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Comment by nickpp | Hacker News Reader

You know, I've been playing the game he's describing since I was born. Is called REAL LIFE and its point system uses money. Spend on upgrades (education) get new powers and eventually earn more. Spend in shops, get new toys. Etc.

This is not the future, it is the present.

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Damn, I've been trying to accumulate happiness points. Is there a patch I didn't download?

For happiness points, spend your money on personal improvements and your time on other players.

Sounds sort of boring.

A great video with a lot of exciting ideas (even if they're articulated somewhat stormily at times). This is definitely a viable advertising platform--one that makes good use of the attractive qualities of capitalism, by inspiring competition and desire for collection within consumers, trading exposure--and (hopefully) real human currency--for fabricated (yet, if implemented correctly, completely desirable) points.

nickpp's point is off the mark. Human currency carries with it an unfortunate (but absolutely and obviously necessary) burden of seriousness. If you spend it foolishly, there's a chance you'll "Game Over"--and (as my mom always used to tell me) there's no reset button in real life, sorry. Implementing a system where individuals apply a certain (limited) extent of value to a new, less dire, capitalistic system, is a win-win for everyone involved.

Blow all of your points on a retinal-based bar-code scanner that barely works? Oh well, at least you can still make rent.

Actually, the current efforts with Universal Health Care and general Social Security in developed countries are trying to make sure there is no "Game Over".

And as for boring - I guess it depends on the player. Personally I find video games incredibly unfulfilling. Lots of fun while playing but leaving an empty feeling afterward, of time completely wasted. While real life is AWESOME! Everything I do and create improves my life and that of the people around me.

But again - it depends on the person.

Explicit, short-term rewards trump implicit or long-term rewards. Immediate feedback with points will enable much faster & more effective behavior change.

Very true, but most people don't realize it. Or worse, people will admit that money and time and effort on eduction produces rewards, but they don't equate those short term indications (grades) with the long term rewards (options in life, potential stability and/or self-determination). Amusingly enough, something that is a reward for reward sake (XBox Achievements) is accepted without question...

You point to existing structure that guides human behavior. One of the points of the talk is that game designers can create additional structure that will guide behavior differently.

Indeed, and marketers have been taking advantage of that quite well (the frequent-flyer mile system works much like the sorts of games he describes).

It's funny because games originally derives from real life competitions and adventures, now people are pushing the ideologies in modern games back into real life.

Absolutely right.

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