[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Report to Board: Chinese Internet Research Conference

[Marcin Cieslak]

(...)
> The other high-light for me I had already mailed you. It was the keynote
> speech by Jenova Chen [3]. Jenova is a game designer and some of the
> most remarkable games he designed were Flow [4], Flower [5] and Journey
> [6]. Especially the design principle of Journey impressed me most. So
> Jenova said in online games in most cases gamers try to kill each other
> or try to group with each other to kill something. And he thought this
> is a very poor social interaction. He thinks that most games explore
> only one emotion: the power, to be a superhero is in most cases the
> motive of a game. But the human emotion is more complex. To be able to
> explore and induce the complex emotion of an attendee for example is the
> difference between a good movie and a bad movie, or a good book and a
> bad book. He thinks that the emotion of want to be powerful is a very
> adolescent one, that is why most mature adults won't play games any
> more, because they are beyond that level of emotion. So he has two
> design principles, the first one is to explore the emotional
> possibilities of a game. The second one is the to create a special
> environment of communication between the gamers. He says that internet
> (game, forums, Twitter, whatever<and I can add mailing-list, talk pages
> and villege pumps>) are mostly hostile. And he wanted to create an
> environment where gamers can interact with each other, but don't have
> the possibility to be hostile to each other. So for example by designing
> Journey he decided to not give the gamers the possibility to chat with
> each other, but only to interact with each other in a non verbal way.
>
> When he was talking I could not help as to think about Wikipedians and
> how they interact with each other. Naturally, language is the essential
> of our projects we cannot avoid Wikipedians talking with each other. But
> then again, people always thought that games can only be successful if
> they are violent, and Jenova proved that this is not the case. And what
> his speech told me is, even when we always think that something have to
> be done in a certain way and only in that way, there are always chances
> to explore other possibilities. And we should not stop to think about
> those trying and being innovative, and being innovative in an
> unconventional way.
>
> This is why I think we should invite him as a keynote speaker of
> Wikimania, or at least for the staff retreat. And why I was so excited
> after his speech that I mailed you immediately.

Ting,

thank you for posting this. This can actually go beyond the village pumps
- it can even affect ways we design our user interface (like making
scripting and templating more available to the rest of us).

I would really happy to meet Jenova in Washington, if possible.

//Saper