Posts Tagged 'Voting'
Feedback Loop: How Halo Could Improve Democracy Forever
It turns out that the characters we play and the stories they’re in can change our patterns of behavior and our attitude towards others. Armed with better stories, game developers can change the world.
Imagine the latest Halo game with an all new DLC. As Master Chief during election season, it’s your civic duty to get to a voting booth, no matter how many Grunts get in your way. This could be the near future if game writers decide to embrace the responsibilities that come along with the latest research from Tiltfactor’s Geoff Kaufman.
Kaufman’s recent study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, examines the phenomenon of ‘experience-taking.’ The principle is that certain types of fiction, specifically those where the participant can take on the identity of the protagonist, push the participant to merge the character with their selves, “feeling the emotions, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses of one of the characters as if they were their own.”
One particular part of the study shows promise to provide a solution to the political conflict arising from Halo 4’s scheduled release date.
Feedback Loop: How Halo Could Improve Democracy Forever
It turns out that the characters we play and the stories they’re in can change our patterns of behavior and our attitude towards others. Armed with better stories, game developers can change the world.
Imagine the latest Halo game with an all new DLC. As Master Chief during election season, it’s your civic duty to get to a voting booth, no matter how many Grunts get in your way. This could be the near future if game writers decide to embrace the responsibilities that come along with the latest research from Tiltfactor’s Geoff Kaufman.
Kaufman’s recent study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, examines the phenomenon of ‘experience-taking.’ The principle is that certain types of fiction, specifically those where the participant can take on the identity of the protagonist, push the participant to merge the character with their selves, “feeling the emotions, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses of one of the characters as if they were their own.”
One particular part of the study shows promise to provide a solution to the political conflict arising from Halo 4’s scheduled release date.
Fixing Reviews: The Lying Score
Review scores are tricky; they are not for everybody. For a scoring system to have any worth, it must have consistency. Not everybody is ready for that. You can’t call a game a master-piece only to call it a disappointment at the end of the year. Review scores must also be honest and, believe it or not, even less people are ready for that. Here, I’m not talking about the flawed notion some outlets have that the average between 0 and 10 is 8. That’s just being mathematically deprived. Instead, I’m talking about Metacritic, Amazon, App Stores and whatever other place that aggregates scores from users in order to present a single information: that the cosmos has voted and decided that game X is a 8.6 out of 10.
Guess what? They are all lying.
They are lying because they encourage users to lie in their reviews. Yes, that means the liar is ultimately you, Mr. User.
Fixing Reviews: The Lying Score
Review scores are tricky; they are not for everybody. For a scoring system to have any worth, it must have consistency. Not everybody is ready for that. You can’t call a game a master-piece only to call it a disappointment at the end of the year. Review scores must also be honest and, believe it or not, even less people are ready for that. Here, I’m not talking about the flawed notion some outlets have that the average between 0 and 10 is 8. That’s just being mathematically deprived. Instead, I’m talking about Metacritic, Amazon, App Stores and whatever other place that aggregates scores from users in order to present a single information: that the cosmos has voted and decided that game X is a 8.6 out of 10.
Guess what? They are all lying.
They are lying because they encourage users to lie in their reviews. Yes, that means the liar is ultimately you, Mr. User.
An Interview With Uber Entertainment's Chandana Ekanayake
I sat down with Uber Entertainment’s Art Director/Executive producer today, Chandana Ekanayake (commonly known to forum and Twitter peoples as Eka), to ask him about some of the thematic elements of Monday Night Combat. What follows is the exchange–certainly a
An Interview With Uber Entertainment's Chandana Ekanayake
I sat down with Uber Entertainment’s Art Director/Executive producer today, Chandana Ekanayake (commonly known to forum and Twitter peoples as Eka), to ask him about some of the thematic elements of Monday Night Combat. What follows is the exchange–certainly a