Jtm-pnw-session-games-matter
We're looking for the notes taker - so this is from memory.
There were 11 in attendance, including Harold Shinsato (convenor), Sandy Frost, Sarajane Siegfriedt, Tracy Record, +++
There were several directions possible for the session that Harold raised.
- Games Theory - as a field of mathematics and also of social behavior Games Theory can shed light on human activities and can help us set up healthier media ecologies.
- Games for Teamwork - many games can be used to teach a journalist team, or help journalists collaborate with other communities.
- Games for Mass Communication - this includes a computer online game that might be installed on a website to help communicate a point.
- essay
The session mostly seemed to focus on the third, with points from the games theory and games for teamwork being interwoven.
One of the attendees had created a facebook application to teach about invasive weed species. A very elaborate game had been planned, and the programmers quoted something that would have costed 200K+. Instead they just made a facebook app, which was a survey people could put on their facebook pages and share with friends, asking what invasive weed species were their last significant others. It's not clear yet how successful it is, but it was cheap to construct.
Games can be a great motivator. Harold quoted a story about motivation where a company was doing poorly with bad morale. The could be observed to be lethargic. But when the whistle blew for lunch, a group came to life, ran to a basketball court undressing as they ran, to play a very enthusiastic game, only to return back to lethargy after the game was over.
Back to game theory - whether you realize it or not, people are "gaming" the media system. In Harold's youth, it was a dream of many just to be able to find a news crew and get in the background to be on television. Any airtime at all was a "win". Just adding comments to your blogs changes the game, but people still play. You don't need to add an online game for their to be a "game" going on, that people are playing.
