Fun vs. work?

makes you sound like a nutter, Ben

At last night’s BARG meet-up Ben gave a great intro to some of the “online/offline imaginary/real world experiences” he’s been involved in. It was a nice contrast to the board games that had been occupying people up until that point!

As well as serving as a cautionary tale of cranes, shovels and monkeys, it also prompted a remark from one of the other people there along the lines of “All this puzzle solving sounds a lot like work. What’s fun about it?”.

This of course immediately made me think of the Gaming the Future of Museums webcast hosted by the Center for the Future of Museums the previous day in which Jane McGonigal outlined some of her theories about happiness. The video of the lecture was on YouTube for a short time, but now appears to have been made private (it may be added to the CFM paged linked to above at a later date). Meanwhile the slides are available and Nina Simon has written a summary and interesting discussion on her blog, Museum 2.0.

Here’s the redux of the redux:

Happiness research shows that four things make people happy: having satisfying work to do, the experience of being good at something, time spent with people you like, and the chance to be a part of something bigger.

(Whilst hunting around for the YouTube video mentioned above I came across this news interview with McGonigal. It’s not hugely relevant to the main thrust of this post, but it echoes some of Ben’s themes nicely and if I embed it here I’ll know where to find it later. It may also be useful to some of the BARG attendees just starting to discover massively multi-player things.)

The other reference point I had for “what’s enjoyable about it” was some posts on the unfiction forums. I’ve never played in an Alternate Reality Game, but these people have so I’ll just point you to this thread and let them do the talking. Note the emphasis on community and learning new skills.

Back in Nikki-world, work-play is firmly on the list of dichotomies I don’t really understand/recognise (Art-Science being the other major one).