The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It by Philip G. Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan Page A
Authors: Philip G. Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan
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have to pay you a fee. At the very least, clearly post resources that users can easily refer to if they suffer from porn addiction — much the same way casinos offer resources for people who have gambling addictions.
What video game producers can do
Bridge the gap between imagination and realization so that while users can enjoy playing your games, their time counts for something beyond themselves. You have the tools and ability to apply the game mindset to real-world problems and create generations of true-life heroes.
In Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World , Jane McGonigal discusses the power of crowdsourcing, making the observation that successful crowdsourcing projects are structured like a good multiplayer game. One example she uses is the parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009. Essentially, many members of British Parliament, or MPs, had been filing illegal expense claims that added up to millions of pounds sterling, including frivolous charges like £32,000 (more than $50,000 at today’s rates) for personal gardening expenses and £1,645 (nearly $2,600) for a “floating duck island.”
The government released the expense forms in an unsorted collection of more than a million electronically scanned documents. The Guardian newspaper, which had been covering the scandal, knew it didn’t have enough manpower to sort through the mess, so it hired Simon Willison, a software developer, to design a website where anyone could examine the documents for incriminating details. With his help, the Guardian launched a site called Investigate Your MP’s Expenses, the world’s first massive multiplayer investigative journalism project. After just three days, more than 20,000 people had sifted through 170,000 documents. Investigate Your MP’s expenses also had a remarkable 56 percent visitor participation rate.
The investigation prompted the resignation of dozens of Parliament members, plus legal action, including suspensions and prosecutions. Ultimately, it led to widespread political reform. 119
Though it may appear to be a suggestion not unlike Tom Sawyer persuading the neighborhood boys that whitewashing a fence is fun, imagine the kind of force gamers would become if every gamer dedicated just 1 percent of his gaming time — 30 million collective hours a week — to make a real-world impact like Investigate Your MP’s Expenses. Considering Wikipedia represents roughly 100 million hours of human thought, hypothetically 15.6 Wikipedia-size projects could be accomplished every year if each gamer invested that 1 percent into a crowdsourcing project. Now that would be a force to be reckoned with.
About TED
TED is a nonprofit devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading.” It started out, in 1984, as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs, Calif, each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.
The annual TED Conferences in Long Beach/Palm Springs and Edinburgh bring together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
On TED.com, we make the best talks and performances from TED and its partners available to the world for free. More than 900 TEDTalks are now available online, with more being added each week. All of the talks are subtitled in English, and many are subtitled in various other languages. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.
What video game producers can do
Bridge the gap between imagination and realization so that while users can enjoy playing your games, their time counts for something beyond themselves. You have the tools and ability to apply the game mindset to real-world problems and create generations of true-life heroes.
In Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World , Jane McGonigal discusses the power of crowdsourcing, making the observation that successful crowdsourcing projects are structured like a good multiplayer game. One example she uses is the parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009. Essentially, many members of British Parliament, or MPs, had been filing illegal expense claims that added up to millions of pounds sterling, including frivolous charges like £32,000 (more than $50,000 at today’s rates) for personal gardening expenses and £1,645 (nearly $2,600) for a “floating duck island.”
The government released the expense forms in an unsorted collection of more than a million electronically scanned documents. The Guardian newspaper, which had been covering the scandal, knew it didn’t have enough manpower to sort through the mess, so it hired Simon Willison, a software developer, to design a website where anyone could examine the documents for incriminating details. With his help, the Guardian launched a site called Investigate Your MP’s Expenses, the world’s first massive multiplayer investigative journalism project. After just three days, more than 20,000 people had sifted through 170,000 documents. Investigate Your MP’s expenses also had a remarkable 56 percent visitor participation rate.
The investigation prompted the resignation of dozens of Parliament members, plus legal action, including suspensions and prosecutions. Ultimately, it led to widespread political reform. 119
Though it may appear to be a suggestion not unlike Tom Sawyer persuading the neighborhood boys that whitewashing a fence is fun, imagine the kind of force gamers would become if every gamer dedicated just 1 percent of his gaming time — 30 million collective hours a week — to make a real-world impact like Investigate Your MP’s Expenses. Considering Wikipedia represents roughly 100 million hours of human thought, hypothetically 15.6 Wikipedia-size projects could be accomplished every year if each gamer invested that 1 percent into a crowdsourcing project. Now that would be a force to be reckoned with.
About TED
TED is a nonprofit devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading.” It started out, in 1984, as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs, Calif, each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.
The annual TED Conferences in Long Beach/Palm Springs and Edinburgh bring together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
On TED.com, we make the best talks and performances from TED and its partners available to the world for free. More than 900 TEDTalks are now available online, with more being added each week. All of the talks are subtitled in English, and many are subtitled in various other languages. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.
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