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"His eyes fell upon the garden, and there across a large bed in the centre of the lawn was a vast pattern of pansies; they were splendid flowers, but for once it was not their horticultural aspects that Major Brown beheld, for the pansies were arranged in gigantic capital letters so as to form the sentence:\n\nDEATH TO MAJOR BROWN "\n\n\nThis story by British writer G. K. Chesterton was fittingly cited in the wikipedia article on ARGs as an early record of the concept behind these kinds of games. For those interested in making a connection between gaming and other more "conventional" forms of storytelling, this short story is worth the read.

I'm looking into Jane McGonigal's work around ARG's - Alternate Reality Games. In particular I'm wondering how playing one of these games changes the way people interact because they are thinking differently. This is what McGonigal has to say about such changes: "Games, when you play them with other people, … actually strengthen the reward circuitry so it actually makes people more social and more likely to collaborate because their brains are actually more responsive to people online and offline. Games are transforming the brains of people who play them in largely positive ways." She is saying that by playing a game, we adopt a role and use our brains differently. This expands what is possible in our brains, and has impacts on what we do in life after we are finished playing the games. And this is what games should do: change how we live our lives when the games aren't there. Like art helps us see differently, games should help us live by different rules, recognize different systems than we saw before playing the game.

I spent my whole Saturday morning working with 5 of the best educators I know. We're bringing gaming into the classroom. Once Suzie Boss pointed me to Jane McGonigal, I became a follower. So yeah, can I put follow McGonigal for Act1 in Evoke? Why not? After all she says things like this: "In "EVOKE," you're leveling up in world-changing superpowers like creativity and resourcefulness. You're unlocking achievements by completing real social innovation missions. Even though much of the game material is real and important and serious, you get the motivational push of game dynamics and the rewards and satisfactions of making real progress. Plus, it's a social network, and once you start making friends with other players, there's all the social stickiness that involves." In this quote, you can see that McGonigal is attempting to bring together the power connective powers of social network with the addictive and motivational mechanisms of games. Plus it's all about doing REAL missions, missions in real life. I'm still not sure that my students will see the connections between their addictions and the learning/doing/re-wiring that McGonigal is aiming for in Evoke. I'm not sure, but I've been VERY impressed so far with how Evoke feels, and I've been seeing that the gamers in my classroom are the first to "get" this game. I want to learn more about McGonigal now, because it gives me more confidence that she is up to something with Evoke, that it has the power of a massively multiplayer online game and the seriousness of a political action social network.