Metaviews

dropouthangoutspaceout:

I believe that videogames are powerful tools and powerful ways of communicating – but they are only just that – another way to communicate, just as the telegraph, radio and television were. Yet gamification seems to offer the promise of a new way of engineering happiness – a new way of controlling the population when consumerism seems to have come up so short in creating the docile consumer that governments and corporations would like. This is the continuation of Edward Bernays’ Freudian cynical view of people; as blind slaves to nature. Instead we should be very open to the understanding that there is a moral dimension to gamification: it can exploit people.

A post that sums up a bit of my talk from last Thursday’s midterm report at Metaviews.