Power of change
Wednesday, December 14, 2005 at 9:49AM
The guys at Penny Arcade have proven to be truly inspirational in their efforts to use their success as a tool for positive social change. This, my friends, is why I love gamers so very, very much.
It brings us back to that navel-gazing topic again, of course: How do you use the massive collaborative energy of an ARG to effect positive social change? It's something I'm dead sure can he harnessed, if we could only hit on the right tactic. Raising money is perhaps the easiest goal, but surely there are other vectors of change we could target with as much or more success. I wonder how we could get ARG players to visit nursing homes and tell stories, or teach technical skills in urban high schools, or clean up public parks?
We have the power of distributed human effort at our disposal. If we can harness distributed computing power for projects like SETI@home, surely we can do something even more magnificent with the human touch in play.
Reader Comments (2)
- There is a line gamers shouldn't cross though. Remember the sentiments on the Cloudmakers group? "Hey! We're smart! We can find out who was behind the 9/11 terror attacks!"
Efforts toward social change would be great, but we should make sure that we don't attempt to overstep our bounds.
- On a smaller scale, some of this goodwill has already been spread. Money has been donated to group members; one whose family experienced a grave tragedy, and one who couldn't afford to attend a game meet, in which he was a prominent participant.
- I think you are talking about a larger scale effort, though. And I'm sure you would find plenty of people, like me, who would be more than happy to participate in any ARGer project done for the greater good.
http://attacksofopportunity.blogspot.com/2006/01/whats-your-most-dangerous-gaming-idea.html
The gist: gameplay can teach you new ways to think, and when people change, societies can change.