Reality is Broken (Jane McGonigal)

Mom and I picked up this book by Jane McGonigal a couple months back, somewhat on a whim and when we were really only intending to pick up A Game of Thrones (George R. R. Martin). The title and front cover drew our attention, and a quick look inside the front flap convinced me to convince mom to buy it:

More than 174 million Americans are gamers, and the average young person in the United States will spend ten thousand hours gaming by the age of twenty-one. According to world-renowned game designer Jane McGonigal, the reason for this mass exodus to virtual worlds is that video games are increasingly fulfilling genuine human needs. In this groundbreaking exploration of the power and future of gaming, McGonigal reveals how we can use the lessons of game design to fix what is wrong with the real world.

 The book was fascinating (Though it took me longer to read than Martin's 800-page fiction. Why is it that good fiction is always better than great non-fiction? That's a question for another blog). Mom had me pull it out of the bag and read the introduction section on the ride home, where McGonigal presents the situation: millions of people are spending a good chunk of their time in a fictional, game world. Her explanation, as the synopsis states, is because game worlds are fulfilling basic human needs that the real world isn't.

She retells a story told by the first known historian, Herodoctus. According to his Histories, a famine came to the Lydian people thousands of years ago. They tried several different methods of stretching their supplies, and their king finally decreed that they would spent one day so engrossed in playing games, so as not to feel hunger, and the next day they'd stop and eat. In this way, Heroductus says, they passed eighteen years.

McGonigal admits that the story may or may not be true, but uses this as a launching point into the first section of the book, which describes ways in which playing video games are actually benefiting their players. She does a very good job at disproving the common connotation of the word 'game', showing us how games actually make us happier and more self-satisfied, and encourage social connectivity. She quotes Bernard Suits, who said "Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles," and stresses that most games offer no extrinsic reward (money, fame, outside praise), and yet thousands of people will work hard for the intrinsic reward of having overcome a good game-world challenge.

Her goal, by the end of the book, is to get these same thousands of gamers to work hard to overcome real-world challenges, not for extrinsic gain but for intrinsic pleasure, the same way they do in virtual worlds, by making reality fulfill the same needs games are.

While reading, I found myself agreeing in large part with the things she presented. As a literary person, this of course made me feel somewhat... treacherous. I love reading, and I truly wish more people read in their free time, but I've come to believe (even before reading this book) that certain video games can be just as good, or even better, than certain books. When playing a game, you're making decisions and learning how to cope with the consequences. While reading a book, you're just improving your vocabulary and writing skills. Of course, depending on what you're reading or playing, what you really learn changes, but I dislike this stigma people have for gamers, that 'if you play video games you must be wasting your time'.

"These new ‘libraries’ that have arisen in recent years to facilitate reading activities are a frightening sight: dozens of young children, normally so vivacious and socially interactive, sitting alone in cubicles, reading silently, oblivious to their peers." (Excerpt from Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You)

I want to add here that I don't wholly agree with her premise. Yes, I think people should start looking at games in a more optimistic light, especially since they've been around so long ("You don't mind if I play Chess, but you absolutely wont have me playing Little Big Planet?"). However, there are a lot of bad traits that games can propagate that even the worst books can't convince us to undertake. Certainly, video game intake should be regulated like books, by encouraging moderate use of good media, and discouraging (not censoring) the bad.

After (hopefully) convincing us of the possible benefits of video games, McGonigal moves on to showing us how we can integrate lessons learned from the game industry into our everyday lives. She focuses a lot on a field called Positive Psychology, and a genre of game called 'Alternate Reality Games', which take place in real life but utilize the game technology. She moves away from pure-video games and onto real-world games, using game design to get the most out of life.

Throughout the book, McGonigal lists off her proposed 14 'Fixes to Reality':
1 - Tackle Unnecessary Obstacles (provoke interest and creativity for intrinsic rewards)
2 - Activate Extreme Positive Emotions (provide optimistic sense of our own abilities, and fiero)
3 - Do More Satisfying Work (with clear goals and vivid results)
4 - Find Better Hope of Success (not being discouraged by failure and focusing on attainable goals)
5 - Strengthen your Social Connectivity (by building our social stamina)
6 - Immerse Yourself in Epic Scale (making our hard work meaningful with bigger context)
7 - Participate Wholeheartedly Wherever, Whenever we can (by enjoying, and not escaping, our real lives)
8 - Seek Meaningful Rewards for Making a Better Effort (motivating ourselves to work harder)
9 - Have More Fun with Strangers (encouraging and building social participation)
10 - Invent and Adopt New Happiness Hacks (adopting scientific advice for living a good life)
11 - Contribute to a Sustainable Engagement Economy (with many people to tackle real-world problems for free)
12 - Seek out More Epic Wins (creating satisfying, heroic, real-world tasks)
13 - Spend Ten Thousand Hours Collaborating (collaborate and create in the time it takes to become an expert)
14 - Develop Massively Multiplayer Foresight (working together to prepare for the future)

By subtly implementing these fixes, based on how good games work, McGonigal hopes we, as an entire world, can become better people.

I can't say I entirely agree with her, and certainly there's not enough real-world research to say that her 'fixes' will have the intended results, but she brings up a lot of very good points, and I was happy with what I read.

If you want to learn more about the author, Jane McGonigal, and her research, her website is www.janemcgonical.com