Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Currently we see everywhere from the news to the dinner table people complaining about video games and screens. What most people don't realize is that video games have been part of life for over 40 years. Many of the ones complaining used to spend hours at arcades or playing with early video consoles. Video games are part of reality and no matter how much we disagree they will not go away anytime soon. According to a Newzoo report "2.2 billion gamers across the globe are expected to generate $108.9 billion in game revenues in 2017".

Jane McGonigal is a game developer who shares her 10+ yrs experience developing video games. She explains how for gamers Reality is Broken because when they contrast their real life (school, work, etc.) and their virtual worlds they find in the later a lot of the values reality no longer provide.

"Gamers want to know: Where, in the real world, is that gamer sense of being fully alive, focused, and engaged in every moment? Where is the gamer feeling of power, heroic purpose, and community? Where are the bursts of exhilarating and creative game accomplishment? Where is the heart-expanding thrill of success and team victory? While gamers may experience these pleasures occasionally in their real lives, they experience them almost constantly when they’re playing their favorite games."

Games have some characteristics that are more or less common. A sense of purpose, a goal. They have rules that define boundaries and within unleash creativity and foster strategic thinking. Games have a feedback system that keep games engaged and motivated. Finally, McGonigal includes voluntary participation that is important for community formation. A fifth characteristic not included in the book is competition. Which is interesting because as later explained in the book, gamers are good at cooperation. Even in games that are about winning gamers find more motivation in collaborative modes.

McGonigal explains how game developers not only are good at games but have a better understanding of positive psychology and human motivation than most reality developers. Schools, companies, communities and even play spaces and parks miss those elements. No wonder when people have a choice digital easily wins.

“Game designers and developers are actively transforming what once was an intuitive art of optimizing human experience into an applied science. And as a result, they are becoming the most talented and powerful happiness engineers on the planet.”

But the most amazing insight is the power of Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) Role-playing game (RPG). For instance, World of Warcraft gamers had spent over 5.93 million years solving challenges over the first six years. McGonigal proposal is to tap the power of MMO to tackle world problems. Not only local problems but those that require massive efforts such as pandemics, food supply, energy, network security, and migration. Through Alternate Reality Games - ARGs (ARGs are games you play to get more out of your real life, as opposed to games you play to escape it.)" players can bring all the good of video games to the real world.

Throughout the book, Jane McGonigal suggests 14 fixes to reality, in other words; how can we bring the excitement and motivation to our regular lives and more? With ideas such as:

"(Fix #2: Activate extreme positive emotions). That’s why games can put us in a positive mood when everything else fails—when we’re angry, when we’re bored, when we’re anxious, when we’re lonely, when we’re hopeless, or when we’re aimless.” 

“We’ve discovered how game designers help us achieve a state of blissful productivity: with clear, actionable goals and vivid results (Fix #3: Do more satisfying work). We’ve seen how games make failure fun and train us to focus our time and energy on truly attainable goals (Fix #4: Find better hope of success). We’ve seen how they build up our social stamina and provoke us to act in ways that make us more likeable (Fix #5: Strengthen your social connectivity), and how they make our hardest efforts feel truly meaningful, by putting them in a much bigger context (Fix #6: Immerse yourself in epic scale)." 

"We’ve considered how points, levels, and achievements can motivate us to get through the toughest situations and inspire us to work harder to excel at things we already love (Fix #8: Seek meaningful rewards for making a better effort). We’ve looked at how games can be a springboard for community and build our capacity for social participation (Fix #9: Have more fun with strangers). " 

“crowdsourcing games that successfully engage tens of thousands of players in tackling real-world problems for free (Fix #11: Contribute to a sustainable engagement economy).”

Instead of fighting against video games people should learn and incorporate their best practices to life. In addition, this could empower people to collaboratively solve big world problems.

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