Jane McGonigal, Department of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies, University of California at Berkeley. E-mail: janemcg@uclink4.berkeley.edu.
The increasing convergence and mobility of digital network technologies have given rise to new, massively-scaled modes of social interaction where the physical and virtual worlds meet. This paper explores one product of these extreme networks, the emergent genre of immersive entertinament, as a potential tool for harnessing collective action. Through an analysis of the structure and rhetoric of immersive games, I explore how immersive aesthetics can generate a new sence of social agency in game players, and how collaborative play techniques can instruct real-world problem-solving.
Massively-multiplayer gaming, virtual reality, colelctive intelligence, extreme networks.
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