We also take a bite out of the poisoned apple of open world games. What makes them compelling? How have they developed? What does procedural generation hold in store for ‘fans of the genre’? Have open world games become stale? And most importantly, how can they be fixed?

Download: Episode 25

What is Threat Detection?

Threat Detection is a videogame chat show on Radiomade.ie. Each week, hosts Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal take an hour or two to tear apart a videogame topic, like character, horror, or sex.

Gareth & James get together in the first Threat Detection for a while for a general chat about games. They talk about classic videogame publications like PC Gamer, C&VG and EGM, as well as the revival of classic games on sites like Good Old Games.

Download: Episode 24

What is Threat Detection?

Threat Detection is a videogame chat show on Radiomade.ie. Each week, hosts Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal take an hour or two to tear apart a videogame topic, like character, horror, or sex.

What’s Threat Detection?

Threat Detection is a lively, smart, frequently funny and always irreverent videogame chat show on Radiomade.ie. Each week, hosts Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal take an hour or two to tear apart a videogame topic, like character, horror, or sex.

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 23

In the second part of our A.I. in games double bill, we focus on the companion character of ‘Ellie’ in ‘The Last Of Us’, perhaps the greatest accomplishment in videogame A.I.

What’s Threat Detection?

Threat Detection is a lively, smart, frequently funny and always irreverent videogame chat show on Radiomade.ie. Each week, hosts Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal take an hour or two to tear apart a videogame topic, like character, horror, or sex.

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 22

Why is artificial intelligence hard?

Primarily because we don’t really understand human intelligence. Especially as applied to areas like language and creativity. There’s a mysterious middle-ground between our understanding of what’s happening at a high level (cognitive processes) and low level (individual neuronal signalling). For example, neuroscientists still don’t know for certain whether ideas are distributed (hebbian cell assemblies) or located in individual neuronal cortices.

Traditional research in AI seeks to recreate general intelligence. Projects such as MIT’s Kismet* attempt to create an AI that can learn and interact socially as well as exhibit emotions. At time of writing, MIT is working on developing an embodied AI with the faculties of a young child, a long term project yet to bear fruit.

Natural Intelligence

Natural intelligence is situated, physiologically, socially and environmentally. Evolved adaptive intelligence makes sense only in the context of what biologists call ‘the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness’. In other words, the environment it evolved to suit. Biologist Herbert Simon famously compared intelligence to the blade of a scissor, fitting into the environment it had evolved to process.

Natural intelligence is based on multi-level, dynamic, evolved biological systems. Natural selection applying at the level of the gene, the cell, the biological system, the organ, the individual, the group, the species. Not to mention sexual selection at the individual level.

For smart AI, you need a smart AIE (artificially intelligent environment). What does a smart environment look like? It has properties like mass, friction, location in space. It matches the capacities of it’s AI. It has a cohesive design that fits the affordances of the game universe.

But that’s not all there is to simulating intelligence. What about collective (socially situated intelligence)? AI that communicates – not merely its perception but what it has learned, remembered and predicted. This is how culture develops (even ants have culture by this definition) – even protozoa have (genetically acquired) learning.

Evolving Artificial Intelligence

Genetic algorithms will one day give us smarter game AI. But current progress is incredibly primitive. Today, evolutionary algorithms are sometimes used for procedural level generation or modelling the physical behaviour of characters. Developing genetic algorithms is hard. It requires perfectly specifying a problem space and its attendant fitness function (how to figure out if the problem has been solved). These must be manually implemented for each parameter of every aspect of behaviour required (not to mention play tested, balanced etc).

Emergent gameplay is fun – but only some kinds of emergent gameplay. If an AI fails too stupidly, it’s merely irritating. By contrast if an AI has adapted too well (to a problem space, or the players behaviour behaviour) it’s not fun either! Easily thrashing the player. Another wrinkle is the difficulty of defining ‘fun’ as a fitness function.

Instead, today’s game AI is provided by manually encoding known algorithms. We create problem solving heuristic systems interact in at best a quasi-non-deterministic manner. For example the famous A* Search algorithm for bot pathing. A variety of types of ‘weak AI’ have been developed which enable relatively autonomous decision making in bots and other in-game agents. Simple reflex agents, that act based on perception (no learning or previous knowledge required) – IF I see you, THEN I shoot! Goal based agents – that perceive their environment and act based on goals, with the capacity of learning from whats effective. Utility based agents, similar to goal based agents, but with the added capacity of evaluating states of the world for desirability. Expert systems: simple decision trees, based on pre-existing knowledge, sometimes capable of inferring based on formalised abstractions of existing knowledge. One example of this is Wolfram alpha – an expert system with natural language processing and many curated databases (which helps to power Siri and Google Now).

AI in Games

Early developments involved defined ruleset games in simple universe. The worlds of boardgames like checkers and chess. Since the 1950s chess programmes have been able to regularly beat a majority of non-expert players. Todays home programmes regularly defeat grandmasters. However in some games, like the ancient Chinese game ‘Go’, humans still have the upper hand.

Classic experiments in videogame intelligence include Steve Grand’s ‘Creatures’ series, which simulated intelligence at multiple levels – genetic, classical (pavlovian) and operant conditioning.

What’s Threat Detection?

Threat Detection is a lively, smart, frequently funny and always irreverent videogame chat show on Radiomade.ie. Each week, hosts Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal take an hour or two to tear apart a videogame topic, like character, horror, or sex.

This week – E3, the worlds largest videogame conference

Started in 1995. The first E3 was conceived by IDG’s Infotainment World and co-founded by the Interactive Digital Software Association (now the Entertainment Software Association). It coincided with the start of a new generation of consoles, with the release of the Sega Saturn, and the announcements of upcoming releases of the PlayStation, Virtual Boy and Neo-Geo CD.

Nothing short of fabulous opera being performed by seriously amateur public representatives and corporate heads of the great movers and shakers of the video game industry. Over the last ten years the press conference has grown and moved with the growing profits of the video game business, jumping from Los Angeles convention center, Tokyo in 1996.

What does E3 say about the state of the industry industry?

With the prevalence of bullshots, ‘target renders’ and broken releases – e.g.: WatchDogs, Battlefied 4 – can we trust anything we see?

What are our hopes for the near future of gaming?

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 21

The Best of E3

New Ass Creed – co-op looks incredible, but who will play like this. Will the game’s already low bar difficulty be even more simplified.

HD Zelda on Wii U

Tried to play down any of the new footage – what little there was. Instead focusing on a new focus to freedom of gameplay and an open world to support it.

Alien isolation
Human and android enemies too.

Far cry 4
Yawn, more UBI open world. UBI are the hollywood studio of videogames.

Create a ‘mythic’ template, OTT villain, with story ‘beats’, test in the market, wax rinse repeat. Although, to be fair, co-op looks fun – footage shows a lot of gameplay potential. Multiple ways to approach mission objective, aspects of the environment to play against your enemy. Nice and steady frame rate to keep up to your fast paced shooting and interactive movements.

Mirrors Edge 2 – looks identical to ME2 – seems very early in development.

Star Wars Battlefront

The Last Guardian – MIA but apparently not cancelled

A lot of pre-alpha footage and barely explored concepts but besides some HDified classics there are few big ips coming out this year. Destiny is excused, all hail Destiny.

Tomb Raider Reboot Sequel

The Division – promises incredible co-op, what chance it will deliver.

Rainbow Six – Siege

– co-op, destructible scenery, blockades etc – learning from rust,Battlefield
– could have done more with planning stage (second device etc), but core gameplay looks fantastic (first PC multiplayer I ever played)
– can they fix janky shooting too?

H1Z1 – looks rubbish thus far.

Grim Fandango remake for PS4 / Vita
– from Doublefine!!!!

No Man’s Sky Gameplay (please dont’ make it PS4 exclusive)
– space Dinosaurs, planet to planet traversal

– this is what happens when the demo scene make a game
– dodgy interview, glosses over details such as instancing, interaction, gameplay
– another interview

Uncharted 4 ‘Thief’s End’ – 2015 / PS4

(Pretty Teaser tells us nothing, grimdark tone)

GTA 5 – nextgen and PC – improved lighting
If they did this for Skyrim with the lighting mods, now that would shift consoles

Splatoon
First interesting new Nintendo first party IP in a decade Splatoon –
=> back in the 16 bit era, each platform holder would constantly float ‘lesser’ potential series (e.g.: Nights) these days Nintendo seems content to pump out sequels and casual games, what was the last real new IP pikmin?
=> interesting press coverage – Time Magazine, Forbes. Nintendo has name brand recognition far outweighing their sales or contemporary influence

Interesting “indies”

Inside – very limbo like 2d sidescrolling stealth puzzler

Valiant Hearts – WW1 Dog based? heartbreaking trailer //maudlin trailer// – not really an indie, coming from Ubisoft Montpellier (Rayman / Zombie U / Beyond Good and evil team)

Cuphead – perfect recreation of 30s animation in a platformer

Hotline Miami 2 level editor

Indie3 – independent indie games at E3.

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 20

Does character matter?
A vessel for the player to travel through the story.
An enigma in his/her self.
Often times an empty receptacle for containing player projections.

How can it be conveyed in interactive media?

Characters can often be more than their general perspective of first and third person perspective.

Often times the perspective of the character is taken advantage of to better inform a kind of meta narrative or even just to take a more focused and fixed look on the game’s themes (a la Half Life)

Characters can also be unsculpted mounds of marble for the player to not only mold to their tastes but also to have the availability to shift the game engine’s choice of perspective between first and third person.

Will you be the stabby stabby guy, the hammering Yorkshire madman or a resigned and fashionable wizard who flames his enemies.
Distance between player and manipulable character is drastically shortened. This enhances the likelihood of the player embodying his character. They are verbs of the player’s whim and the supplementary background.

On this second part of our discussion of sex in videogames, we delve into gender, sexuality, and the auld ride in mainstream and indie videogames. How have videogames historically dealt with sex? Is it possible for such a mainstream medium to deal with sex in an adult way? Do we even want sex in our games? And finally, has a videogame ever been ‘sexy’?

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 19

On this episode of our weekly videogame show Gareth & James discuss the steamy topic of sex in videogames. We delve into gender, sexuality, and the auld ride in mainstream and indie videogames. How have videogames historically dealt with sex? Is it possible for such a mainstream medium to deal with sex in an adult way? Do we even want sex in our games? And finally, has a videogame ever been ‘sexy’?

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 18

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 17

Continuing from last weeks show, we chat about horror in video games. How does video game horror differ from movie horror, and how we can be horrified, now that we are so jaded.

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 16

In this weeks ‘very special episode’ of Threat Detection, we discuss horror in videogames. We touch on the history of horror games from ‘Alone in the Dark’ to ‘Amnesia A Machine for Pigs’. We talk about how the mechanics of horror are evolving, and how they’ll change now that VR is around the horror. Finally we explore the potential for horror games that transcend our jaded cynicism, and make us truly afraid.

BUT WAIT JUST ONE SECOND!

We’re also running a competition! We have two tickets each to give away to Gamecraft game jams in Dublin (17th / 18th May) & Galway (10th May). If the idea of working on a brand new game in a few short hours surrounded by fellow geeks sounds appealing, respond in the comments for your chance to win free tickets!

Download: Threat Detection – Episode 15

1) Super Bunny Hop reports VAC bans affecting Dark Souls 2
– vac bans for using graphics enhancing hook file

2) Onion AV club running a series of articles on empty spaces in games
World of Warcraft
Myst and Riven

3) More privilege theory applied to gaming

Download: Episode 14

We discuss…

1) Ars reveals the very short tail of steam game ownership

2) The importance of verbs – hilarious Day Z torture video demonstrates the bizarre social mechanics that can develop from relatively simply interaction mechanics. We need more of these! Day Z has bandage, steal, tie up, force feed, take blood, give supplies / clothing. They greatly increase the long now of interaction possibilities with a character. What other potential verbs would improve a game of this ilk?
Negative – Chain / enslave, brand / force tattoo, shave, strip, hobble, tie to something / crucify. Positive – train / teach a skill, cure a disease. Neutral / Chaotic? It’s difficult to think of positive interaction verbs – perhaps because thinking about action verbs is instrumental logic – implies using someone.

3) Kickstarter for a fun asymmetrical VR multiplayer title. Hundreds of fighter jet vs giant human in motion capture suit. Uses advanced multicamera optical motion capture – this will be an arcade event style game: ‘Giant vs Horde’.

Download: Episode 12

We discuss…

1) Guilt of the video game millionaires

2) Interesting article by Samantha Allen about joining the fringe medium of ‘queer’ games with the mainstream gaming audience. It highlights the veritable renaissance of sexual politics video games.

3) What we’ve been playing – GTA 5, Brothers a tale of two sons

Download: Episode 11

We discuss…

1) With the first teasers and trailers released for next gen only Ubi titles like Assasins Creed Unity (5), and The Division – what can we expect from the next generation
– Indie game ‘the vanishing of Ethan Carter’ from ex people can fly dev, amongst the first to use photogrammetry
– also being used by indie title ‘rustclad’ http://www.rustclad.com/, and ‘Get Even’ from Painkiller dev, Farm 51
– environmental physics – infamous second son
– server side intelligence adding more AI (microsofts compute platform, in Titanfall)
– real time lighting (global illumination)
– Procedural generation of enormous worlds
– will ubiquity of big engines like – Crytech, UE, Snowdrop, Frostbite lead to less innovation in AAA titles?
– voxel based, low latency, cloud rendering engines – like ‘high fidelity’ the new second life beta
– realtime face rigging

2) Special guest Thomas Stewart joins us to discuss the experimental roguelike Keeper

3) Oculus betrays its fans
– competitors are already smelling blood
– Carmack asks users to articulate risks
Michael Abrash joins oculus – citing snowcrash and ready player one!
Oculus get death threats for selling out the future
Carmacks comments
– Facebook will construct a ‘social platform’ around the technology
Great video about all the VR shown at GDC

Download: Episode 10

We discuss…

1) More VR rumours
Sony’s VR unit ‘morpheus’
– 300 dollars / euro with camera (loss leader)
– will be named PS View or imagine or some crap
– may be out before Rift (early 2015)
– lots of software in development in house – including VR Last of Us, Drive Club, a VR interface for the PS4 and VR home, also titles from guerilla and sucker punch
– trying to make VR less sad with lots of ‘asymmetric multiplayer – ala you with headsets mates use TV’
– playstation hardware designed with VR in mind
– No PC compatibility – Sony want to work with oculus to ensure compatibility / cross platform
– Finally – Sony also demoed a separate gaze tracking product with Infamous second son – won’t be a part of initial VR offering – but eye tracking could ultimately massively boost VR fidelity and FPS with foveated rendering

2) Will we see a return to local multiplayer
– Nintendo continuing to refocus on local multiplayer
– VR second screen asymmetric multiplayer
– second screen multiplayer (tablet) in new titles like the division
– success of small multiplayer titles like towerfall

Download: Episode 8

We discuss…

1) Oculus DK 2 and Sony VR HMD ‘Morpheus’ announced
– you can order the DK2 today – ships July
– Sony unit has smaller FOV (90 vs 110 – diagonal) but otherwise very comparable
– DK2 is 1080p (divided over two eyes)
– Sony unit includes 3D audio – powered by new binaural engine – requires Sony camera
– Sony units design fits over glasses (weight is not on face)
– both have AMOLED screens – oculus pentile (reduces screen door)
– DK2 has full positional tracking (lean)
– DK2 has bigger ‘sweet spot’ and better lenses
=> hands on with Sony
=> hands on with DK2
comparison impressions
– initial impressions – oculus has better tracking – dedicated IR camera – sony has better screen
– neither meet the threshold for ‘presence’ (90 hrz refresh etc)
– interview with oculus
– similar price (approx 300 for final version of both)

2) Other GDC announcements
– Cytek – now 10 dollars a month (per user) for devs
– UE4 now 20 dollars a month (per user) plus 5% of gross profits
– me too VR solutions from Gameface (all inclusive android on your face) and Sulon (stick your phone in the headset AR / VR with stereo cameras)
– Lots of new PS3/ PS4 middleware announced
=> open source version of XNA
=> Gamemaker now exports to Sony devices
=> Unity PS4 support coming
=> Sony Authoring tools framework (used in last of us) now free download

3) More on a new kind of multiplayer – ‘Crawl’ is a roguelike where your friends play the monsters

4) Irrational developers talk to Polygon about the last days of the company.

According to those with whom we spoke, the closure was the combined result of unfettered creative freedom, lower-than-expected sales, the butting of heads between Levine and his
employees and the unrealistic expectations of big-budget game development.

Download: Episode 8

We discuss…

1) Xbox ONE’s price drop and its failure to make waves with us. Microsofts decisions to include connect in the box. Perceptions on console launches.

2) Our grim gaming memories, including James’s harrowing childhood video game trauma at Sega World.

Gareth & James from the Threat Detection Podcast play through two extremely shoddy text based adventure games, scrawled by Gareth’s very own plush hands in the mid 1990’s.

Download: Episode 7

We talked about…

1) Retro gaming and the reasons people play classic games.

2) Irrational Games shutting down! (Just beat me to it. Was in the process of linking stories to this)
(System shock, tribes3, freedom force, swat 4, bioshock)
– Sean Elliot employers!
– Ken Levine to start new downsized studio with just 15 people to make replayable narrative based game. 200 employees dropped (James added this part. The arrogant authorship of youth)
– Levine described as toxic egomaniac by bioshock designer

Quote on this from David Hollingworth of PCAuthority: Could not someone else have stepped up to run the studio, and create great games? This just seems to smack of the idea that Irrational would be nothing without Levine’s presence, which is quite the smack in the face to the people now left behind as he moves on.
– Another perspective – This was face saving by Take 2 – and Irrational was just shut down with some good PR
– Why would T2 pull this move now? Irrational is for the most part highly profitable and T2’s quarterly projections are being met.

3) New genre – massively single player games
– Examples: Twitch plays Pokemon, Flappy bird mmo (http://flapmmo.com/)
– Zombie studios daylight twitch interaction

Apologies for the sound problems in this episode. It’s our first week in the new studio and we have some gremlins to sort out.

Download: Episode 6

We talk about…

Valve Cheat detection controversy
– Valve pulling an EA. Tracking people’s DNS addresses and entries such as ipconfig/displadns. Doing this through VAC.
– also facepunch (rust dev) institute robust cheat detection –
– GABE Newell responds!

Last of Us ‘Left Behind’ DLC
– homage / trash’s Bioshock infinite’s interactive sequences
– is the combat unnecessary (no)

Buddyfied launches
– one solution to finding folks to play with

Steam game tagging launched, subject to immediate abuse
– gone homo, day z is ‘walking simulator’

Download: Episode 5

1) How in app purchases have ‘destroyed’ the games industry
– Assassin’s Creed 4 metagame is crippled because of this
– do casuals deserve it?
– Jonathan Blows GDC talk
– Nerd 3 (cubed) review of Dungeon Keeper remake for mobile (micropayments crippled)

2) Should games enter the public domain

3) The strange and excessive subcultures of Second Life and other MMOs.

The ‘lost episode’ of Threat Detection! At last available. Apologies for the delay on this one, it got lost in the mix while moving studios.

Download: Episode 4

We talk about…

1) A look back through our Gaming histories!

2) The new consoles – XBox 1 vs the PS4

3) A contentious take on the dodgy future of Nintendo

Download: Episode 3

1) Space game revival (No mans sky, elite dangerous, star citizen etc)

2) Lets Play videos on Youtube
– legality, entertainment value etc
– Youtube videogame personalities
– James – Angry Joe, Spoony, Videogame Theorist, James Rolph (Angry Videogame Nerd)
– Gareth – Robaz, Frankieonpcin1080p,

3) More on Rust – as an engine for the creation of stories

Download: Episode 2

We discuss…

1) Empathy Games – from Gone Home to Papers Please

2) Steam Dev Day to bring AMD,Intel, Oculus and other industry leaders to a two day event that is closed to the public and press.
– Steams mysterious ‘best in the world’ VR demo

3) The rise of Survival Sims
– Rust (from creator of gary’s mod), Day Z, State of Decay etc (others – Dead State, Nether, 7 days to die, Dont Starve)

First episode of our new weekly videogame show.

Download: Threat Detection Episode 1

We discuss…

1) Indie Video game end of year discussion…
– No mans sky, Fex, State of Decay, Kerbal Space Programme, Mirror Moon, Kentucky Route Zero, Hotline Miami, Gone Home.

 2) Virtual reality and the Oculus Rift – Improvements on existing technology, omni-treadmill, reactive grip (tactical haptics), sixsense controller
– hundreds of indie game experiences already created for development kits
– Palmer Lucky, John Carmack
– Demo Day at A4 sounds – limitations – resolution, tracking, machine required
– support from Valve, Epic, Unity
– the seductive horror of virtual reality
– Augmented Reality – Cast AR (Jerri Elsworth, mounted projectors), Sulon GVX (self contained – mysterious room filling illusion), infiniteye 210
– The depth of immersion and its possible diminishing returns

]]> https://garethstack.com/2014/02/13/threat-detection-episode-1/feed/ 0 5975 mylo.jpg dbspin EP1 me@garethstack.com (Gareth Stack)noFirst episode of our new weekly videogame show. Download: Threat Detection Episode 1 We discuss… 1) Indie Video game end of year discussion… – No mans sky, Fex, State of Decay, Kerbal Space Programme, Mirror Moon, Kentucky Route Zero, Hotline Miami, Gone Home.  2) Virtual reality and the Oculus Rift – Improvements on existing technology, omni-treadmill, reactive […]Gareth StackFirst episode of our new weekly videogame show. Download: Threat Detection Episode 1 We discuss… 1) Indie Video game end of year discussion… – No mans sky, Fex, State of Decay, Kerbal Space Programme, Mirror Moon, Kentucky Route Zero, Hotline Miami, Gone Home.  2) Virtual reality and the Oculus Rift – Improvements on existing technology, omni-treadmill, reactive […]games,videogames,podcast,ireland,technology,comedy https://garethstack.com/2014/01/15/new-live-show-threat-detection/ https://garethstack.com/2014/01/15/new-live-show-threat-detection/#respond Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:01:33 +0000 http://garethstack.com/?p=4941

Radiomade is a facinating web based Dublin radio station. They ‘hit the headlines’ as they say in the yellow press, late last year with a successful effort to beat the world record number of consecutive interviews. Last July a similar stunt saw station proprietors Jack & Dan host 24 DJs in 24 hours. Point is they’re doing something new, capturing the imagination of a generation disillusioned with Ireland’s utterly terrible and inexplicably popular commercial and semi-state radio offerings.

Just before Christmas I got in touch with Radiomade and suggested a couple of shows to the guys. One is an ambitious monthly culture / comedy offering that it looks like we’ll be debuting in the near future. The other, a weekly discussion about videogames, technology and interactive entertainment kicked off last night. Threat Detection features myself and Exchange Dublin veteran James Van De Waal. Each show starts with a monologue to kick the discussion off, followed by an in-depth dissection of a trend, issue or incident in gaming. To start the series, we felt is was important to address the issue of games as a medium – specifically a growing and ferociously compelling form of immersion.

Here’s the first episode’s opening monologue…

‘There was a general air of disrepair. Shops were boarded up. The pavement was broken and potholed. A few automobiles traveled on the broken streets. They, at least, appeared to be of a slightly advanced design, but they were dented, dirty and noisy… Clothes had not changed nor had the common speech…. It appeared that in four hundred years nothing at all had been accomplished. Many familiar buildings had collapsed. Others still stood. He looked in vain for a newspaper or magazine’.

An excerpt from John D MacDonald’s short fiction ‘Spectator Sport’, published in 1950. In the story a time traveller visits an America three hundred and fifty years hence, discovering a society that has chosen to focus its energy entirely on the creation of ever more compelling interactive dreams. Dreams a man may labour his whole life to permanently inhabit.

Videogames terrify me, not because I dislike them, but because I find their dizzyingly abundant fantastical worlds so all consuming. The great psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott came up with a word for finding one’s life satisfaction in an uncreative imaginary avoidance: He called it ‘fantasying’, the act of escapist self-delusion. At their worst videogames offer the most compelling opportunity for fantasying possible. Let me read you something else…

‘I think the twenty first century will see a social cataclysm larger than that caused by cars, radios and TV combined… The exodus of people from the real world, from our normal daily life, will create a change in social climate that makes global warming look like a tempest in a teacup’.

Thus begins the introduction to Jane McGonigal’s 2011 book ‘Reality is Broken’, with a quote from Edward Castronova’s ‘Exodus to the virtual world: How Online Fun is Changing Reality’. McGonigal attempts to refute this dire warning, suggesting that since games really do provide a more compelling experience than reality, harnessing their power can incentivize social goods and reinvigorate democracy.

Videogames let us embody avatars, alternative versions of self in worlds unbound by our physical limitations. We can experiment with gender, escape into empowerment fantasies or wreak death and destruction on distant or fictional opponents. Games give vent to our secret impossible dreams and desires; they can enlighten us, enervate us, sate us or drain us. Games combine narrative storytelling, music, theatre and with the added lure of interactivity. They are perhaps the ultimate human form of entertainment, and it’s time we took them a little more seriously.

Is Castronova with his dire warnings of a polis abandoned by its citizens a Cassandra, doomed to be ignored as we sleepwalk into a brave new world of dulling distractions? Is McGonigal right in seeing games as a new freedom to extinguish the unpleasant and mundane, a tool to solve our most intractable problems? This is Threat Detection, a new show about videogames.

You can catch Threat Detection live each Tuesday at 6PM GMT on Radiomade, or catch up with past shows here.