The 47th Precinct

Although I was without my handsome half at sxsw, I did try to check out some of the game related discourse for interesting indie tidbits. One of my great surprises was the third keynote, delivered by the animated and bright Jane McGonigal. Her premise: “Quality of Life becomes the primary metric for evaluating interactive brands, services, environments, and experiences.” I am not sure what I was expecting from the games related keynote, but it was certainly not a dialog on the future of happiness. In fact, McDonigal diligently argues the fact of the pervasiveness of positive psychology language in our midst: references to various indexes (the Quality of Life index), popular titles, and the growth of interest (understatement) in games of all kinds.

In my mind “games” and “virtual world” always refers to transformer like characters battling in a scene of the martian chronicles, not Miranda July’s Learning to Love you More project. However, the idea of games as a tool of engagement, cooperation, even collective intelligence is incredibly appealing to me, particularly as I begin to see that there is (of course) a plethora of categories and offshoots of “game” and that things like SF0, the sock wars, or the Bureau for Workplace Interruptions have a very valuable place in this arena. As our definition of happiness evolves into the idea of satisfaction, fulfillment, collaboration and contribution to a goal larger than ourselves (not necessarily idealistic nor altruistic), thinking of games as a type of group project with a form of instruction, feedback, and community is both captivating and inspiring.

SXSW is my almost favorite conference thanks to their podcasts of talks and panels (although unfortunately not all… then they would be my absolute favorite). If you want to hear/see more of Jane McGonigal, read (sadly, not listen to) a transcript of her keynote, view her presentation slides, or visit her blog.

This entry was posted Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Art, Contest, Events, Games, Good Ideas, Inspiration. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.