Video Games and Watching – Essay Plan
1. Topic
For the sake of this assignment, I chose the topic “Video Games and Watching,” as it is a fascinating topic for me. I have had a long relationship with video games as a main part of my leisure time throughout my life, and so I feel very close to this subject in particular. Furthermore, the ways in which gamification has infiltrated our lives in the last few years is also fascinating to me, whether through creating rewards-based productivity apps or streamlining other behavior in ways that follow game theory (Whitson, 2013). The rise of reality TV competitions and more is also shown to be connected to a rise in physical aggression, calling into question just how much gaming and watching are related with more negative aspects of our culture and society (Gibson et al., 2014).
Also, the increased state of surveillance in our country and the world at large, with the advent of the Information Age and the prevalence of smartphones, has raised many ethical questions about how we watch and are being watched that I find most intriguing (Whitson and Simon, 2014). These elements are already being tied into gaming, such as with Google’s MMO game Ingress, which already leverages online mobile data for unique play experiences, thus blurring the line between information exchange and surveillance (Hulsey and Reeves, 2014). In this respect, this confluence of social and technological factors is playing an increasingly dramatic role in our everyday lives, one which I feel warrants greater investigation.
2. Research Question
Given the rise of video games as a method of popular culture, as well as the proliferation of cameras and surveillance technology in our everyday lives, it stands to reason that there may be a link to be found between the two. Just as we change our behavior when we know we are being watched, we may use that same technology to watch others and exact that behavioral change on others. To that end, this study hopes to address the following research question:
Do video games and the gamification of everyday life increase our compliance and willingness to participate in a world of mutual surveillance on citizens?
3. My Plan
I hope to conduct a great deal of research on the topic of video games and surveillance in order to address this research question. For this term paper, there are three major stages I wish to perform, each of which I hope to do in the space of three separate weeks.
For Week 1, I will engage in the pre-writing and research phase. During this week, I will start sketching out my outline in greater detail than provided here, adding or subtracting material as I focus my research question and hypothesis further. In addition to that, I plan to do more in-depth reading of the sources I have already found, and locate other sources and articles that explore these issues as needed. My hope is to collect a solid base of information on this subject from which I can draw my first draft.
4. Essay Outline
I. INTRODUCTION
Video games and reality television have become increasingly popular in modern society
Their rise has coincided with the rise of camera technology and smartphones, as well as increased surveillance apparatuses from governments and companies
Surveillance has been known to change and determine people’s behavior (von Nuenen, 2015), particularly if gamification promises greater productivity in exchange for information
Do video games and the gamification of everyday life increase our compliance and willingness to participate in a world of mutual surveillance on citizens?
II. Video Games and Gamification
Gamification is used more frequently today, with smartphone apps and games being used to encourage more productivity, higher education, weight loss, and more (Whitson, 2013)
Video games, especially multiplayer ones, encourage extended binge play as a performance for other players in the game who watch them (van Nuenen, 2015).
III. Surveillance and Technology
The rise of smartphones creates a new database of information that users freely give up to social media platforms, apps and more (Whitson and Simon, 2014)
IP technology makes it easier to utilize the cameras on users’ smartphones to surveil others clandestinely and with permission in public and private spaces (Robbins and Isbister, 2014).
Users can easily see these tools as playful or positive, being fully engaged and aware of surveillance as it is happening (Robins and Isbister, 2014)
IV. How Gaming Incentivizes Permission to Surveil
Strong relationship between games and surveillance; games encourage people to intensely watch other players in order to find weaknesses, information that can be used against them (Whitson and Simon, 2014)
Gamification incentivizes players to permit surveillance on them in exchange for rewards (Hulsey and Reeves, 2014)
e.g. gaining a badge on your social media profile in exchange for achieving a weight loss goal in a fitness app
Gamification apps combine games and surveillance in a ‘hybrid space’ that “muddy the boundaries between” real and virtual space (Hulsey and Reeves 2014, p. 389).
Tracking these metrics to receive rewards requires a level of surveillance from the app (and by extension the company or organization in charge of it) that is relatively unprecedented (Whitson, 2013).
V. CONCLUSION
The mutual rise of gamification and surveillance technology in modern life makes it easy for the public to sacrifice privacy for the sake of productivity
The public is incentivized to allow surveillance and knowledge of their information by companies and governments if they are given something in return
Video games encourage a kind of exhibitionism that makes surveillance less objectionable to others
These behaviors and situations can have disastrous effects on privacy and freedom if left unchecked or unaddressed
5. Bibliography
Gibson, B., Thompson, J., Hou, B., & Bushman, B. J. (2016). Just “harmless entertainment”?
Effects of surveillance reality TV on physical aggression. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 5(1), 66.
Hulsey, N., & Reeves, J. (2014). The gift that keeps on giving: Google, Ingress, and the gift of
surveillance. Surveillance & Society, 12(3), 389.
Robbins, H., & Isbister, K. (2014). Pixel Motion: A surveillance camera-enabled public digital
game. In FDG.
Van Nuenen, T. (2015). Playing the Panopticon Procedural Surveillance in Dark Souls. Games
and Culture, 1555412015570967.
Whitson, J. R. (2013). Gaming the quantified self. Surveillance & Society, 11(1/2), 163.
Whitson, J. R., & Simon, B. (2014). Game studies meets surveillance studies at the edge of
digital culture: an introduction to a special issue on surveillance, games and play. Surveillance & Society, 12(3), 309-319.
