Surveillance on the Gaming Community

For the final I will be submitting a paper on surveillance on the gaming community. On the news everywhere I have been reading and watching the Edward Snowden leaks. This issue is interesting to me and it helps me analyze how I play new and online games in the future. It is a topic that I believe the gaming community should be talking about. I know most gamers have their favorite games were they really do not care. I believe that we should be conscious of what companies invade player’s privacy. I give an example that happened a couple months ago with the release of X-box One, and how they had strict requirements to play their system. I also talk about how the newest revelation by Snowden, that WOW (World of Warcraft) and Second life are also being monitored by the government agencies. This is not the biggest issue I have with the surveillance of games. The thing that worries me the most is with companies spying on gamers for profit gain. There should be better regulations against these types of activities, so players feel more at ease when playing and interacting with other players on these types of games. I believe there is really one solution to this issue and it has been visible with the backlash against Microsoft.  

    

Blog Post 4 Jean McGonial

I saw the Ted talks with Jean McGonial and her case on how games could improve real world issues. She goes on a states her case by bringing up examples of certain games that create a type of online connectivity were players help each other on missions. This is important asset to solve problems that the real world has. She states four points; blissful productivity, social fabric, urgent optimism, and epic meaning. These four points that she stated are very positive to the game community, because this is why people play games. She also created three games the let the players solve real world issues as a type of game simulator.

 I agree with some of her main points that games are important and they do subconsciously make players play with the idea of her four points. I believe that we need to have and actual live game that will help solve some of our main issues in our society. My idea is to play a game were a lot of people fight poverty by racing around different areas where there is homeless, and feed them etc. If these games were live and actually helped out while people were playing it would make her idea and concept stronger.    

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html