How To Break Anything

The following is a collection of research and insights that point to how games are at least as valuable as reality.

A year ago, games researcher Jane McGonigal developed SuperBetter as a game-based method for recovering from the traumatic brain injury she was suffering from at the time, and has now announced the upcoming launch of a Kickstarter project aimed at funding a published game guide. In the 5-minute video below (and in a longer TED talk here) she gives her take on how games can change behavior and the world.

Jane’s thesis challenges our notion of what it means to play a “game.” A glance at traditional definitions of “game” will lead the reader to notions of a game as an abstraction of reality (and therefore less valuable than reality) or a mere form of entertainment: games are what children play, reality is what adults engage in.

Jane argues that it is in fact this very abstraction from reality that makes games valuable. Games can provide an environment where:

• difficult things are possible, encouraging optimism
• things are naturally interesting, provoking curiosity
• players have a sense of agency, providing motivation
• actions are immediately meaningful, inspiring awe and wonder
• there are plenty of collaborators ready to tackle complex tasks along with the player, as in MMORPGs, fostering trust and cooperation

In her other works, Jane goes on to describe how games are in fact developing important skills within societies (and have been, since the advent of dice) - skills that will be critical to overcoming global challenges facing humanity.

Games as design for the better

Jane’s charge is in opposition to the idea that reality is the only proper training ground for developing these skills. The primary difference invoked between games and reality is that games are narrated by a designer, while real life is complex and unscripted. Other opponents to the rise of gaming often point to the value of the classroom.

As for the narration issue, it’s worth noting that to the extent that games are designed and “less than real,” so too is the professor’s lecture. Both can be well designed, constructed for efficiently challenging others towards real learning. Alternatively, either can be a mind-dulling exercise built to captivate people just long enough to accomplish some short-term goal – beating the game or passing a test – doing nothing for long-term or valuable learning.

In a discussion of how to build systems for understanding the impact of pollution and CO2, professor and game programmer Greg Niemeyer of UC Berkeley talks about the critical difference between telling someone something important – however critical it is – and having them experience the meaning behind it themselves. Games provide an means through which difficult environments can be more directly experienced in this way.

On the inherent value of reality

It’s also worth considering the inclination to view reality as a value in itself. This is sometimes based on the complexity of reality as the source of it’s value, as noted above. Kevin Slavin of the game design firm Area/Code has noted that it is again abstraction of reality from complexity to simplicity that shows the value games have, by isolating key concepts. The value of virtual currencies in games like Farmville (”who would pay $1 for a sheep that doesn’t even exist?” is the question often asked) helps illustrate the strong social component of the things people actually value – something doesn’t necessarily need to be tangible and ‘real’ to be valuable.

More often than not, though, the argument is simply “reality is just better – period.” Psychologist Joanna Starek studies the nature of self-deception, and takes issue with the absolute value of reality, most notably in a Radiolab episode on deception. She primarily studies athletes, finding a relationship between those who are able to perform better than others who are their physiological equals, and their ability to better abstract themselves from reality (as measured by Sackeim & Gur’s classic self-deception test) - in this case, the measurable physiological reality of their ability to perform. In short, the athletes who recognize the reality of potentially over-exerting themselves fall short of their physiological equals – “reality” does not necessarily translate to “better.”

As we see increasingly more innovators abandon the traditional conception of “games” as subordinate to “reality,” we will see more developments encouraging behavior change for the better through the values McGonigal points to above. These will range from the Epic Win to-do application with individual-level implications to IBM’s CityOne Smarter Planet game with global-scale implications.

The above talk is by Cameron Herold, titled "Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs." Like most I find the entrepreneurial spirit valuable and inspiring.

Though, watching the above actually left me with the following idea: what all entrepreneurs are good at is taking advantage of opportunity. But almost no entrepreneurs are good at taking advantage of opportunity to do anything besides make money.

A rare few people know how to take advantage of opportunity as a means to do something valuable. It requires being comfortable with seeing feedback from one's actions not in immediate "if, then" terms, but in nebulous, extended terms. This is in direct opposition to the comfort of seeing feedback from one's actions immediately and being able to immediately draw causal inferences from them. It requires an understanding of long-term value. These are not skills that are natural for humans, thus they are not skills that most people have. It's an idea that's been sitting on my mind lately, something that seems appropriate to share now having just run into the following:

"The people who run our cities don’t understand graffiti bc they think nothing has the right to exist unless it makes a profit." -Banksy

Some people truly argue that that short-term gain - immediate return - is the only real measure of value. What an unfortunate perspective to have developed. 

Nadia is an aesthetics inference camera developed by Andrew Kupresanin and has the ability to infer the quality of the photo before shooting it and send it to the photographer as a feedback. The camera doesn’t have a display, but constantly sends updated messages about the aesthetic quality of the image as the photographer moves the camera around the object to be captured, helping  judge when to snap the photo.

Last June, Chris Anderson of the book Free: The Future of a Radical Price spoke at the RSA (video here) with notions that on a surface level seemed like an exploration of "free" but were in fact an exploration of value. An exploration of 'quality' is captured in paraphrase below, taken from Chris' response to a comment on how the impossible triumvirate of "free, perfect, and now" (the old maxim being that you can have only two) reflect the desire for cost, quality and time:

"Perfect is one of those words that I'm not so sure what it means anymore. I struggle with semantics - the word 'free' has changed, semantically. The same with words like 'news.' It used to that news meant content created by professional journalists. Now it's something that is relevant and worth repeating. And now you have this word 'quality.' I tell this story in the book: my children are allowed two hours of screen time per weekend. One weekend we said to them that for this weekend's two hours you can have two hours of Star Wars. You can either have two hours of Star Wars DVDs - upscale, high production, surround sound, big screen, and popcorn. Or, you can go on YouTube, and watch Star Wars videos created by 7-year-olds of stop motion animation with Lego figures. And instantly they're like: YOUTUBE. They didn't hesitate for a moment. If you look at these videos created by 7-year-olds you would say that the quality, by standards of Hollywood definition, is not good. They put their fingers in the screen. The lighting is not great. The voiceovers are exactly what you would expect from 7-year-olds. So it fails every traditional definition of quality - except for one, which is relevance. That it is exactly what those kids wanted. And in fact it's not even the quality of the story that George Lucas created that's a factor here - they would actually much rather watch toy soldier animations made by 7-year-olds instead of Star Wars animations. I say all this because I don't know what quality means anymore."

Any given goal that I have tends to require an enormous amount of "administrative support" in the form of homeostasis, chores, transportation, and relationship maintenance. I estimate that the ratio may be as high as 7:1 in favor of what my conscious mind experiences as administrative bullshit, even for relatively simple tasks.

For example, suppose I want to go kayaking with friends. My desire to go kayaking is not strong enough to override my desire for food, water, or comfortable clothing, so I will usually make sure to acquire and pack enough of these things to keep me in good supply while I'm out and about. I might be out of snack bars, so I bike to the store to get more. Some of the clothing I want is probably dirty, so I have to clean it. I have to drive to the nearest river; this means I have to book a Zipcar and walk to the Zipcar first. If I didn't rent, I'd have to spend some time on car maintenance. When I get to the river, I have to rent a kayak; again, if I didn't rent, I'd have to spend some time loading and unloading and cleaning the kayak. After I wait in line and rent the kayak, I have to ride upstream in a bus to get to the drop-off point.

Of course, I don't want to go alone; I want to go with friends. So I have to call or e-mail people till I find someone who likes kayaking and has some free time that matches up with mine and isn't on crutches or sick at the moment. Knowing who likes kayaking and who has free time when -- or at least knowing it well enough to do an intelligent search that doesn't take all day -- requires checking in with lots of acquaintances on a regular basis to see how they're doing.

There are certainly moments of pleasure involved in all of these tasks; clean water tastes good; it feels nice to check in on a friend's health; there might be a pretty view from the bumpy bus ride upstream. But what I wanted to do, mostly, was go kayaking with friends. It might take me 4-7 hours to get ready to kayak for 1-2 hours.

My take on the challenge here is that the above advocates a method of assigning value to actions based on the causal relationship between performing it and the direct impact of that action on the desired goal. To simplify, I'll reference the above elements as processes of 1) assigning value to individual actions based on causal relationships, and 2) determining a causal relationship between performing an action and its direct impact on the world.

An important related implication of the above is that something being profitable doesn't necessarily mean it is valuable, either. In an excerpt from the post "Payola," Seth captures these ideas below:

The New York Times bestseller list is even more easily manipulated than Billboard ever was. It doesn't cost much to scam it and it's pretty straightforward to buy your way onto the list (I know authors who have done this and consultants who sell this service.) You can hire a bunch of old ladies who will go into the 'right' stores and buy books on the right day. As a result of this distortion, the books on the list get more promoted, and thus sell more copies. It's not pretty but it's true.

Certainly, there is in fact a kind of value that both popularity and profitability can measure. I see these as indicators of something being what I call "business-valuable," and I include them on the right side of what I'm calling a paradox in the image above.  

From Seth's excerpt above I can't help but be reminded about SEO and any number of other strategies that I generally think of as "putting business-valuable before wisdom/long-term valuable." It's easy to look at the first and notice that it is in fact a kind of value, without considering the other (I argue more important) kinds of value in the world.

Behavioral economists and psychologists have long been discussing the cognitive implications that naturally come with the abstraction of currencies. Cash is a more abstract form of exchanging value than physical barter/trade, and the credit card is an even more abstract form of exchange than cash. Generally speaking, the more abstract the exchange, the less cognitive impact it has on our long-term thinking and decision-making – often with negative results, as indicated by the rates of credit card debt in the US and elsewhere. As we move into virtual currencies where value is increasing exchanged via SMS, mouse click, or natural gesture motion, many design and cognitive thinkers are expressing their concern about the implications of these even more abstract methods of exchange.

The Proverbial Wallet series of concepts have these thoughts in mind, developed by a tangible interaction team at the MIT Media Lab. These concept wallets incorporate elements of physical and social feedback into the act of spending, bringing a level of cognitive impact back into the purchase process. Each gives a nod to the principles of at-a-glance information and immediate feedback, and their importance in giving people the tools to make better decisions. See below for the team’s description of these concepts:

Peacock: The wallet appears to grow and shrink using a servo to reflect the balance in your accounts. Your assets will be on display to attract potential mates.

Mother Bear: The wallet protects the money within it when you need to be thrifty with a shorted motor in the hinge that resists opening. It promotes saving to weather out financial winters.

Bumblebee: The wallet buzzes through a vibrator motor whenever your bank processes a transaction. This encourages a conscious connection between handing over your credit card and your hard-earned money being harvested from the bank, and alerts you to fraud when you get a buzz without making a purchase.

Proverbial Wallet

[via @carlablumenthal | img via Boston.com]