Creating a better economy through Video Games; The product development story part 1: Values & Industry Research
What is one problem in the world that you think needs to be addressed urgently?
Think about an event that inspired you. What was the event?
Think of someone who i doing something purposeful that you find inspiring. What are they doing?
These are the questions that have built my area of interest into an idea that has been on my mind over the past few years. The problem I think that needs urgent address is that by having a money driven economy, we will only continue to innovate new ways to make money, even at the cost of everything else. An event that inspired me was the video game awards ceremony at GDC. I now have a goal to one day present a game of my own there. And I think Jane Mcgonigal’s TED talks about tapping into the potential of billions of hours spent playing video games was inspiring. Putting them all together puts me in an odd domain. Using video games to build a better economy.
The video game industry is still booming. There is an abundance of fields that we haven’t tapped into creatively. South Korea is rich with a growing e-sports industry. Gambling platforms such as loot crates currently challenge our ethics. And game oriented chat websites such as Twitch.tv have created a new form of gaming focused entertainment. Gaming is a ripe field to plant a new type of idea to be harvested for the sake of our future.
Currently, there is no competition with the type of product I will outline as we go through this journey together. The technology I create, is intended to create competition, and thereby offer better solutions for real world economics. While cryptocurrencies are an interesting topic, it’s out of the scope of this project. Perhaps there is some synergy to be found in using new-age currencies, but I am interested in the model of our economic exchange, and not in the individual currencies that are exchanged.
My goal with these new economic games is to stab at the heart of the issue of our current economic model. That issue being if economic wealth is the goal, and if there is a shortcut to that goal, then there are no rules that you could apply to prevent individuals from pursuing those game breaking shortcuts. Breaking the rules becomes intrinsic to the game itself. It’s not a good game model.
This is the perfect time to create such a product. A competitive landscape analysis would only show us that there is a great deal of conversation about economic problems, and a vast resource for such news. But little to nothing in the way of new solutions for these problems. Carl Marx is known for the volumes he wrote about the issues of Capitalism, but wrote very little in the way of actual solutions. His small paper outlining a few points for a better system became the very foundation for Communism. We can do better then that. And video games are a resource we can use to make that happen.
