I dunno if it's the growing influence of the interactive portion of SXSW, but gamification was in the news recently. An article entitled I Don't Want to Be a Superhero focuses on the dubious consequences of turning real life into games, including late-stage capitalist exploitation and disassociation from the real. This video from Extra Credits spins the transformation of life into play more positively though without being blind to the negative side.
There are lots of heady issues swirling about in this topic: hyperreality & simulation, late stage capitalist exploitation, depersonalization and anomie... A few brief thoughts. These don't have the benefit of a lot of reflection but this is certainly a very engaging topic.
On the positive side, if a gamified world could get kids to be more engaged in learning and people generally more engaged in their community, there's the potential for a lot of good with these cybernetic strategies. But their vulnerability to manipulation for nefarious purposes, such as spending real cash for digital ephemera or in lieu of just and fair compensation, makes me hesitant to send out the parades. Also, if we need the overlay of a game get necessary tasks like housecleaning done or make work bearable, doesn't they imply a more complex question about our relationship to work and life than how to incentivize people to motivate them to accomplish their tasks?
Why do we need a game to get us to call our friends and family? Why do we need the overlay of play to maintain social bonds? To motivate us to work? Is this simply extending behaviorist theories to all aspects of life in order to engineer society? Is there something wrong with that?
Today I was directed to take implicit associations tests. While doing so, I noticed two things. First, the "test" was more or less your basic quick time event that modern video games are quite fond of. The basic conceit of the study is using the errors you make sorting items into two columns to imply an unconscious / subconscious association. The columns are defined by two terms (black-white, good-bad) and the pairings switch as the test goes through (black and good, white and bad becomes black and bad, white and good). At least some criticism of the "results" of this test point to the conjunction of sorting and reflex tasks instead of racial basis as the cause of the "errors."
The second was the possibility of programming and "re-education" through the use of such tools. While it wouldn't have to be as extreme as A Clockwork Orange, I imagined getting a mild shock every time I failed to sort "correctly" instead of just the little red "X" letting me know I made an error. Inculcating social attitudes through "games"? I wouldn't want to get the "Recalcitrant" badge. Or would I?
Youtube won't let me embed the re-education clip from A Clockwork Orange here so you'll have to click over to enjoy it. RIP Stanley Kubrick.
Need to hook up my Kinect so I can earn some achievements on Your Shape and Active 2... oh, and maybe improve my health.
Showing posts with label Extra Credits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Extra Credits. Show all posts
Friday, April 1, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
I don't get it...
Apparently there's a new meme circulating in certain corners of the internet; the geeky, video-game obsessed corners. The trailer for Dead Island has become the gold standard for "difficult to watch" clips.
This week's episode of The Escapist's webseries Extra Credits criticizes EA's recent marketing campaigns as not advancing the image of video games as more than mere "kids play" or for adult men amidst arrested development. After taking EA to task for its recent marketing flubs and not living up to its initial promises to be a company dedicated to "electronic artists" pushing the boundaries of computer interaction, the episode wraps up by saying "There. Now the Dead Island trailer isn't the most depressing thing you've seen this week."
A forum reply to the trailer for We Dare, a new Wii title collecting "adult themed" minigames (but only rated for 12 and up for "mild sexual references), described the game's ad as "almost more painful to sit through then [sic] the Dead Island trailer."
What I haven't quite ferreted out yet is whether these and similar comments are aimed at the style of the video itself, with its slow motion cuts and reverse chronological ordering all Memento style, or its substance, more or less tracing the death arc of a young girl on a tropical vacation with her parents. Are they art crit comments or sympathetic hearts? Or both? I guess only time will tell as this meme develops. Just ask Antoine Dodson. Until next time... stay double rainbow.
Here's the official Dead Island trailer.
Here's the Backwards-Forwards trailer. It reassembles the Dead Island trailer into roughly chronological order.
Here's the so-called LITERAL* trailer. In bad taste? You make the call!
* literal is another internet meme in which people sing about quite literally what's going on onscreen. I first became aware of it in the context of the Total Eclipse of the Heart video. This may or may not have any relation to the MadTV sketch seen [HERE] and [HERE] and [HERE].
This week's episode of The Escapist's webseries Extra Credits criticizes EA's recent marketing campaigns as not advancing the image of video games as more than mere "kids play" or for adult men amidst arrested development. After taking EA to task for its recent marketing flubs and not living up to its initial promises to be a company dedicated to "electronic artists" pushing the boundaries of computer interaction, the episode wraps up by saying "There. Now the Dead Island trailer isn't the most depressing thing you've seen this week."
A forum reply to the trailer for We Dare, a new Wii title collecting "adult themed" minigames (but only rated for 12 and up for "mild sexual references), described the game's ad as "almost more painful to sit through then [sic] the Dead Island trailer."
What I haven't quite ferreted out yet is whether these and similar comments are aimed at the style of the video itself, with its slow motion cuts and reverse chronological ordering all Memento style, or its substance, more or less tracing the death arc of a young girl on a tropical vacation with her parents. Are they art crit comments or sympathetic hearts? Or both? I guess only time will tell as this meme develops. Just ask Antoine Dodson. Until next time... stay double rainbow.
Here's the official Dead Island trailer.
Here's the Backwards-Forwards trailer. It reassembles the Dead Island trailer into roughly chronological order.
Here's the so-called LITERAL* trailer. In bad taste? You make the call!
* literal is another internet meme in which people sing about quite literally what's going on onscreen. I first became aware of it in the context of the Total Eclipse of the Heart video. This may or may not have any relation to the MadTV sketch seen [HERE] and [HERE] and [HERE].
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