Jane McGonagal, studied for her PhD at Brooklyn, California, she is an online games developer who has over 9 years experience. Some of the games she has developed include the World of Warcraft, Superstruct, World Without Oil (WWO), and Evoke (McGonagal). In the Gaming Can Make A Better World presentation, McGonagal attempts to persuade her audience on how increasing hours of online game play, can impact positively to the society, by making the society members to perform better at solving real world problems such as obesity, climate change, hunger, poverty, and global conflict.
One of the persuasion strategies that McGonagal engages is the use of logos. McGonagal points out that, 3 billion hours are spent in playing online games per week (McGonagal). She further argues that these hours are not enough for solving real world problems, and that the population should target a total of 21 billion hours of game play (McGonagal). McGonagal expects that the increase in hours of online game play will reflect in the real world through urgent optimism, increased social bonding, blissful productivity, and epic meaning. McGonagal’s recommendation for increased hours of online game play are based on two premises, (a) Gaming solves virtual problems, (b) Gamers spend many hours gaming, which lead to the conclusion (c) Gamers spend many hours solving virtual problems. It is through the long hours of solving virtual problems that McGonagal believes that a game player can gain positivity and persistence in solving real world problems.
McGonagal uses pictures as a means of using pathos to convince the audience. She displays a face of an amused game player that looks funny. This triggers laughter, and makes the audience happy. A happy audience is more likely to be receptive to her message. She proceeds to interpret the game players face whereby she points out optimism, surprise, and a feeling of an epic win, when interpreting the gamers’ facial gesture (McGonagal). McGonagal also displays another picture of a girl who seems sad and enclosed. McGonagal describes the girls picture as a person who has the face of , ’I am not good at life’ attitude, which she claims is ordinary facial expression as we try to solve urgent problems (McGonagal). The audience would choose to side with the picture of the amused game player as opposed to the sad picture.
McGonagal also uses ethos as a persuasion tactic, whereby she says that her inspiration comes from Herodotus (McGonagal). Herodotus designed a dice game as a means of solving a famine problem for his Kingdom of Lydia. She recommends that the same tactic is applicable in solving the world’s current problems if every individual engaged in 1 hour of gaming a day (McGonagal). This is a strong point since it has logos backing, whereby DNA findings that show that the Etruscans who formed the Roman Empire share the same DNA with Lydian’s, and geologists found out that there was a global cooling that lasted 20 years, these findings support Herodotus story and add weight to McGonagal’s idea of using games to solve problems.
One of the weaknesses in McGonagal’s presentation is the use of pictures that are open to different interpretations even against online gaming. While McGonagal claims that increased hours of online game playing can help in solving real world problems, she has no evidence to prove this, but she confirms that gaming is an avenue for escapism and that is why people want to play games for long hours. The strong part of her presentation is where refers to the WWO game which simulates a world with limited oil (McGonagal). She tracked the player’s behavior from 2007 to 2010 and found out that the gamers maintained the habits formed in the game in real life (McGonagal). This is a message that games can be a tool for education and behavior change.
Works Cited
McGonagal, Jane, perf. Gaming Can Make A Better World. 2010. Web. 1 Nov 2012.
