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

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

“Forget everything you know, or think you know, about online gaming. Like a blast of fresh air,
Reality Is Broken
blows away the tired stereotypes and reminds us that the human instinct to play can be harnessed for the greater good. With a stirring blend of energy, wisdom, and idealism, Jane McGonigal shows us how to start saving the world one game at a time.”

—Carl Honoré, author of
In Praise of Slowness
and
Under Pressure

 

“
Reality Is Broken
is the most eye-opening book I read this year. With awe-inspiring expertise, clarity of thought, and engrossing writing style, Jane McGonigal cleanly exploded every misconception I’ve ever had about games and gaming. If you thought that games are for kids, that games are squandered time, or that games are dangerously isolating, addictive, unproductive, and escapist, you are in for a giant surprise!”

—Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, and author of
The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want

 

“
Reality Is Broken
will both stimulate your brain and stir your soul. Once you read this remarkable book, you’ll never look at games—or yourself—quite the same way.”

—Daniel H. Pink, author of
Drive
and
A Whole New Mind

 

“The path to becoming happier, improving your business, and saving the world might be one and the same: understanding how the world’s best games work. Think learning about
Halo
can’t help your life or your company? Think again.”

—Timothy Ferriss, author of the #1
New York Times
bestseller
The 4-Hour Workweek

 

“Jane McGonigal’s uncanny vision and snappy writing give all of us a plausible glimpse of a positive human future, and of how gaming—of all things—will take us there.”

—Martin Seligman, author of
Flourish
and
Authentic Happiness

 

“The world has no shortage of creative people with interesting ideas. What it lacks is people who can apply them in ways that really make a difference, and inspire others to do the same. Jane McGonigal is the rare person who delivers on both. Once you start thinking about games as ‘happiness engines,’ and the ways that our lives, our schools, our businesses, and our communities can become more ‘gameful’—more fulfilling, more engaging, and more productive—you’ll see possibilities for changing the real world that you’d never imagined.”

—Tony Hsieh, author of the #1
New York Times
bestseller
Delivering Happiness
and CEO of
Zappos.com
, Inc.

 

“Jane McGonigal’s work has helped define a new medium, one that blends reality and fantasy and puts the lie to the idea that there is such a thing as ‘fiction’—we live every story we experience and we become every game we play. Her insights in
Reality Is Broken
have the elegant, compact, deadly simplicity of plutonium, and the same explosive force.”

—Cory Doctorow, author of
Little Brother
and coeditor of Boing Boing

 

“Jane McGonigal’s groundbreaking research offers a surprising solution to how we can build stronger communities and collaborate at extreme scales: by playing bigger and better games. And no one knows more about how to design world-changing games than McGonigal.
Reality Is Broken
is essential reading for anyone who wants to play a hand in inventing a better future.”

—Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia

 

“Wonder why we love games? McGonigal has written the best take yet on the deep joys of play—and how to use that force for good.
Reality Is Broken
is a rare beast: a book that’s both philosophically rich and completely practical. It will change the way you see the world.”

—Clive Thompson, contributing writer for
The New York Times Magazine
and
Wired

THE PENGUIN PRESS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

First published in 2011 by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright © Jane McGonigal, 2011

All rights reserved

 

Excerpt from
The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia
by Bernard Suits.

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

 

McGonigal, Jane.

Reality is broken : why games make us better and how they can change the world / Jane McGonigal. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-1-101-47549-2

1. Games--Social aspects. I. Title.

GV1201.38.M34 2011

306.4’87--dc22

2010029619

 

 

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

 

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

—BERNARD SUITS, philosopher
¹

G
amers have had enough of reality.

They are abandoning it in droves—a few hours here, an entire weekend there, sometimes every spare minute of every day for stretches at a time—in favor of simulated environments and online games. Maybe you are one of these gamers. If not, then you definitely know some of them.

Who are they? They are the nine-to-fivers who come home and apply all of the smarts and talents that are underutilized at work to plan and coordinate complex raids and quests in massively multiplayer online games like
Final Fantasy XI
and the
Lineage
worlds. They’re the music lovers who have invested hundreds of dollars on plastic
Rock Band
and
Guitar Hero
instruments and spent night after night rehearsing, in order to become virtuosos of video game performance.

They’re the
World of Warcraft
fans who are so intent on mastering the challenges of their favorite game that, collectively, they’ve written a quarter of a million wiki articles on the WoWWiki
—
creating the single largest wiki after Wikipedia. They’re the
Brain Age
and
Mario Kart
players who take handheld game consoles everywhere they go, sneaking in short puzzles, races, and minigames as often as possible, and as a result nearly eliminating mental downtime from their lives.

They’re the United States troops stationed overseas who dedicate so many hours a week to burnishing their
Halo 3
in-game service record that earning virtual combat medals is widely known as the most popular activity for off-duty soldiers. They’re the young adults in China who have spent so much play money, or “QQ coins,” on magical swords and other powerful game objects that the People’s Bank of China intervened to prevent the devaluation of the yuan, China’s real-world currency.
²

Most of all, they’re the kids and teenagers worldwide who would rather spend hours in front of just about any computer game or video game than do anything else.

These gamers aren’t rejecting reality entirely. They have jobs, goals, schoolwork, families, commitments, and real lives that they care about. But as they devote more and more of their free time to game worlds, the
real
world increasingly feels like it’s missing something.

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.