(I want to thank reader BB for introducing me to two blogs that are worthy of your time; America20xy.com and Technofascismblog.com.)

Ah, the liberal secondary education system at work.  It appears that the speaker in this video, Jesse Schell, believes that our society is moving toward a ‘game point’ system that will reward us for better behavior.  Mr. Schell is a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, CEO of Schell Games who is currently working on an online multiplayer game for ‘The Mummy’, and former manager and designer at Disney.

All the same names still working toward the same direction…’making people better’.  This is my daily “Serenity” moment.

This 28 minute video that is rather dry up until minute 17:25, (so skip ahead), where you will hear about all the wonderful points awarded for brushing your teeth, taking public transportation, achieving good grades in school, and how this is already starting with the virtual plant growing inside Ford hybrids when you burn less gas, and Lee Sheldon, “teaching at the University of Indiana.  One of the first things he did was – ‘you know what? this grading system kinda sucks’, cause school’s a game, right? You go, you get scores, you take, and you know, you come out and there’s a leaderboard, ya know.  And he said, ‘I’m going to do this better’.  He doesn’t give out grades for each assignment, he gives out experience points, and you level up through the class.” Mr. Schell is convinced this game point system is coming and only wonders who will bring it to us first, hacks or game designers.

Excerpt from Technofascismblog.com:

It seems Schell’s best idea for our future is to turn us into point-chasing, gamebot automatons that are manipulated into performing whatever actions are desired by the controllers of the global game system. The scariest part of this presentation for me is not the Orwellian world Schell conjures up but the fact that he seems to think this is all desirable and wonderful.

“Dice 2010: Design Outside The Box Presentation”:

Jesse Schell’s bio from The Art Of Game Design:

Jesse Schell has taught Game Design and led research projects at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center since 2002. Jesse is also the CEO of Pittsburgh’s largest videogame studio, Schell Games, and the former chairman of the International Game Developers Association. In 2004, he was named one of the world’s Top 100 Young Innovators by Technology Review, MIT’s magazine of innovation. Before coming to Carnegie Mellon, he was the Creative Director of the Disney Virtual Reality Studio, where he spent seven years as designer, programmer and manager on several projects for Disney theme parks and Disney Online. Before that, he was a software engineer at IBM and Bell Communications Research, and a writer, director, performer, juggler, comedian, and circus artist for both Freihofer’s Mime Circus and the Juggler’s Guild.