[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 73, Issue 8

[Alex Gibson]

Long time lurker, first time poster, great list thank you to all the
contributers. Also thank you for last months discussion on China, I arrived
in Beijing on an artists residency (Nov-Mar), just as the China discussion
was getting started, and thoroughly enjoyed the information, insights and
meditations about Chinese new media arts practices and its various contexts.

Back to games:

A buzz word being thrown around in Silicon Valley (rather amusingly) is
'gamification' [1]:
"The popularity of video games and the explosion of social networking are
intersecting to redefine how we will experience the Web over the next
decade."

The attempt to create subjects and identities that are 'socially engineered'
[sic] by developing game goals, strategies and incentives reeks of the
profit motive. This is particularly unnerving when considering that the main
function of many of the most popular social networking sites, funded by so
called 'angel investors', is to make money through advertising (ie//
facebook.com).

The buzz around 'gamification', I would suggest, is more about using a key
function of games; that is to limit and persuade the decisions of the end
user so that the system may better serve the interests of the social network
and its stakeholders. Perhaps this phenomena will be more common in other
new mass-media; microblogging, wikis, etc. Of course, games serve more
functions than to persuade the end-user, but this in particular demonstrates
the persuasive power of games to control behaviour, a power that is not only
being deployed for entertainment, but also for control and profit on a large
scale.

This post perhaps is a diversion from the main topic, but I think it
illustrates an interesting tangent of how games are being deployed and
exploited in other domains.

[1] http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_16401223?nclick_check=1

Kind Regards,
Alex Gibson
www.alexgibson.com.au
http://tuanjiespace.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20101210/251e0443/attachment.html>