Hisham Sarwar
In the past 20 years, video gaming has gone from novelty entertainment to one of the largest industries in terms of money as well as audience. Societies within the online gaming communities are working more collaboratively and more productively then societies in the real world. The foundation of the gaming world has been creating more exiting experiences which compels players to collaborate and communicate more effectively to achieve their goals.
Video gaming has come under fire from critics about potential harms but also has been praised for potential benefits. This is because we don’t have the sort of collaboration in real life as in the gaming world neither we possess such resources to call up our friends to change the world at the drop of a hat.
No Unemployment in the Gaming World:
The interesting fact about video gaming world is that there is always something to do and there is no person sitting idle. This means there is no concept of “Unemployment” in the world of gaming. And when you accomplish something at your gaming levels, you feel good. But getting this kind of positive feedback is difficult in realty.
Gaming and the Real World:
The theorists who stand with the positive impacts of video gaming claim that transcending human’s as a resource through social fabrics of gaming into something that might solve the issues of unemployment, hunger and poverty. We have an entire generation of young people who spend many hours on gaming and have become expert gamers. We just need to figure out how to get such people invest their time and energy into the real world. The optimization and hope that you feel when we accomplish something in the gaming world basically motivates you for doing better in future.
What if we apply all our efforts in the real world?
Augmented Reality is the future. The collective conscience of the gaming world is strong because the online players have similar goals and they uphold similar values within these goals. These goals and missions create e strong social cohesion and a unified social morality. This morality, which is the social tie among these players bind them together to control their selfishness and work together.
Gamers are the super-powered, hopeful individuals. They believe that they are capable enough to change the world but the problem is that they restrict themselves only to the virtual world. They never apply their capabilities and efforts for the improvement of the real world. With insightful research and inspiration, we can bridge the gap between online and real world communities. We can empower our people to make the outcome a reality by giving people the means to achieve the epic win.
Instead of focusing on violence, social inaptitude and gaming addiction, we should explore the great potentials of video gaming as tools of learning, socialization, improving resilience and optimism and find solutions to problems for changing the world for better.
The next world-saving game:
We can identify each aspect of our lives such as studies, work, health, personal and public interests as quests to make real world a better place to live. World-saving game can be the biggest game of our lives and we can all become heroes, only the trick is to act not only in games with the skills and abilities we have but also to act outside of them. After all Pokemon (with its AR features) has tasted big success already.
Dream Team:
In games, we form a dream team which may consist of astronauts or scientists. Their aim is always to find solutions to problems that distract them from achieving their goals. In our real world, we can form such dream teams as well. We can all have something to do to save the world and to make it a better living place. We can make it our job to invent the future of energy, the future of food, the future of health, the future of security and the future of social safety net.
We can use the medium of online gaming to give people the means to tackle real life problems such as unemployment. Our world is full of amazing super powers: blissful productivity, the ability to weave a tight social fabric, the feeling of urgent optimism, hope and the desire for epic meaning. With the resources available to mankind, we can make any future we imagine. In our real world too, we can see ourselves as optimistic, hopeful and empowered people who can work efficiently. We can empower ourselves irrespective of our age, for that “freelancing” is now becoming a very good option. The only challenge is to make ourselves feel equally challenged, engaged and motivated by facing real world problems as they are in games.
Games can provide us a powerful platform for change; the only need is to use human resources efficiently to do real world work. Thinking and mechanics should be used to engage audience to solve problems and build strong communities; the actions people take should be rewarded and encouraged as in the gaming world.
The same factors that make people play games can be put to good use to solve problems that humanity is facing today.
