limitations. What’s needed instead is for games to go beyond flow and fiero, which make us happy in the moment, to provide a more lasting kind of emotional reward. We need games that make us happier even when we’re not playing. Only then will we find the right balance between playing our favorite games and making the most of our real lives.
Fortunately, that’s exactly what’s happening in the computer and video game market today. Games are increasingly teaching us the four secrets of how to make our own happiness—and they’re giving us the power
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