Most of the younger folks in the biz express frustration that the “system” is resistant to change, particularly the type of change that might render some people’s entire professions obsolete. And I get it – the fear of change is natural in every entrenched industry. No one wants to be faced with the possibility that large amounts of human and cash capital investments might be lost.

But I think what saddened me the most is that the creative people – writers, directors, producers – people shaping the content are so terrified of the forces of the market (and audiences) that they seem to be more conservative than ever in their creative choices. I’m sure the same was true of the artists who worked in silent films, when talkies came along, and of the unrivaled film industry when television came along, and on and on…

When I consider what has driven change in entertainment over the years, I see seismic shifts due to technology or social disruption that the industry then hobbles to catch up to. Very rarely do I see an instance of the business innovating from the inside. And I’m not talking about 3D technology either. I’m talking about creative shifts – experimentation WITHIN the medium of film.

The French New Wave changed film in a very radical way; it was a push within the medium that spoke to the era. And it changed the way in which storytelling in film had functioned until that point. This is an example of artistic innovation within the medium – introducing new ideas into the lexicon and pushing the possibilities of film further. I acknowledge that the movement came from outside the “establishment” and only slowly seeped into the way mainstream films were later made and viewed; BUT the movement was a real, working consideration of film as a process and a form, as art that evolves.

We are in a very different predicament today.  Filmmaking itself as we know it may be approaching obsolescence and there is little happening inside the medium that is a direct response to this issue. The fact that blockbuster movies are looking and sounding a lot more like videogames is a strong indication that without meaning to, the medium will experience inevitable, perhaps accidental change. However, without the minds of artists whose job it is to think these ideas through and experiment with what film *could* be in the future, we will accept a mishmash that is little more than the residue of innovation in other kinds of creative endeavors like gaming and interactive play.

As those who follow me know, I am a huge proponent of platform agnostic storytelling – I am after all, a transmedia storyteller. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate and respect the specificity and art of each individual medium. I love reading books and I adamantly believe that the experience is like no other. I don’t read because there’s nothing to watch. I read because I love *to read*. I play games when I want that experience. I go to concerts when I feel like I want to be surrounded by the energy and life of the audience and band.  So while I am fully committed to working with connective storytelling, I am still a filmmaker who would like to find a space in which filmmaking as an art can grow deeper, more meaningful and expansive as a medium.

If film is to survive, we need to aggressively experiment creatively with the medium. That is our job as artists, and for the folks who make money off the work, they too must understand that innovation is not a choice – it’s that, or perish.

Photo from www.attendingtheworld.wordpress.com

Over the course of the Egyptian uprising, I began to notice a pattern in the language of the protest signs that gave me pause for thought. I figured if a sign was written in English then it was intended for the eyes of the English-speaking world. So perhaps there is a sense that the world of English speakers understands the language of videogames, thus the pervasiveness of “GAME OVER” as a way to tell the world Mubarak was a losing player in the game of Egyptian history.

Photo by Jason N Parkinson

No surprise perhaps, given the pervasiveness of gaming and game language among a young generation of gamers, who I presumed to be part of the crowd gathered in Tahrir Square. In this blog I have talked about Gamification, that soon-to-be-ubiquitous term for the filtering of all things through the lens of gaming.Then of course with the advent of the relentlessly charming, über-enthusiastic videogaming cheerleader Jane McGonigal and her theories about the possibilities of gaming and gamers as a skilled and untapped pool of infinite social do-goodishness, it certainly seems like the moment for gaming + social change to make its debut on the world stage may have arrived.

Photo from www.ayman.iyobo.com

The “Game Over” message stayed with me for a long time – both during and after the protests. What does it mean in a game when you get the message on your screen? It means you played your round, and have reached the end of the sequence. It does NOT mean that you cannot play again but it does mean that you have to start from scratch and use your skills to run the course once more according to the rules. Although I’m not sure that the nuance here is what mattered to those protesters who simply wanted the world to know how they felt about their 30-year dictator, it is worth noting that the call was for a fair-and-square game to be played. And in that sense, I can’t help but wonder if the psychology of gaming has impacted this young generation’s sense of fairness. Why, after all do we love even the most analog of sports – football, soccer, basketball? I’ve long thought we crave an arena where your skills and strategy means the best player wins.

My instinct right now is that the hopes for gaming as a panacea may be a stretch, given that so much of popular gaming also encourages latent negative tendencies in players and espouse dubious power relations. But I think where McGonigal and the proponents of Gamification get it right is on the point that gaming has given players a sense of agency in (virtual) worlds that feel fair and more balanced than the “real” world often is. Nowhere is that imbalance so pronounced as in the lives of young men and women who experience as extreme a disparity as is possible in the difference between their real lives under oppressive regimes and their gaming worlds.

But for one moment in Egypt, on February 11, 2011, the two converged and Game Over meant liberation in real life.

Photo from www.egamer.co.za

And if you didn’t see the movie, all you need to know is that Facebook was created as an extension of real-life social networks, in which you “friend” people whose acquaintance with you either reflects your status – ie: popular (you have 1500 friends), or smart (your grad school or work “group” that everyone sees on your page) or achievements (your marathon photos, or new baby pics). So when Zuckerberg took the STATUS game online, it was a natural human fit– an extension of one’s local friends, a chance to show off your status to more people – your high school friends, extended family members and maybe even future work collaborators.

When one asks, as I have, why Facebook became so popular so quickly, the answer is simply that its primary function gives us an identical payoff to joining that country club or enrolling your child in that exclusive school gives us – STATUS. You belong to a club – granted, it is of your own making – but a closed group nonetheless. No matter your culture, class or race, this is a fundamental human desire that drives much more of our lives than we are often willing to admit. I’m sure if Foursquare gave a badge called “Snake” instead of “Mayor”, the mobile geo-location based game would be a lot less popular. Even as the Mayor of my corner deli, I get status. That status means something. If it didn’t, Foursquare wouldn’t exist.

And this is why Michel Reilhac’s talk on the “Gamification of Life” at the recent Power to the Pixel Conference struck me as very interesting. In his view, the trend towards “gamification”–a term which (at its most benign) describes real life behavior that incorporates the mechanics of game play such as competition and rewards–suggests a desire to experience game-like emotions in the “real” world.

In an example game designer and gamification theorist Jesse Schell often uses, some very simple daily functions are already being gamified when Ford Fusion installs a digital “tree” on your hybrid car dashboard that “grows” as your fuel efficiency increases.

Nice, right? A very cute visual incentive for those green-minded folks out there. And as most people who drive hybrids can attest to, the game is always on: who can get the most MPG from their hybrid. Within those circles, that ability wins points….and STATUS. It’s easy to forget that these are all subtle indicators of where we are in the food chain of our social lives but from the prolification of even the most mindless of games – Farmville, with its 85 million players, it is so clear that winning does mean something to us. Otherwise, why would social gaming, especially those proliferating on social networking sites be more popular across ages and demographics than we’ve ever seen before?

While technology has certainly enabled more casual gaming behavior, it’s nothing new. We see offline corollaries everywhere – Ebay, a site where you get to bid for an item is a very clear version of the traditional auction. Auctions are games with the objective to beat one or more individuals in procuring an item. Some people call that particular kind of gaming gambling, and certainly at its most compulsive it can be. Just like the stock market. But TED FellowJane McGonigal, whose endless optimism about our collective skill and potential as gamers, sees a silver lining in gamification – and it is that we can take our rewards based mentality and put it to use for global change. Her argument is persuasive – she suggests that if we game for conservation as in the Ford Fusion example and have fun doing it, then isn’t all we need better games that have real life results?

McGonigal has a point – her approach is to harness the power of the gamification trend in that Clay Shirky Cognitive Surplus way and use it for good. And perhaps this has promise: the idea that we can essentially encourage people to transform this primal need for status that our gaming fulfills into important productivity. I won’t go into the less benign forms that this kind of “encouragement” can spawn, especially from marketers (watch the last half of Jesse Schell’s talk below) but I will say that we are in some very slippery territory here.

Do we create incentive-based participatory entertainment such as games, stories as a way to “trick” people into our narrative – whether that is selling toothpaste or even a blockbuster movie? But since companies like Zynga, the creators of Farmville and Mafia Wars are unstoppable (recent valuation puts it at $5.5 billion), it certainly puts strong evidence in the worlds of commerce and art that we ARE buying the kool-aid. We DO want to be gamified.

While acknowledging the force of gamification, Reilhac also critiques it as a “caricature of the American cultural utopia” in which we need the black and white questions and answers that gaming provides. Maybe so. But as long as that’s the prevailing ethos, the gamification model will be the only way to stay in the fray.

One need only look at history to see that ideas germinate and proliferate where history allows it – so when affluence abounds and it has recently to an unprecedented degree – we look for ways to pass time, engage our minds, and of course, improve our social status. And make no mistake, we always play to win.

I know those of us who came of age in an era when gaming was entirely console based, simplistic in the “kill or be killed” bloodbath sort of way, the appeal has been limited. But I see that changing in creative and completely engaging ways. For instance, this week saw the launch of Armchair Revolutionary, a non-profit that uses money generated from their games to support innovative science and technology projects attempting to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.

According to the Geek Gestalt blog, the games available to play on ArmRev are also lessons in social change. The article reports that among the first games are a “videogame called “Make Waves” that is designed to provide users with real-life social activism tools while they manage part of the ocean in a virtual environment modeled on the real-world. Second, “Hack Your Body,” a three-part effort designed around the “fast approaching genomics revolution” that includes the Personal Genome Project; the development of commercial software that will allow users to analyze their own DNA; and a full-length commercial documentary film about genomics. And “End of Darkness,” a publicly financed company that aims to build clean energy infrastructure for the poor.”

For anyone thinking about social change, it has become imperative to consider the impact of interactive play as active learning. Its power cannot be underestimated, especially among younger players for whom interactivity is a way of being, and not merely a time consuming pastime. Nowhere is this more of a priority than Games For Change, a hub for innovators and artists in this space to share their games with the public. In a quick peruse through the games, I immediately noticed how youth-focused the play was, and rightly so, as that is the audience we need to be innovating for.

I believe that the need to educate on social issues is pressing and to do it artfully and beautifully is an enormous but exciting challenge. I’m glad gaming is starting to fulfill its potential across the board and I’m looking forward to delving more deeply into specific games in coming posts — looking at them in terms of their design, content and social impact.

This is a PS3 game. Not a piece of installation art. That’s all I’ll say for now. Ponder that while I go buy a Sony Playstation. Seriously though, I’m curious – really curious. So consider this Part 1. In Part 2, I’ll discuss what this could mean in the wider space of media art and storytelling.

Here’s some sample gameplay that shows you how it looks when you’re actually controlling.

My initial post had this WSJ video review but due to their technical issues streaming the embed this morning, I pulled the above clips. It’s worth reading.

So as a person who creates entertainment, I evaluate these games both in terms of what they mean for changing business models in an era of social media and what it says about people’s behavior, their tastes and interests. I am sure like all things in pop culture, people will get bored and Mafia Wars will give way to Yakuza wars, which will give way to Compton wars which will give way to Alien wars and on and on. You get my drift – these guys aren’t necessarily looking to create “art” per se – they are through and through commercial entertainers. But they are capturing audiences, something like 61 million sets in the case of Farmville, certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Hollywood has always prided itself on being the arbiter of popular tastes, having dipped their toes into every kind of mainstream entertainment, until this point. The innovation and creativity that goes into building these social games is coming from elsewhere. The stories are not conventional but I would argue, still narrative in their own way. Interactivity and social connections drive these forms of entertainment. And while Mafia Wars may not make as indelible a mark on contemporary culture as say The Godfather, the audiences ability to share these gaming experiences with each other and connect in a completely non-linear manner is clearly driving the popularity. And this is practically the cavemen days of the technology. I think as social gaming evolves both in the way it drives revenue for social sites like Facebook, we will see increasingly more interested and sophisticated narratives emerging.