Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
McGonigal Chapters 7-8
I believe McGonigal's 3 main claims in her writings are:
1. Wholehearted Participation - McGonigal really stresses the importance of not just participation, but wholehearted participation. She defines this participation as, "to be self-motivated and self-directed, intensely interested, and genuinely enthusiastic," and that if you are not participating wholeheartedly in your own life, you're missing out on ways to be happy. I thought this was a really unique way to look at it. She uses the examples of Chore Wars, Quest for Learning, and SuperBetter to show how engaging in this "wholehearted participation" of the mundane aspects of your own everyday life can make a positive difference. She believes that ARGs can (should) help the players participate more fully in their own live, even if positive-impact isn't the ARGs main goal. Her comparison between ARGs being the "antiescapist" game, compared to traditional games being a way to escape from reality, also supports this claim. No one is playing Chore Wars to escape from the stress of their lives, but they are playing it because it's a fun way to participate wholeheartedly while trying to complete a mundane, everyday task.
2. Meaningful Rewards When We Need Them Most - McGonigal opens Chapter 8 by recalling an experience she had at a conference, where she mentioned that it would be nice to have a "leveling up" system in real life, the way characters can level up in games. She inspired someone to create a site that does just that; emailing people to let them know someone has given them a "+1" in some trait you exhibit, especially if it comes at the hand of doing an unpleasant task. She also uses her own personal experience as being a nervous flyer to make a case for why earning rewards can make a dreaded task more pleasant. She notes that when quantitative benchmarks are available for marking progress, the instant positive feedback encourages players to work harder, or take on the next biggest challenge. Nike+ is a great example of this. It's not an ARG in the way you would typically consider the definition of the game, but yet it has so many common characteristics. It encourages people to participate wholeheartedly in their exercise (a task many people dread), it provides an instant way to see the progress you've made and how far you have to go until you meet the next benchmark, and there is a community of other members who use Nike+ and compete in challenges together all over the world.
1. Wholehearted Participation - McGonigal really stresses the importance of not just participation, but wholehearted participation. She defines this participation as, "to be self-motivated and self-directed, intensely interested, and genuinely enthusiastic," and that if you are not participating wholeheartedly in your own life, you're missing out on ways to be happy. I thought this was a really unique way to look at it. She uses the examples of Chore Wars, Quest for Learning, and SuperBetter to show how engaging in this "wholehearted participation" of the mundane aspects of your own everyday life can make a positive difference. She believes that ARGs can (should) help the players participate more fully in their own live, even if positive-impact isn't the ARGs main goal. Her comparison between ARGs being the "antiescapist" game, compared to traditional games being a way to escape from reality, also supports this claim. No one is playing Chore Wars to escape from the stress of their lives, but they are playing it because it's a fun way to participate wholeheartedly while trying to complete a mundane, everyday task.
2. Meaningful Rewards When We Need Them Most - McGonigal opens Chapter 8 by recalling an experience she had at a conference, where she mentioned that it would be nice to have a "leveling up" system in real life, the way characters can level up in games. She inspired someone to create a site that does just that; emailing people to let them know someone has given them a "+1" in some trait you exhibit, especially if it comes at the hand of doing an unpleasant task. She also uses her own personal experience as being a nervous flyer to make a case for why earning rewards can make a dreaded task more pleasant. She notes that when quantitative benchmarks are available for marking progress, the instant positive feedback encourages players to work harder, or take on the next biggest challenge. Nike+ is a great example of this. It's not an ARG in the way you would typically consider the definition of the game, but yet it has so many common characteristics. It encourages people to participate wholeheartedly in their exercise (a task many people dread), it provides an instant way to see the progress you've made and how far you have to go until you meet the next benchmark, and there is a community of other members who use Nike+ and compete in challenges together all over the world.
Monday, March 3, 2014
CGTS Chapters 17-23
My Top Ten List from CGTS Chapters 17-23
1. Organization - One thing the book emphasized is that organization is key to the success of your story. It gave some really useful suggestions for organizational tools, such as creating a spreadsheet of character data, or a schedule of milestones you need to hit on the way to a deadline. These would be useful tools for our own group to use to keep our story organized.
2. Communication - I've learned firsthand already that communication is important when creating a transmedia narrative. When one member of the group doesn't participate, it makes it hard for the rest of the group and their story to progress. Communicating with my fellow group members is 100% necessary when working on our group projects, and contributing to the success of our story.
3. Realism in Web Design - I thought it was really interesting that the book suggested modeling your fictional websites from real ones. That was an idea I had never thought about before. I will definitely be taking a look at other psychic websites online, to get ideas for how my character's business website should look.
4. News Sections in Web Design - Our group story takes place in a sort of post apocalyptic world, and that setting is key to a number of important plot points. I think having a sort of news section would be a good world-building tool, so that readers can easily gain background information on the state of the world our characters live in. It's important to keep in mind the tips from the book, however, which say not to get bogged down by updating news and lose the plot of your story.
5. Using Twitter for Social Media - The book brings up a lot of points about how other social networks do not really approve of people making profiles for fictional characters. One social network it recommends to use is Twitter. I am already familiar with how this network works, and it would be very easy to create a realistic profile for my character. It's also an easily sharable way to communicate with the other characters through @ replies and retweets.
6. Sending Bulk Emails - One thing the book suggests is the sending of large batches of emails. It warns that there is a fine line between sending too many emails and not sending enough. Again, I think this would be cool to use within our story, but in combination with the Breaking News type section.
7. Physical Artifacts - The book suggests using physical objects to get people involved in your story. I think this is an awesome idea, and I agree that it helps people become connected to the story by having a tangible object. For our group story, one cool artifact we could easily create would be paper documents for someone who lives in the poor ghetto.
8. Quality Control - The book stresses the importance of quality control and double checking your work. I think this is extremely important, and often gets overlooked. Even the most interesting and fascinating plot will not attract readers if there are typos and other inconsistencies. Within our group, we will have to do quality control for each other to make sure our story meets our standards.
9. Automated Outbound Emails - The book talks about how automated outbound emails can be used to provide depth to your story, such as sending a code to someone who emails the correct password. I would really like to incorporate this into our story somehow because I think it's an interesting tool, but I am not sure how it would fit within our plot.
10. Video Production - The book also talked a lot about tips for video production, which I know we will be working on as a project for class. I thought it provided a lot of helpful information, such as making storyboards and taking framing into consideration. These will be things I keep in mind when we start to work on our character videos.
1. Organization - One thing the book emphasized is that organization is key to the success of your story. It gave some really useful suggestions for organizational tools, such as creating a spreadsheet of character data, or a schedule of milestones you need to hit on the way to a deadline. These would be useful tools for our own group to use to keep our story organized.
2. Communication - I've learned firsthand already that communication is important when creating a transmedia narrative. When one member of the group doesn't participate, it makes it hard for the rest of the group and their story to progress. Communicating with my fellow group members is 100% necessary when working on our group projects, and contributing to the success of our story.
3. Realism in Web Design - I thought it was really interesting that the book suggested modeling your fictional websites from real ones. That was an idea I had never thought about before. I will definitely be taking a look at other psychic websites online, to get ideas for how my character's business website should look.
4. News Sections in Web Design - Our group story takes place in a sort of post apocalyptic world, and that setting is key to a number of important plot points. I think having a sort of news section would be a good world-building tool, so that readers can easily gain background information on the state of the world our characters live in. It's important to keep in mind the tips from the book, however, which say not to get bogged down by updating news and lose the plot of your story.
5. Using Twitter for Social Media - The book brings up a lot of points about how other social networks do not really approve of people making profiles for fictional characters. One social network it recommends to use is Twitter. I am already familiar with how this network works, and it would be very easy to create a realistic profile for my character. It's also an easily sharable way to communicate with the other characters through @ replies and retweets.
6. Sending Bulk Emails - One thing the book suggests is the sending of large batches of emails. It warns that there is a fine line between sending too many emails and not sending enough. Again, I think this would be cool to use within our story, but in combination with the Breaking News type section.
7. Physical Artifacts - The book suggests using physical objects to get people involved in your story. I think this is an awesome idea, and I agree that it helps people become connected to the story by having a tangible object. For our group story, one cool artifact we could easily create would be paper documents for someone who lives in the poor ghetto.
8. Quality Control - The book stresses the importance of quality control and double checking your work. I think this is extremely important, and often gets overlooked. Even the most interesting and fascinating plot will not attract readers if there are typos and other inconsistencies. Within our group, we will have to do quality control for each other to make sure our story meets our standards.
9. Automated Outbound Emails - The book talks about how automated outbound emails can be used to provide depth to your story, such as sending a code to someone who emails the correct password. I would really like to incorporate this into our story somehow because I think it's an interesting tool, but I am not sure how it would fit within our plot.
10. Video Production - The book also talked a lot about tips for video production, which I know we will be working on as a project for class. I thought it provided a lot of helpful information, such as making storyboards and taking framing into consideration. These will be things I keep in mind when we start to work on our character videos.
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