For years after their creation, electronic video games were thought of as distractions from real life productivity. They were 8-Bit screens filled with ‘bleeps and bloops’ of sound effects and were simplistic in every way, shape, and form compared to the video games of today. However, much like modern day video games, both games from their respective time periods offered continuous stimulation for the gamer. In an excerpt from “Reality is Broken” by Jane McGonigal, the idea of video games becoming a benefit to society is expressed by the author. McGonigal addresses the video game community as a thriving generation in and of itself that is continuing to grow year after year. She also describes the typical gamer as ubiquitous throughout society because everyone and anyone can be a gamer; from middle school teenagers with significant free time in their schedules, to the 9-to-5-ers that play video games for various reasons. The idea that McGonigal is trying to relay to her audience is that gamers are gamers because they see something in video games that is not offered to them in real life: “Gamers want to know: Where, in the real world, is that gamer sense of being fully alive, focused, and engaged in every moment(?)” (McGonigal). So instead of embracing just one culture, a gaming-influenced one or not, McGonigal offers the alternative of integrating gaming aspects into real world life.

While I do not consider myself a gamer, I’ve had nearly every next-generation video game console that has been released in my household, however each console wasn’t purchased for my use, but my fathers instead. My father, a man that works 10-hour days on average, still finds hours throughout the day, and even more time on the weekend, to play his video games. I’ve never seen him purchase a video game and not complete it in a matter of days, if not a week or two. He is extremely tenacious in progressing through his games, but from what he’s told me, his vice with video games is that they are a stress reliever from work. You see, in line with what McGonigal suggests about being stimulated constantly, I believe that my father uses video games to constantly stimulate himself outside of reality for a few hours a day aside from his work-life.

There are individuals like my father who use video games as a distraction from their work lives, but then there are individuals who have turned video games into a major part of their lives by investing significant amounts of their actual savings into virtual goods. These people are the folks that I see McGonigal referencing when she says that certain people have become distracted by the appeal that virtual worlds have to offer in comparison to the real world. Her solution to this conflict of real and virtual cultures is to “provid[e] gamers with better and more immersive alternatives to reality, I want all of us to be responsible for providing the world at large with a better and more immersive reality” (McGonigal). How she plans on integrating gamer-like accomplishments in the real world, I am still unsure of, but personally I wouldn’t mind a society that had certain aspects of video games to them…perhaps a “checkpoint” before every test so I can load at that location if I’m unhappy with my grade!

Source: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/big-book/excerpt-reality-broken