Fix 11-12

In the previous weeks, I have been reading the book by Jane McGonigal (2011) Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World and I have been applying it to the game that I have played now for the past few months, the Settlers Online.  In her book, McGonigal discusses the various "fixes" that are in both games and life, how games influence life, and how we use what we have learned in life in the games and what we have learned in games in life.

Fix 11: "A sustainable engagement economy: compared with games, reality is unsustainable.  The gratifications we get from playing games are an infinitely renewable resource" (McGonical, 2011 p. 244).  This means that as a player, you are getting something out of the game that real life doesn't often give you - rewards and a purpose.  Today I cleaned my house.  There was purpose in the fact that my house is less gross now and I didn't want bugs moving in because I keep putting off cleaning.  Later on, my "reward" for cleaning is that I can play a game.  I'm playing The Elder Scrolls Online, which is having another beta weekend to stress test the serves to get ready for the official launch.  In the game, I will do all sorts of little odd tasks with a character that I am invested in.  My husband also plays, and I have the same investment in his character.  I will go out of of my way or do specific tasks to get his character something that he needs.  McGonical (2011) writes that players become invested in the game world and the character, have long-term goals, and are rewarded (p. 245).  I am getting all of those things from the game. 

Fishing in The Elder Scrolls Online

My husband and I in The Elder Scrolls Online

 In the Settlers Online, fix 11 works to keep me as a player invested and involved in the game.  The game world offers continual tasks and maintenance that requires the player to keep coming back and investing time and energy into the world.  This is an attempt to keep players engaged and progessing forward.  Other things that the settlers does to create a good game world is to inspire a player to explore through treasure hunts and missions, to expand their world, and to collaborate with clans or other players to keep their world succeeding.  To create good game mechanics, the Settlers Online are given clear results.  As soon as a quest finishes, the player is rewarded with a series or XP, goods, or in-game currency.  The Settlers Online creates a good game community by providing a variety of chat boxes, including global, help, and clan, email options, and PMs to let players communicate for both fun and collaboration. 

Fix 12: "More epic wins: compared with games, reality is unambitious.  Games help us define awe-inspiring goals and tackle seemingly impossible social missions together" (McGonigal, 2011 p. 252).  Social participation of the masses is where social powers are harnessed instead of just intellect or human labor, such as adding closed-captioning or digitizing print media (McGonigal, 2011).  In the Settlers Online, my clan has a method that is a small scale of what McGonigal (2011) discusses on pages 253-254 where individuals send positive messages to children who need support as they take important exams worldwide.  My clan has a mentorship program where newbs are mentored by those who are further along in the game and have mastered it.  It is a much smaller scale, but something that provides social interaction and feeback that is personalized to help a player succeed. 

There are other gaming methods to help improve peoples lives on a large scale.  One site compiles them together, as well as like-minded individuals.  The site actually has my favorite PSA currently trending in the main window of what people are playing, "Dumb ways to die" which was intended to keep people acting smart and safe around trains.  It's actually really fun, goofy, and the music video is fantastic. 

Crowdsourcing
Never heard of it?  Not to worry.  Many people are unfamiliar with the concept of crowd-sourcing, or at least the term.  Basically, you are getting a crowd of people together to help you with a project or goal.  So, how does one go about crowd-sourcing?  You go to the place where there are billions of people connected, millions of whom have similar interests, passions, and ideals - the internet.

Crowdsourcing is kind of like a MMORPG, such as World of Warcraft (WOW) or the Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) according to McGonigal (2011 p. 229).  Crowdsourcing can provide a "good game world", "good game mechanics", and a "good game community" (McGonical, 2011 p. 229-230).  She goes on to use Wikipedia as an example of crowdsourcing, where the site effectively does all three things.

If you are unfamiliar with Wikipedia (hated by most educators, beloved by most students) it is an encyclopedia that allows individuals to create, edit, and contribute to pages.  I've even made a few pages of my own, such as this one about the Tom S. Cooperrider Kent Bog State Nature Preserve in Kent, Ohio.  I wrote the text, those are my pictures from a walk a few years ago now, and I am the primary contributor of that page.  There are in-pages on here, often authored by experts in the field or topic, and it is an amazing and invaluable resource that is accessible to anyone with internet access.  It is the kind of thing that I dreamed about as a kid reading through the encyclopedias that my mom and dad purchased one at a time from the grocery store.  The criticisms of Wikipedia and other similar sites is part of what makes it both feasible and amazing - the fact that anyone can contribute information.  Some pages are falsely edited, often religious or political figures are targeted.  Others are pranked with jokes.

Aside from information, crowdsourcing can have some very real, serious, and important applications.  These can range from the progression of science to search and rescue.  The government has realized the potential that people have to contribute when all working together, technology in hand.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has created a website and an app that allow individuals to report in information to help compile a database that helps disaster victims and rescuers/responders.  This is something that is applicable to both health and geography, the disciplines that my background is in.  Often, in times of serious disaster, such as hurricane Sandy or Katrina, universities are called upon to help manage GIS information or to create maps for rescuers/responders.  What roads are closed off?  What routes can the crews take?  What hazards are there for the people in the area and for rescuers/responders?  How was infrastructure systems impacted?  One previous problem was that there was no streaming data for this.  Satellite images only come in so often.  Although you can do a lot with that, some of what is happening on the surface might not be caught.  Crowdsourcing, where the individuals on the ground both disaster victims and rescue/responders can contribute.  A quick picture or a few lines of text can make a large difference in saving lives.

Hurricane Sandy was crowdsourced in New York through water samples and measurements collected by volunteers.  People can together who had an interest in the storm, the area, safety, or for a variety of other reasons.  They worked together to help create a picture of what was happening in that area.  Weather crowdsourcing is not uncommon.  I participate in a crowdsourcing group that contributes accurate measurements, photographs, and information to the local meteorologists at a Toledo news station.  The information shared by myself and other weather nerds can help during times of severe weather.  I'm a trained spotter, as are many other members of the group.  In addition to contributing information to the local station, we report to the National Weather Service who can issue watches or warnings based on what is seen at a specific location by a trained spotter.