Shaping the Future — One Game at a Time
Jane McGonigal whom I met at DiGRA 2005 in Vancouver (one of the highlights of my graduate experience), is in the ContraContraTimes as noted on her blog entry. I would love to go back in time to be able to play I love Bees because I feel being in Canada, I somehow missed the boat.
And for a generation that’s dabbled in games like these, expectations have changed.
“It’s a sandbox where you can create anything you want,” McGonigal said. “And this sense that the world is flexible is trickling back to people’s feelings about the real world. Why aren’t the physical spaces in the real world as social as the areas in (the game)? You develop a taste in people to want to have a physical impact — and it’s good for democracy. The question is, how can we make games that improve culture?”
That’s what McGonigal will be exploring at the MacArthur Foundation and a Palo Alto think tank, the Institute for the Future, beginning this month. On hiatus from the land of the “Bees,” she’ll be designing games that will allow people in 2007 to temporarily inhabit future worlds, merge intellects and solve problems far, far outside any box.
She is someone I will be definitely following when she begins work at the Institute for the Future.