Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (56 page)

1
Saba, Moussavi, Somnath Chatterji, et al. “Depression, Chronic Diseases, and Decrements in Health: Results from the World Health Surveys.”
The Lancet
, September 8, 2007, 370(9590): 851-58. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61415-9.

2
Lyubomirsky,
The How of Happiness
, 14.

3
Ibid., 7.

4
Ibid., 72.

5
Ibid.

6
Seligman,
Authentic Happiness
, xii.

7
Weiner,
The Geography of Bliss
, 310.

8
Ben-Shahar,
Happier
, 165-66.

9
Williams, Sam. “Hack, Hackers and Hacking.” In
Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software
(Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2002). Also available online at
http://oreilly.com/open-book/freedom/appb.html
.

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Caplan, Jeremy. “Hacking Toward Happiness.”
Time
, June 21, 2007.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1635844,00.html
.

11
I coined the term in 2007, but I’d already been doing it for years by then. I just needed a way to describe it to other technologists so they could start doing it, too. I introduced the term in a keynote at the Emerging Technology Conference (ETech) in San Diego, March 26-29, 2007, and again in a keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, April 18, 2007.

12
Morrill, et al.,
Together Alone
, 231.

13
This claim is based on my review of the findings of positive-psychology research trials on acts of kindness, in which participants typically don’t know each other before being put in the cooperative test setting. It’s a perfect example of transitory sociality.

14
Keltner,
Born to Be Good
, 3.

15
Ibid., 7-8.

16
These rules were coauthored with Sean Stewart, the award-winning science fiction and fantasy author, during the Last Call Poker project.

17
Tad Friend, “The Shroud of Marin.”
The New Yorker
, August 29, 2005.

18
Davidson, Amy. “California Dying: Q&A with Tad Friend.”
The New Yorker
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http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/08/29/050829on_onlineonly01?currentPage=all
.

19
Pujol, Rolando. “NYC Cemeteries Dying from Neglect.”
AM New York
, May 29, 2009.
http://amny.com/urbanite-1.812039/nyc-cemeteries-dying-from-neglect-1.1286733
.

20
Weiner,
The Geography of Bliss
, 73.

21
Hecht, Jennifer Michael.
The Happiness Myth: The Historical Antidote to What Isn’t Working Today
(New York: Harper One, 2008), 57.

22
Ibid., 58.

23
Ben-Shahar,
Happier
, 147-48.

24
Hecht,
The Happiness Myth
, 59.

25
Keltner,
Born to Be Good
, 195.

26
Quoted in Keltner,
Born to Be Good
, 186.

27
Hecht,
The Happiness Myth
, 298.

28
Csíkszentmihályi,
Beyond Boredom and Anxiety
, 102-21.

29
Keltner,
Born to Be Good
, 220.

30
Weiner,
The Geography of Bliss
, quoting John Stuart Mill, 74.

1
Flugelman, Andrew. “The Player Referee’s Non-Rulebook.” In
The New Games Book
, 86.

Portions of this chapter are drawn from “Engagement Economy: The Future of Massively Scaled Participation and Collaboration,” a
Technology Horizons
special report I created for the Institute for the Future in September 2008. The full original report, published by IFTF, is available at
http://iftf.org/node/2306
.

1
“How the
Telegraph
Investigation Exposed the MPs’ Expenses Scandal Day by Day.”
Telegraph
, May 15, 2009.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5324582/How-the-Telegraph-investigation-exposed-the-MPs-expenses-scandal-day-by-day.html
.

2
Wintour, Patrick, and Nicholas Watt. “MPs’ Expenses: Critics Attack Censorship as Redactions Black Out Documents.”
Guardian
, June 19, 2009.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/18/mps-expenses-censorship-black-out
.

3
Jeff Howe.
Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business
(New York: Crown Business, 2008), 4-17.

4
Andersen, Michael. “Four Crowdsourcing Lessons from the
Guardian
’s (Spectacular) Expenses-Scandal Experiment.” Nieman Journalism Lab, June 23, 2009.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/06/four-crowdsourcing-lessons-from-the-guardians-spectacular-expenses-scandal-experiment/
.

5
“Participation on Web 2.0 Websites Remains Weak.” Reuters, April 18, 2007.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1743638820070418
.

6
Wright, Steven, and Jason Groves. “Shameless MPs Try to Dodge Trial Using 1689 Law Which Protects Them from Prosecution.”
Daily Mail
, February 8, 2010.
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.

7
Shirky, Clay. “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus.” Personal blog, April 26, 2008.
http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html
.

8
Internet World Stats—Usage and Population Statistics, accessed December 31, 2009.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
.

9
“Wikipedia Is an MMORPG.” Wikipedia project, accessed May 1, 2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_an_MMORPG
.

10
Ibid.

11
Puente, Maria. “Learn, Fight Hunger, Kill Time All at Once at
Freerice.com
.”
USA Today
, January 23, 2008.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2008-01-23-freerice_N.htm
.

12
The answer is “growing from the tip of a stem.”

13
“Frequently Asked Questions.” Free Rice.
http://www.freerice.com/faq.html
.

14
Anderson, Frank. “Can Videogames Make the World a Better Place?” BitMob, August 25, 2009.
http://bitmob.com/index.php/mobfeed/foldinghome-distributed-computing.html
.

15
Pietzsch, Joachim. “The Importance of Protein Folding.” Horizon Symposia: Connecting Science to Life, online project of the journal
Nature
.
http://www.nature.com/horizon/proteinfolding/background/importance.html
.

16
McElroy, Griffin. “Joystiq Set to Overtake G4 in Folding@home Leaderboards Tonight.” Joystiq, February 8, 2010. http://playstation.joystiq.com/tag/folding@home; and Stella, Shiva. “Sony Updates Folding@home for PS3 Folks Trying to Save the World.” Game Bump, December 19, 2007.
http://www.gamebump.com/go/sony_updates_folding_home_for_ps3_folks_trying_to_save_the_world
.

17
Stasick, Ed. “Leave Your PS3 on for a Good Cause This Sunday Night!” Joystiq, March 21, 2007.
http://playstation.joystiq.com/2007/03/21/leave-your-ps3-on-for-a-good-cause-this-sunday-night/
.

18
Rimon, Noah. “Folding@home Petaflop Barrier Crossed.” PlayStation blog, September 19, 2007.
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2007/09/foldinghome-petaflop-barrier-crossed/
.

19
Khan, Shaan. “Turning In-Game Achievements into Real-World Action.” Thinkers & Doers, July 30, 2009.
http://blogs.waggeneredstrom.com/thinkers-and-doers/2009/07/turning-in-game-achievements-in-real-world-action/
.

20
Dumitrescu, Andrei. “PlayStation 3 Will Catch Up to the Xbox 360 in 2011.” Softpedia, August 5, 2009.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/PlayStation-3-Will-Catch-Up-to-the-Xbox-360-in-2011-118402.shtml
.

21
Jacques, Robert. “Folding@home Clocks Up a Million PS3 Users.” V3, February 6, 2008.
http://www.v3.co.uk/vnunet/news/2208966/folding-home-clocks-million-ps3
.

22
“Computer Game’s High Score Could Earn Nobel in Medicine.”
RichardDawkins.net
forum, May 11, 2008.
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=44321
.

23
The game was developed by doctoral student Seth Cooper and postdoctoral researcher Adrien Treuille, both in computer science and engineering, working with Zoran Popović, a University of Washington professor of computer science and engineering; David Baker, a UW professor of biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator; and David Salesin, a UW professor of computer science and engineering. Professional game designers provided advice during the game’s creation.

24
Fahey, Mike. “Humans Triumph Over Machines in Protein Folding Game Foldit.”
Kotaku.
August 6, 2010.
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/08/humans-triumph-over-machines-in-protein-folding-game-foldit/
.

25
Cooper, Seth, Firas Khatib, et al., and Foldit players. “Predicting protein structures with a multiplayer online game.”
Nature.
August 2010. 466, 756-60.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7307/full/nature09304.html
.

26
Deci, Edward L., Richard Koestner, and Richard M. Ryan. “A Meta-Analytic Review of Experiments Examining the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation.”
Psychological Bulletin
, November 1999, 125(6): 627-68. DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.125.6.627.

27
“Job Listings.”
Bungie.net
, accessed May 1, 2010.
http://www.bungie.net/Inside/jobs.aspx
.

1
“Epic Win.” Urban Dictionary entry.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=epic%20win
.

2
Twitter replies to @avantgame from @tobybarnes, @changeist, and @incobalt, on November 4, 2009.

3
Many of The Extraordinaries’ microvolunteer missions are more like Amazon Mechanical Turk-style human intelligence tasks—labeling, tagging, and sorting digital objects for museums, scientists, and government agencies, for example. This is important, but it doesn’t represent the epic win. In phone conversations with the founders of the project in early 2010, I learned that the company aims to focus on developing more real-world, mobile missions and rely less on online human intelligence tasks.

4
“Chat with an Extraordinary: Nathan Hand of Christel House.” The Extraordinaries blog, November 17, 2009.
http://www.theextraordinaries.org/2009/11/chat-with-an-extraordinary-nathan-hand-of-christel-house.html
.

5
Wenner, Melissa. “Smile! It Could Make You Happier.”
Scientific American
, September 2009.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=smile-it-could-make-you-happier
.

6
“Chat with an Extraordinary,” The Extraordinaries blog.

7
Official Game Guide for
The Sims 3
. Prima Official Game Guides, June 2, 2009, 42.
http://www.primagames.com/features/sims3/
.

8
Edelman, Joe. “Make a Wish.” Live talk, Ignite Amherst, September 22, 2009.
http://igniteshow.com/amherst
.

9
Personal interview with Joe Edelman, July 12, 2008.

10
Edelman, “Make a Wish.”

11
Ibid.

12
Edelman, Joe. “Your Life: The Groundcrew Mission.” Groundcrew.
http://groundcrew.us/papers/your-life
.

13
Edelman, Joe. “The Mobile Manifesto: How Mobile Phones Can Replace a Broken Economy.” Joe Edelman blog, January 2009.
http://nxhx.org/thoughts/manifesto.html
.

14
Edelman, Joe. “Volunteering with Groundcrew.” Groundcrew.
http://groundcrew.us/papers/volunteering
.

15
Jeyes, Dave. “Google Wants to Smarten Up Your Home with PowerMeter.” Tech.Blorge, February 10, 2009.
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2009/02/10/google-wants-to-smarten-up-your-home-with-powermeter-2/
.

16
Kho, Jennifer. “Adaptive Meter: Playing the Energy Conservation Game.” Earth2Tech, March 29, 2009.
http://earth2tech.com/2009/03/29/playing-the-energy-conservation-game/
.

1
Richards, C. “Teach the World to Twitch: An Interview with Marc Prensky.” Futurelab, December 2003.
www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/publications_reports_articles/web_articles/Web_Article578
; and “Designing Games with a Purpose.”
Communications of the ACM
, August 2008, 51(8): 58-67. DOI:
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1378704.1378719
.

2
Tomasello, Michael.
Why We Cooperate
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009).

3
Tomasello, Michael, and Malinda Carpenter. “Shared Intentionality.”
Developmental Science
, December 2006, 10(1): 121-125.

4
Rakoczy, Hannes, Felix Warneken, and Michael Tomasello. “The Sources of Normativity: Young Children’s Awareness of the Normative Structure of Games.”
Journal of Developmental Psychology
, May 2008, 44(3): 875-81.

5
“Which Do You Prefer: Competitive or Cooperative Multiplayer?”
Escapist
, October 24, 2009.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.151529
.

6
Contreras, Paul Michael. “LittleBigPlanet Sets Another Milestone for Number of Levels.” PlayStation Lifestyle, November 20, 2009.
http://playstationlifestyle.net/2009/11/20/littlebigplanet-sets-another-milestone-for-number-of-levels/
.