Ludotopian

Adj. The belief that through games the world can become a better place.

There is a growing body of work that, to a greater or lesser extent, suggests that games can make the world better. The notion is generally that through participation in a game we actors gain some form of improved outcome. The scope of outcome ranges from the narrow sense of, say, an educational outcome for an individual or the wider sense of a social change brought about through game culture.

In applying the term Ludotopian I want to capture more the sense of a grand ideal than the unreal nature of utopianism.

The two main users of this notion in contemporary writing are TerraNova’s own Edward Castronova and Jane McGonigal.

Most here are probably aware of Castronova’s work Exodus to the Virtual World which I think is the grandest statement of the potential power of games, in this case virtual spaces, and their impact on society as a whole.

While Castronova might have the grandest statement I think that McGonigal in her various keynotes and blog posts presents possibly the most evangelistic and enthusiastic case for the broad good of the practice of game participation. In particular I would point to her work on ARGs which suggest that goods (that is various forms of 'the good') can be derived from participation in acts that make up the game, the meta-social elements that establish the community of gamers and in some cases such as world without oil the actual outcome of the game itself.

I think in both cases we can say that there is an underlying thesis that goes beyond games being just one more human practice that happens to have beneficial outcomes. I contrast this with work in fields such as education that tend to point to the positive side of gaming but tend to be less broad about its good in relation to other learning methods.

I’m aware that I’m remiss in this post in not doing a broader literature search, though I’m keen to understand where ludotopianism emerged from and how its growth is related to the social changes in which academics and writers have working.

If such a thing as ludotopianism really exists, what was the first work that truly encapsulated it?