Could game makers save the world?

GuyClapperton 0 Tallied Votes 258 Views Share

Back this morning from an excellent evening hosted by Toshiba listening to Bruno Beusch, managing director of gamehotel. He gave a talk about how games were becoming increasingly pervasive and was quite persuasive; the thing that really caught my attention, however, was the idea that game makers would be able to run the world's finances better than the bankers have done.

OK, we'll take all the gags about how a trained hamster or three could make a better job of it than the bankers have managed lately as read. And we'll assume, rightly, that the only people coming up with this particular theory at the moment are game creators themselves, who are therefore not entirely unbiased.

The theory runs that game writers understand how people behave and they make their games work accordingly. There is a psychological concept called 'flow', which is when someone is totally immersed in their activity, and that's what gamers aim for. There is equally an idea that if someone is immersed in a system they will test its limits, whether it's a child trying to do things their parents wouldn't like and seeing whether they get away with it, or a gamer seeing whether they can hit the 'side' of a scene of a game so they can't go any further.

Or indeed, according to the game people, they'll test an environment like the banking sector and see - subconsciously by all means - if they can break it. The game writers understand this, runs the theory, so would build in tolerances and get-outs. The financiers didn't.

Personally I suspect everhone can have a theory about just what went wrong and it's no use blaming any one thing. And I'm not sure about recreating the banking sector as one big game. But it's an interesting theory nonetheless.

lockheart9190 0 Newbie Poster

Well that's true if they keep this as a philosophy or guide on doing games they might save the world. Actually I heard some Ideas on how to make the war's bloodsheds. Why don't we just get it through to a game? come on just see this for a fact. After war is just get us to a conclusion no body really won to a war they are just an endless fights. Don't you agree? So why don't we just make through a game where there is no blood shed and no money or natural resources is being wasted. Nice blog by the way

Member Avatar for anu07
anu07

Games sure do help in certain stages,which are educational or at times when games spread positive messages about society...but that part where we say that there shouldn't be any games with wars and blood shed,I don't think the absence of such games would really help in reducing violence in us human beings,violence has been with us for millenniums,it won't just go by stopping games with blood shed.....but something could sure be done to push the in-game wars to such a angle which might not have negative effects on children,as much as how violent games might make others violent,it also keeps many of their violence inside the video games......competitive gaming with minimal violence might be helpful though....

On another thought,I guess making war games to such an angle where the player's character is the victim,would really help them understand the pains of war and violence and in turn might induce them to realize the horrors of war.

Coming back to the main point,since humanity is evolving socially,social games would really be of great use.

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