Reality Is Broken, But We Can Fix It
Playing digital games is something people do for fun, right? It’s not brain surgery, and it’s certainly never going to change the world.
Except game designer Jane McGonigal thinks games can change the world and that game developers have a responsibility to make it happen. Instead of just inviting gamers to escape into a game world that is more attractive than the real world, game developers have a responsibility to steer gamers toward improving the real world.
McGonigal says reality is broken and can only be fixed if we make the real world work like massive, multiplayer games.
We think of games as escapist – as helping us forget about real lives – rather than as adding to our real lives. We think of games as something we play to forget about our problems – not to help us solve real problems. We think of games as fundamentally separate from reality – and I am here to say that this is not only completely wrong, it’s actually the most dangerous idea we have about games today.
Why is it a dangerous idea? Because the biggest obstacle to industry growth is the perception that games are a waste of time. Meanwhile, the biggest source of criticism of videogames is that they are addicting and a distraction from what really matters: real life.
The great challenge for the next decade of games is to battle this perception – AND to do a better job of making games that clearly and powerfully connect with our real lives.- Jane McGonigal, Director of Game Research & Development at Institute for the Future
A very powerful POV and an interesting vision for the future of problem solving. What makes it so interesting to me is that gaming has a huge cultural impact on our life’s long before the first video game was released.
Source: clashofculture
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