Game designer and CMU ETC professor Jesse Schell gave this creative and mesmerizing talk at DICE 2010 that you pretty much need to watch. He starts with the unexpected success of Facebook games, the Wii and Webkins; segues into describing the ways that games are reaching out into the physical world; and moves on to observations about game mechanisms appearing in everything from TV shows to cars. Finally, he launches into a wild extrapolation of what happens when every aspect of the world is instrumented and every action you take in your life has gameplay elements and scoring mechanisms. It’s a vision that’s more than a little dystopian, kind of like the panopticon with points, but I think you’ll find it bracing and thought provoking. Â Watch for the sly iPad joke around 17:00 ;-)
+1 Knowledge Sharing to @mikeliebhold and @avantgame for pointing this out!
Tags: DICE, games, Jesse Schell
The video is worth watching, and convinces me that these annoying loyalty programs will continue to grow and evolve. But I think that many people won’t want their cereal box looking at them while they eat breakfast and then communicating wirelessly back to General Mills.
I’ll personally opt out of most of the stuff described in the video, because I’d rather pay a little more and not have my every move tracked by corporations. I just hope there are enough people like me so that this option remains available. I resent having to pay more to not have my shopping habits tracked, so I choose my grocery stores because they don’t have loyalty cards. Then again, I do like Amazon (but there I’m paying less and having my shopping habits tracked).