Gaming as a System

McGonigal states that "when you strip away the genre differences and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system and voluntary participation" (McGonigal, 2011, P21)

From this McGonigal tries to explain that in this presence everyone is playing a game in one sense or another. A game can consist on something physical challenge's such like football or hockey which have a more hands on approach, or on the other hand games can also consist on more mentally challenge's such as chess or even computer based games which have more thought and focus put into them.  Though these are not the main characteristics of the game, as they are all developed and built up from the four traits; goal, rules, feedback system and voluntary participation. Where the rules potentially set the guidelines to reach the goal, hence this is the aim of the game resulting in the participation, and finally the feedback operates in letting the user know how far along they are in the game. For example, football main goal is to try and get as many shots past the goal keeper that the other team, where the rules would be only to shoot within the box and only allowing 11 people on each time, resulting in participation due to competitiveness and then a feedback system at half time applying the improvements and their progress through the game.

 These are more less known as a 'Fiero'; as McGonigal defines this as a "craving for challenges that we can overcome, battles we can win, and dangers we can vanquish" (McGonigal, 2011, P33). Showing that subconsciously this is the reason for playing 'games' as it gives it more excitement to the goals and feedback along with the rewards, therefore it can allow our daily live to become more interesting, by using the game process to engage the users and keep them entertained as well as even solving problems, such like gamification. Therefore this shows that yes the 'game system' could be applied to helping out reality processes in today's society like education or retail, but as these aspects don't have a aim there is no use for voluntary participation resulting in a fall through of the 'game system'.

Bibliography

McGinigal,J. (2011) Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change The World (The Penguin Press)