This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »
Do games really make a better world?
Does really games makes better world?
Topics:
better life gaming
TED Conversations
Sign In
To join or start a conversation, you'll need to sign in. Not a member? Register Now (it's free and fast).
Live Conversations
Live Conversations are hosted by TED speakers and TED Fellows. Ask your questions and participate in the discussions on the following dates and times:
timber maniac 20+
Wade Crum
On a more generalized note, I think games or any type of (play) is important for work/life balance. The key would be balance.
Alex L
I think your question is to general. There are specific games that could benefit are society but me spending 100+ hours on Elder Scroll isn't going to help the world.
I did really enjoy this talk though. it was a great one.
Rick Ryan 10+
1. Genre: They are many. An RPG (Role Playing Game) that is reality-based will be quite different than a pure Fantasy-based game. Yes, you can learn the same life-skills in both, but if you can't separate the fantasy from reality once you walk away from the game, then there may be a problem. FPS (First Person Shooter) games can teach you how to kill people effectively, and maybe you will learn coordination tactics and strategy, but what is the goal of the game? Kill as many people as possible. I think there are better ways to learn life-skills...but that said, some games that place you in a FPS environment can also teach good lessons too. There are FPS games that place the player in the role of say a soldier in WW2. The experiences in a game like that can teach you the horrors of war. Simulation games (flying, racing, etc) are a whole different genre, and can be used to develop real-world knowledge and skills.
2. Single player vs Multi-player: If I play a "game" on my computer by myself, then I am playing within the "world" limited by the software coding. Randomness may be part of the software, but it is still limited as to the variations available within the software. Go online however and start playing in an environment with 5000 other players, and things change drastically. True "Game Theory" comes into play then, as I have to deal with the decisions of other human players. Things get much more complex then...just like the everyday decision-making problems we face in the "real world". Groups form with their own agendas. Rational and irrational decisions are made. Greed may develop. Sounds a lot like real-life.
Are games good or bad? Depends on the game and what someone takes away from the gaming experience.
Ravi Chandran
Being in software field, i think i am able to understand clearly any given task and how it will impact the specified business process. i dont know if it is because of me playing games or not. but i know one thing, i get more opportunities to give my suggestions to my senior managers and mostly they agree with me and accept my solutions.
one side effect i do see is isolation on social level. i am anti social, to an extent.. not able to talk "normal" talks with people around me.. well, can't do anything about that though..
Lucy Armitage
And I definitely felt intrigued from what Jane says therefore I borrowed 'Reality is Broken' from my library.
Aftering watching the most recently uploaded talk on TED (The game that can give you 10 extra years of life) and reading the first few chapters from her book, I felt compelled to pick up my wii remote and start gaming again.
I haven't gamed properly since I was an early teen because I was (foolishly) influenced by people's pre-conceived ideas about gaming and especially females gaming. Actually I tell a lie, a couple of years ago, my boyfriend and I had a habit of playing Mario Kart online which is very fun!! Unfortunately we tuned out eventually because we felt more race car tracks needed to be introduced. Anyways... Back to the point!
My chosen game is Zelda: Twilight Princess on my Wii console.
I can only play it on my free days in the early morning and so far I have clocked up 19 hours. I can't believe the staggering difference it has made to my life in the past few weeks. I feel I am getting the mental stimulation and challenges that I crave. Figuring out the puzzles, achieving the tasks and goals, and in my normal tasks the music hums in my head if I do anything well. It's silly but it seems to make mundane tasks a bit more fun. I have started to do various hobbies again and accomplish more tasks in my day than I did before.
I am reading the book as well (not simultaneously) and it's extremely interesting. That's all I can report on my experience so far in response to Jane's inspiring talk but it would be great if other people gave it a go and see if they have noticed a change in their lives since gaming themselves.
After giving gaming a proper chance, reading books and various articles, and experimenting myself. If it can effect one person in a positive way it surely must make a better world
Matthew Logie
I actually think they have a lot of potential in influencing the way education is structured. When learning something new, we very quickly forget it unless we go over it again soon after and continue to use it regularly. Think of a good tutorial for a game that takes you through how to do things and you then use that knowledge to play through the game. If you go back to a game that you have done this with you will very rapidly be able to remember what to do, just like riding a bike.
If we then think of education where you have the 'tutorial' the period of learning then a large gap and then a test to see if you can remember what you did months ago. This is an inefficient way to try and learn something. Imagine the idea of levelling up a skill and use it for school or university subjects. Learn something then immediately do a test, then go over what you missed and do another test and so on. Divide the subject up into a lot of small incremental levels, and you go up one level once you get 100% in that specific test. Your 'level' can then be your mark for the course.
You can also occasionally have an event where you have groups of students and they work together to overcome a task such as a maths problem or create a story or work of art etc. They are working together realising what they are good at, they can start to specialise in a 'role'.
This ended up longer than i had intended but i am starting to feel like this should be put into practice.
Elizabeth Gu 30+
But it depends on the quality of games.
I see so many young kids are playing games these days, and getting addicted to the games.
Some games are too addictive and have bad effects on children.
What do you think?
Cyler Sullivan
Debra Smith 200+
http://youtu.be/2Ax-deW6c60
john cupcake
Mats Kaarbö 10+
Scott Koenraadt
Kevin Jacobson
Jonathan Gronli
Sebastian Helenius
J Glines
Cyler Sullivan
flexman feng
Sebastian Helenius
At least I didn't play too much Grand Theft Auto...
EDIT - don't play Civilization while on acid.
choi jisu
Jonathan Gronli
For example, the Ultima games got people thinking not only about storytelling but also issues of morality. For specific examples, Ultima IV-VIII. Each of the games covers the building of a religion based off of virtues and the corruption of the virtues and the religion itself through politics. They even asked whether morality was a universal standard that pretty much never changes or if morality was in a constant state of change from culture to culture, case to case, and even person to person.
It's all a matter of fostering critical thinking skills in the students so that they can figure out how these things work. A rather funny point as some politicians in America, usually the Republicans (actually I think it was the Texas GOP that "accidently" did this for the Texas GOP), added the ending of teaching critical thinking skills to their platform.
Cyler Sullivan
Jonathan Gronli
As for reading, yeah. Pretty much the same thing. Gaming taught me to read and got me thinking about things that I didn't even need to think about until I got into either college or grad school. Hell, just in terms of reading, because of gaming teaching me to read as well as I did, I'd already been reading things that my teachers didn't need to read until grad school while I was in 6th grade.
Amr Salah
Most games (songs and movies etc), if not all, are no more than lies and illusions. Games do not help improve the society. Nowadays, the game industry is 'mainly' using the worst practices and approaches possible to make as much money as possible while offering people nothing of real value. I think the game industry should be seriously more regulated and some companies should be sued.
Very few games may be excluded from that, including games that are educational or have real life goals, like some simulators of environments and situations that are normally very hard or impossible to experience. Also 'games' as in physical sports and competitions are good.
(Perhaps I should admit that I'm guilty of wasting much of my 'lifetime' on games when I was younger and that's one thing I deeply regret.)
flexman feng
Max Gutapfel
Many games have a philosophical edge, or get us dreaming about a diffrent world.
Thats not necessarily bad!
Also realize that some of the most competetive games out there require you to achieve (mental) skills which through ordinary "sports" you wouldnt have a chance to grasp. Look for example at starcraft, a strategygame.
You think off tactics, counters, you play around, search for exploits of the system, you see a strategy your unable to grasp and you recreate what happened. yet ofcourse in a kinda limited sphere but its enough to teach our brain efficient ways of thinking, and processing data.
Nothing in our brain is specific as we go we automatically rely on skills weve learned before.
Another example is minecraft a game in which everyone can outlive his creativity, heck theres even electronics in the game... and people actually started building computers inside a game and learned how circuits work, invented machines (yup inside a game... but thats better then inside the box right ;o) ).
Ofcourse there are games which really dont require you to do anything you cant allready do and which are pure entertainment. But they aint all that bad, you can create action movies and you can create philosohical movies. You can even create those retarded lovestorys which noone seems to think off as bad.
Its same with games, dont judge them if you dont know whats out there!
There even are alot of "puzzlegames" out there which have quite some popularity are puzzles / quizzes bad now because they are built upon the same concept?
Amr Salah
=====
Well, perhaps I played games for the wrong reasons.
I played strategy games for challenging situations that were not real. I played rpg games for stories that never happened. To be honest, I usually played when I was upset or a little depressed just as an escape from reality. It was no better than staring at colorful dots instead of dealing with problems.
Most games are not designed to develop skills. They're just made so that game companies would get richer and gamers would lose their time. The wheel keeps turning as the companies find new victims to their trade. The moment one plays a game or watches a movie, one is simply letting himself be deceived. The worst thing is that all this is disconnected from reality, keeping one away from nature and the rules that govern it.
Cyler Sullivan
C Medansky
Max Gutapfel
Besides there are so many video guides/tutorials online, that we dont even need direct interaction inorder to understand a game.
About the other things however i have to agree mostly.
Luis Javier Salvador 30+
Barry Palmer 50+
Check out the world peace game:
http://www.ted.com/talks/john_hunter_on_the_world_peace_game.html
As for computer games, one day they will make the world better, given enough decades.
Computers and computer games are in their infancy. The games will evolve and eventually teach us lessons we would never learn without them. I believe that computer gaming will introduce an entirely new paradigm of human experience. The combination of computer players with human players scattered around the world is completely outside our prior experience, and its potential is only beginning to be explored. As a very simple example, imagine a game in which the score is based on your moral decisions.
Sebastian Helenius
Barry Palmer 50+
It was just an example. I have no plans to develop any games myself.
Marina Frangioni
Cher Calusa
Cyler Sullivan
Henry Maldonado
I think of something like chess in this regard. Has chess improved the world since its inception? I cannot really write yes. Sure, it provides better understanding in strategic actions but it does not replace human relationships.
Fritzie Reisner 100+
Henry Maldonado
Cyler Sullivan
Fritzie Reisner 100+
Barry Palmer 50+
Here is one that many people never think of when they contemplate chess:
When you first learn chess, you cannot help but learn the vast difference between the ideal and the real. When playing chess, each player has perfect information; absolutely nothing is hidden. In the real world, most of the information that can affect your decisions is purposefully hidden or unavailable. Contrasting these situations gives you a much better understanding of the real world. You learn that you cannot make decisions about the real world in the same way that you make decisions about chess moves. You must factor in risk, and the cost of obtaining more and/or better information.
You also learn that even if you have perfect information, this does not necessarily lead to the best decision. Just sitting at a chess board and playing both sides by yourself, you can learn humility in the face of complexity. And compared to real life, chess is just a simple game.
Jay Kumar Pradhan
Kevin Holbrook
I do it for the entertainment that can be found within a game. The possibility that games can be more than just killing, without the bore of educational games.
It is not exploitation to make a product fun that people want to use over and over. Rewarding someone for something they do is a well known way of making people enjoy what they are doing. Not just games do this, every large company in the world does this. Some use it for bad, but overall it's just entertainment.
In response to 'Misuse of technology', thats laughable. It's because of games, and movies that computer companies are constantly striving to make technology better. We need faster computers, we need more power and smaller size, we wouldnt have smarthphones and powerful computers if it were not for the advancements in the computer game and film industries.
Miguel Barcelo
Jonathan Gronli
Jonathan Gronli
As for your educating yourself about game development, I'm actually doing a similar thing with a group of friends. For me game development isn't about the possible money. It's about the possible stories that can be told.
Cyler Sullivan
Cyler Sullivan
Sia Jeong
Like th e video i've seen that Jane come out and started to explain why games are good,
the games makes ous to do our work more and more happly and fun.
For example, I can't do any work, than I can play a game and started to do lots of work. It's l
It/s like playing a game.
Jane told us these cool things abour games.
I think games really make better world :)
Vijay surana
Fritzie Reisner 100+
There has surely been research on this question, but individual experiences are also relevant as long as we don't assume what's true for any of us is true in general.
If we consider games more broadly than just computer games, it is interesting that games have played a role over thousands of years across cultures. This circumstance suggests that games has tended across time and place to improve the quality of life for some people.
Debra Smith 200+
If there is one thing i hate more it is the idea that violence is part of hockey- who made that up and why does it fly?
James Zhang 30+
In basketball for example, players drive to the basket not to actually try to score, but to try and draw fouls so that they can take free throws. Their chances of scoring aren't that great but their chances of getting free throws are high. While most people argue, this is simply part of the game, to me it was still just taking advantage of a particular rule in the game and using it to their advantage.
There's another strategy called "Hack-a-Shaq" where a player will simply foul another guy on purpose to get them to the free throw line. They do this because the guy getting the free throws suck at them lol. Shaq, one of the most dominant centers ever to play the game, was a victim of this hilariously effective strategy, because he was one of the worst free throw shooters ever lol
Debra Smith 200+
D
James Zhang 30+
These are just my observations anyways, from almost all competitive games I see. Competitive games, the ones where you gotta beat the opponent through offense/defense, is a lot like rock paper scissors, and a lot about "supply and demand".
Basically a game starts off simple, it has simple rules. The game is very new itself and there's a lot of exploring and people have fun. When people play competitively, they want to win. So when they want to win, they may start studying what's good/bad, and eventually one guy discovers a particularly effective strategy that is hard to counter. Now, this guy with the new strategy starts winning like crazy and hardly anyone can stop him. So when people see what the guy has done, they copy his strategy because they know it works somehow. This is what gamers call the new metagame, which is the popular use of specific strategies (my definition lol). So now people are complaining how cheap this strategy is and how it has ruined the game. This is when the rules need to adjust to this new metagame, or someone else needs to develop a new strategy to counter it. When someone finds a particularly effective counter to the current popular strategy, that becomes the new metagame.
While I think people do come up with some really dirty tactics, some other tactics make the game interesting and complex. Like in baseball, the concept of bunting was probably non-existent in the beginning of the sport, but it added a new dimension/complexity to the game that makes it more interesting.
Metagames also change because new players may come into the scene that brings a new presence/strategy that can change the playing field. Or some rule changes may also cause people to find newer loopholes and strategies. In Basketball, defense nowadays focus more on trying not to get fouled and also making your opponents take uncomfortable shots. I think defense was a lot rougher in the 80s or 90s, and people trashtalk way more.
Debra Smith 200+
Thanks again, James.
James Zhang 30+
I didn't know you played basketball, that's cool! Hmm, could it be that you were also good at rebounding and have long arms proportional to your height? I'm just guessing here...
The other girl sounds really funny lol