Game designer
More and more game designers are trying to make players do things with much more meaning. And this group of designers is growing rapidly.
Just to give you an idea of who I am talking about, here are 3 presentations from people who are aware of this motivational power games contain and try to apply it to something further away from traditional games.
I first heard about this subject at the NLGD Festival of Games 2009 (read my highlights), where Jonathan Samel Baskin held a talk named ‘From Branded Games to Games as Brand’. He believed in the fact that games had stronger motivators than any other form of interactivity that is currently used by companies or brands. Trying to combine these two separate things would make it an incredibly strong brand.
But motivation is a dangerous thing, and I will tell you why.
Imagine life as a game, something like what the designers above me were trying to say. You would get +10 points for brushing your teeth, +50 points for wearing two different pairs of socks because you got an achievement from a socks company, and +25 points for picking a biological product at the supermarket instead of a ‘normal’ one. If this is how it has been going your whole life, points are basically telling you how much value objects have in your life. Or maybe even how much certain people are worth to you, as some friends of yours like to listen to metal music more often than others and thereby you do too, for which the record label gives you another +10 points each day you see them. What will points take over?
Moral. Empathy. You could name every single thing that makes us value aspects of life or that of others. If there is an old lady crossing the streets but she needs your help, would you help her if you would get no points for it? Why bother if it has no value? Intrinsic and extrinsic values meet. You wouldn’t know better.
Obviously, these are very extreme examples, but you can already see consequences of motivating people with rewards in various games. Would you help an old lady cross the street in GTA? I thought so.
So how likely is it that out future will look like a big game? Are these motivators a threat to our daily lives and how we interact with each other?