I DON’T BUY IT!

An academic Response to the TED talk by Jane McGonigal,  “Gaming can make a better world”

Janine Olah

                In the TED talk video by Jane McGonigal entitled “Gaming Can Make a Better World” in our class on October 23^rd , Jane McGonigal presents herself as a game designer who wants to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in games. She feels that in order to do this people need to be convinced to play bigger and better games. McGonigal points out that we spend about 3 billion hours per week playing online games.  She calculates that we actually need to play over 21 billion hours per week to solve problems like hunger, global conflict, poverty, climate change, obesity, and the like.  My first thoughts on this were: I don’t buy it! I do think we need to spend more time solving those problems, but I do not see how gaming can do it.  I do agree that gaming can help people learn some of the skills to solve problem and can help with collaboration, concentration and optimism, but I don’t think games themselves are the answer to the big picture problems.

                McGonigal’s point is that the intense concentration and optimism of a gamer on the verge of an epic win is what is needed in order for us to have the kind of deep focus that we need to solve big world problems.  An “epic win” is a win that is almost beyond what you think is capable.  So she feels that if we seek out to have epic wins against some of humanity's problems, we can relate our gaming skills to real world problem-solving skills. With this point I agree, but I don't think increasing hours online is the way to do it. 

                The problem is, McGonigal points out, that a lot of gamers feel they are not as good in reality as they are in a game world.  They are not as inspired to cooperate, not as motivated to do something that matters. IN GAME WORLD, they become the best version of themselves, get up after failure, stick with a problem as long as it takes, but in real life they feel overwhelmed, frustrated, cynical and even depressed. Still, McGonigal believes that if we can translate some of the skills gamers have into skills to use in the real world, we can solve big problems.  The main skills she claims gamers have are these 4 “superpowers of gaming virtuosos:

1.       1. Urgent optimism – Gaming fosters extreme self motivation and  hope of success

2.      2.  Social Fabric – Gaming builds up bonds, trust and collaboration with others

3.      3.  Blissful Productivity-People are happier working hard and gaming gives them hard work to perform

4.     4.   Epic meaning- Gamers love to be attached to awe expiring missions

                Towards the end of her talk, Jane McGonigal talks about up some of the games that have been created in order to help solve real world problems.  “World Without Oil” is a game where people try to survive an oils shortage; “Superstruct”, is a game with a premise that we only have 23 years left on the planet and teams were formed to invent the future of energy, food, health, etc; and “Evoke”, a game where social innovation skills were learned.  Here’s where I really don’t buy her premise. Yes, during those sample games, people were motivated to come up with ideas and solutions to problems, but I think that the majority of people when given the choice to play a socially-conscious game, or a fantasy game, would certainly choose the fantasy game. They are just more fun!  Even McGonigal admits that we use games to escape reality.  So if reality truly is broken, what would it take for people to want to stay rooted in reality, rather than fantasy? 

                I disagree with McGonigal’s notion that we need to spend 21 billion hours per week playing games.  I enjoy playing games and I think that there is a place for gaming in solving world problems.  I do think that skills that are learned in the games can be translated to the real world, but I don’t think the GAME ITSELF is the method to save the world’s problems. In order to solve the real problems, gamers actually need to budget their time in these fantasy worlds and take what they’ve learned within them into real life. Instead of increasing the time we spend playing games, we should increase the amount of time we do real-world epic winning in such spaces such as education and volunteerism.  Only then can the time we spend in-game translate to epic-wins outside game spaces.