A link to this interesting article on the BBC was sent to me today (thanks, Emma). It raises some interesting points on the ways in which gaming is perceived and how it could be (should be?) integrated into a work environment.
The article highlights some very real concerns involving the potential of games to exploit workers, and I fully agree with much of the sentiment that games have the potential to revolutionise how we work, particularly that “game mechanics, and game presentation, can make otherwise difficult or tedious tasks more palatable”. However, I am somewhat troubled by the implicit assumption that everyone is a gamer.
I playing love games and would happily play games at work all day but I can quite accept that there are people that would hate it. If it’s true that “as the population becomes ever more game literate, there’s less and less reason to rely on the old-fashioned, inert interfaces that so many psychometric tests require”. What about the people that don’t play games? Or play different types of games? Won’t this just lead to another form of discrimination?
(On reflection, while playing games all day at work is a nice idea I’m sure it wouldn’t take me that long to get bored… or frustrated… or simply dying to do something different. And what would I do when I wanted a break?)
Wow , nine billion hours playing solitaire, that’s a lot to get ones head around.
found your site on del.icio.us today and really liked it.. i bookmarked it and will be back to check it out some more later ..