The readings for today analysed the topics of rationalization and instrumentality in computer games from a social science perspective. During the class, several discussions were held about achievements and “playbour”. Three study cases, “The Piano Stairs”, the app “The Mini Getaway” and Foursquare were shown as examples of how companies are interacting with its potential buyers through the act of play.
The Piano Stairs was created On the saying that it’s better for your health to use the stairs instead of the escalator, a group of people decided to convert a Swedish subway staircase to a piano in order to see if they could make more people choose the stairs over the escalator. When a person stepped up on a step, the step would play a tune. The MINI Getaway is an app that turned a large area of Stockholm into a playing field, where players could win a MINI Countryman car by “stealing” it from other players. Once a person is within 50 meters of the placement of the virtual car, that person can claim the car as his own. And thus the game begins, as other players are now after the player with the car, and once they are within 50 meters of that person, they can steal the car as well. Lastly, Foursquare is a location-based social networking website for mobile devices, where users can check-in and be awarded user points and sometimes "badges".
At first view all the case studies seem awesome. It’s wonderful that play can be put into the life of adults and help communicate messages in such easygoing and practical ways. But when we look closer at the cases, you come to the unfortunate realization, especially if you are professionally engaged and enamored with games and play, that play is not the answer to everything. In the example of the piano staircase it was apparent that the play aspect congested the stairs and made the users use the stairs in ways it was not meant to (e.g. jumping up and down in the same spot). In the examples with the MINI app and Foursquare the notion that large companies exploit something as sacred as play and the magic circle in order to promote their products. It feels wrong because play was something that in my childhood was “free” and “free for all”. You could use whatever object was near as whatever object you needed. With the imposition of play-objects that have to be made by a certain company, you get left out of the game if you do not fork out.
It all comes down to the weird behaviors of humans that large companies and games such as Farmville are cleverly exploiting. Players, who invest time, labour and money in a game world also becomes attached to it. And the more labour you put into your Farmville farm or WOW character, the more loss you'll feel when giving it up. And humans hate loss. We even deem losing something as extremely negative, while winning the same thing/amount does not hold the same inverse value. And I cannot stop but feel cynical and exploited, at least on behalf of the poor players actually caught in these things.
But then again I do play "Pocket Frogs" on my iPhone almost every day.
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And yes, I've so far bred 4.890 different frogs and only have 14.614 to go.
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And yes even though the game is free I've actually paid a little for certain upgrades in the game so that I could breed frogs faster.
And yes I feel really stupid right now.
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