Putting Reality Back Together Again

“My #1 goal in life is to see a game designer nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.” –Jane McGonigal

 Jane McGonigal is known as being a designer of alternate reality games that ultimately have the goal in improving real life problems and situations.  On top of her New York Times best seller Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, Jane is the Director of Games Research and Development at the Institute for the Future.  In addition, Jane is the founder of a game developing headquarters, Gameful.  Some of her other accomplishments include that more than 30 countries have been exposed to award-winning games that have been targeted at tackling real life problems through collaboration and strategy.  With a PhD from UC Berkeley, Jane McGonigal’s achievements have been recognized throughout the world, no matter what view someone holds on her topics of choice.

Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World focuses on…

“games for personal and social change,” “positive impact games,” “social reality games,” “serious games,” and “leveraging the play of the planet.”

Jane feels that games are crucial for the future…  That the games are rooted in pushing collaboration, dedication, strategy, organization, motivation – basically features that push for a better world.  She explains in the book that these games will continue to create an appetite for involvement, and ultimately will result in worldwide solutions.

“Game developers know better than anyone else how to inspire extreme effort and reward hard work. They know how to facilitate cooperation and collaboration at previously unimaginable scales. And they are continuously innovating new ways to motivate players to stick with harder challenges, for longer, and in much bigger groups. These crucial twenty-first-century skills can help all of us find new ways to make a deep and lasting impact on the world around us.”

With this book being written, Jane hoped to establish a framework to how all of these hopes can be accomplished.  Because in the Unite States there are “183 million active gamers”.  There is a sense that people who are devoted to these games (otherwise known as gaming cultures) are finding that reality is missing something that a game provides.  That is where Jane gets this “broken reality”.

“The real world just doesn’t offer up as easily the carefully designed pleasures, the thrilling challenges, and the powerful social bonding afforded by virtual environments. Reality doesn’t motivate us as effectively. Reality isn’t engineered to maximize our potential. Reality wasn’t designed from the bottom up to make us happy.”

In a sense I agree that games are providing us with a sense of satisfaction that reality does not.  These games bring together people, creating this culture that motivates and connects people to a common interest.  Within these game cultures, the gamers are dedicated to overcoming all of these puzzles/levels/problems.  Whether people want to admit to it or not, games are a way people can escape reality and just zone into another realm and play.  That does apply to everyone.  There are some people who are more introverted and do not do well in a social atmosphere.

I was reading some audience reviews on Jane’s views, and I feel that some people are so naive concerning this topic.  I read that driving video games could actually make someone a better driver, or when playing a baseball video game it improves your hand eye coordination.  I am not a believer in this approach.  I feel that if someone wants to improve their driving skills, or their hand eye coordination, to go out and actually drive a car or swing a bat.

I just feel like this is way too big of a stretch for me.  That Jane can honestly claim that her new revamped video games are a cure for depression, obesity, and other major issues like curing cancer.  To further this, I feel that this is why the majority of America is unhealthy and overweight.  We are promoting playing video games, rather than going out and getting exercise. The irony in solving our nation wide obesity problem by playing a video game is beyond me.  If my psychologist told me the cure to my depression was in playing a video game, I would not pay her for the session and never go back to her.  People want real answers, not a virtual outlet.

What if these video games were used in an academic setting or a business setting and had someone monitoring the purpose of the game and what users should be getting from it?  Would that be enough to change my mind on Jane’s views?

Yours Truly.