Jane McGonigal on Alternative Reality Games for the Greater Good

Podcast via http://podcast.cbc.ca/spark/spark_20081006_jane_mcgonigal.mp3

Description

"Jane is a game developer famous for designing imaginative, interactive games that encourage real world participation (think I Love Bees and World Without Oil.) They’re called alternate reality games, and Jane is one of the pioneers of the format.

Superstruct is set in the year 2019, where the fate of the human species is threatened by 5 super threats: a pandemic, climate change, power struggles, major security breaches and a global food shortage. Your mission is to come up to real solutions to those problems by doing things like blogging, making videos and uploading photos online. You play the role of yourself, but 11 years in the future.

The idea is to try and forecast how people may react to the scenarios, and use that information to help plan for the future.

Nora and Jane chatted about the game and also looked at some of the bigger trends we’re seeing in alternate reality games. Jane thinks we’ll start to see more aspects of gaming in our day-to-day lives soon." (http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2008/10/full-interview-jane-mcgonigal-on-gaming-for-the-greater-good/)