TED Speaker Tom Chatfield

This speech works around how human being can enter a learning environment with games. How the gaming industry allows the mind to expand and become something bigger in an educational level. Tom Chatfield begins his lecture stating about the “power of virtuality” video games present and how we absorb that and reproduce it. Video games a part from growing on the human imagination it can motivate and compel us into something more and better. We cannot discard the essentials, which are technological advances and concept constructs in order to develop products, which then would open up the audience’s imagination and motivate the to do better. The video game industry has been growing exponentially these past few years. He describes it as being the “fastest growing industry among all media”.

The fact is that people do spend the money on these products and inside the games also because they feel an emotional, individual or even a collective drive to do so. It is true, gamers and non-gamers demonstrate it everyday by simply connecting with others and sharing experiences. It is incredibly interesting how he particularly describes how we measure the gaming experiences with the constant data, which is the first way to reward the brain. Second providing short and long-term aims and third with effort consider rewarding yourself; reward effort. Four, constant, rapid, and clear feedback is extremely important. This is very important especially in a learning basis. He specifically says and I quote “is very, very hard for people to learn if they cannot link consequences to actions”. Fifth is the element of uncertainty, people desire to seek and find out about the unknown; this way even rewards will be better. Sixth are the windows of enhanced attention; the memory and the confidence. Gaming experiences change variations in both of these concepts. They help expand the memory span and sometimes reduce it, but most of all they help people gain confidence in themselves.

Lastly other people who are what mostly drives us to want to play games, to be able to connect and share with others. We need that connection to one another, humans are social beings, and since technology has partially separated that physical sharing and connection, it has definitely opened a new road to which we can describe ourselves social beings. He inspires because he connected in various ways the gaming industry to real life situations. It is definitely important to remember that we need new sharing and communication methods. Also, that these are educational methods we can use to grow as better human beings. Like it is also learned in Chris Anderson's Speech, as he describes it the "Crowd Accelerated Innovation", people want new ways of communicating with peers and sharing with family and playing with friends. These modern ways show how we interact not only with others and also with the rest of the world.