Trololo Cat Tweet by Felicia Day and Chrishenanigans
Cudos to @Chrishenanigans and @feliciaday for sharing the Trololo Cat YouTube video. I was almost in tears at work when I watched this vid!
Doritos Tablet for Doritos Viralocity
There's only 6 days left to vote for my friend's video on the Doritos Viralosity site! Please go and vote!
A Response to Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk
Playing to positivley change the world is already a reality Jane! You just have to spend less time in virtual worlds and get out there and do something you're passionate about. Educate yourself and travel. Changing the world around you in a positive manner is a personal choice and not something you can trick kids into doing.
I enjoyed Jane's optimism in this TED talk and I've been a gamer since I was 7 years old (27 years old now), but I firmly believe gamers will never be a resource to be tapped to change the world in a positive manner because the rewards from the real world are not the same as the rewards in their virtual worlds. World of Warcraft spends so much time in the game to win notoriety, weapons, and armor. I don't know about you, but I think millions of people playing to win material objects of value and notoriety just sounds like the same thing going on right now in the world. Of course, I'm trying to apply that type of gaming in a very literal way to what Jane wants gamers to do. However, World of Warcraft is so HUGE because of exactly that model.
The more time spent - the bigger the reward. Jane's badge/achievment approach is a bit off. You get badges/achievements as a side effect of doing quests and missions. The badge/achievement system does not work well as the reward. If I spend 2 hours a week helping a local farmer growing potatoes and I reach collecting over 2,000 potatoes, my reward should be a card that I can use at any grocery store to earn a 2% discount on potatoes, a new level of 'Potatoe Picker level 1', plus a badge like 'Green Potatoe'. After 20,000 potatoes my discount would grow to 4%, or whatever, a new level, and a new badge 'Hot Potatoe'. That sounds kinda cool, but take a moment to consider the amount of social restructuring we would need to pull off for something like that.
Here's another game we could all play that's actually possible right now: Donate $20 to save a baby's life in a 3rd world country during the month of April.
Instead of playing this game every month, gamers spend it to keep playing online games for 1 more month. Now, I'm not trying to villainize gamers, but instead trying to point out that something deep down in society is critically flawed. I think a catastrophe is necessary to really smack us all on our asses. After, we will get back up, and rebuild but will we also keep repeating the sins of our parents?