The Jesse Schell presentation on bringing gaming into everyday life was quite interesting and somewhat eye-opening. I especially enjoyed his example of fantasy football being a proving point to what he was going to discuss about how easily people become attached to games, which can be as simple or meaningless as fantasy football yet they still continue to play them for nothing but satisfaction. I personally am a big fantasy football fan and this video really made me realize how easily most people are satisfied by something that really has no direct effect on them. I believe that all of the concepts he presents are plausible based on the simple idea of people finding the smallest things/rewards to satisfy themselves. However, I do believe that some of the concepts he presents are much less plausible than others, such as the REMtertainment System which essentially reads your dreams and rewards the dreamer for specific things that they may dream about. I believe that this idea is a plausible idea however implausible because there are better ways or directions in which our research and development in technology should be headed. I do believe that many concepts similar to Schell’s point-system based advertising will eventually make their way into our lives. It is only a matter of time.
Gaming, Living Screens and Educating Communities
I think that the Blinkenlights idea of allowing the viewers and community interactive directly with the “board” may be something that would best in connecting a community and even educating us. For instance, think of the iconic news ticker in Times Square that informs the passerbys with important news stories. If this kind of idea were to allow interaction of the community to post stories, warnings or notes this could be an interesting way of educating the public. I think of the times that I see or hear a bunch of sirens and immediately go to Twitter and type into the search bar where I believe they are headed to or even are. Another instance in which I go to Twitter first is when the CTA is delayed without any notice. I have discovered this is the best way to find out what is going on on the tracks when the CTA website normally doesn’t have this information posted. The reason I go to Twitter first is because it only takes a few seconds for someone in the area of whatever is happening to tweet about the situation, whereas it normally takes a news station or website a few minutes or even hours to say what is going on. Therefore, if there were a way that this news ticker would use specific web word searches to find up-to-the-minute information or even allow the public to send their up-to-the-minute information to this ticker would be an interesting way of informing the public of what is going on.
Gaming could factor into this by having a point-system such as those that Jesse Schell presents. The points would be based on you providing helpful information to public through this screen. The more important the information the more points. Also, as you gain more points you would “level up” and as the information is shown next to it, would be some sort of way to show the viewer how reliable this information might be. Similar to eBay’s Seller Feedback feature, which shows the buyer how reliable this seller is based on feedback of their previous customers. This would then give people the motivation to give real information and become the best “information-giver” out there.