In Jane McConigal’s book, Reality is Broken she exlores a recently exploding phenomenon of online gaming anlooks at its various social impacts and implications toward the future. When many of us think of online gaming, we tend to think of some overly obsessed child sitting in their room, ignoring reality, entirely fixated on a flashing computer screen. Popular media has given us this image through shows like Southpark, and MTV Real Life stories. These programs however present a rather warped view of the online gamer in my opinion. Having been an online gamer myself, i can almost assure anyone that this is not the case for a majority of Americans. As McConigal states in her except posted on the market place (http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/big-book/excerpt-reality-broken ) generally Americans tend to be on the lesser end of extreme gamers, with the average game player playing around 1- 2 hours a day. Although i admit that in my prime game playing era, i played for much longer periods of time than an hour or two.
In her book, McConigal makes a lot of really interesting comparisons between reality and virtual gaming environments. She starts by first making the observation that reality was not tailored for each human being, and that reality does not set up each person to succeed, nor does it care if you enjoy it. However, the difference that exists between reality and gaming is that games have been created by human beings for human beings. In games people can feel a sense of adventure, immersion and even in some instances escape. While to some escape sounds like a bad things, because it alludes to the idea of running away from reality, McConigal sees it in a different way. McConigal sees gaming environments as allowing people to exist in a world that makes them feel accomplished, providing structured activities, and allowing for new experiences that could never be experienced in the world.
Though McConigals ideas may seem to be a little bit strange to those fo us who have not looked at virtual worlds as a means for entertainment. I believe that her ideas hold some truth but only to those with willing and open minds. Some people are able to find comfort through online gaming,s some find competition, and some find achievement, who is to say whether or not virtual reality and reality are so very different.
Heres a picture of a guild found in wow, a guild is a collection of players(sometimes who do not even know each other in real life) who adventure and explore the world together .