Thursday, June 30, 2011

Informatics: Improving the World Through Videogames

As entertaining as they are, I’ve long seen videogames as a unique medium with which to create interactive works of art. Most similarly to films, everything comes into play with videogames—graphic art and design, music and sound, storytelling, voice/gestural acting, and more. Lately my view of videogames has expanded even further whereby I believe they have the potential to improve society.

For instance, Jane McGonigal (Reality is Broken) sees videogames as an incredibly powerful tool in activating inherent desires. In her studies, she has laid out four reasons for why people play games: the ability to have satisfying work with a clear goal and sense of purpose, the opportunity for growth and betterment with timely and propitious feedback for accomplishments, interaction with peers where teamwork and trust is rewarded, and a sense of greater purpose, real meaning, or community, where individual actions contribute to a larger and more meaningful resolve. McGonigal believes that by understanding these motivations videogames can be used to help our society do more fulfilling work with more meaningful payoffs. If that idea seems a bit unrealistic, take a look at this: Games that Launch Companies, Games that Heal: Q&A with Jane McGonigal.

There are still more examples of real world applications of informatics (defined by Indiana University’s School of Informatics and Computing as “the art, science and human dimensions of information technology). Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy has been used to help soldiers recover from post-traumatic stress disorder. The simulation technology allows therapists to safely expose patients to potentially traumatic-event experiences slowly and progressively. In doing this patients are allowed to more effectively interpret emotionally arousing stimuli and overcome some of the challenges or fear responses of PTSD.

And then there is of course exergaming, which may have been the unintentional result of games like Dance Dance Revolution. After the Wii was released developers took quickly to the idea of producing games that encourage exercise or movement. Lending to its success, parents appreciate the games as much as their children and many have purchased the Wii specifically to use exergames games such as Wii Fit.

Videogame art and design is one of my passions, but I do believe that some games are more helpful to society or more meaningful than others. I want to put my time and effort into something that will positively contribute to the community and improve the world as we know it.