Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (52 page)

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

Authors: Jane McGonigal

Tags: #General, #Technology & Engineering, #Popular Culture, #Social Science, #Computers, #Games, #Video & Electronic, #Social aspects, #Essays, #Games - Social aspects, #Telecommunications

BOOK: Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
13.59Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
These are exactly the good game skills and abilities that the ancient Lydians drew upon in order to survive catastrophic climate change and reinvent their own civilization.
If they did it then, we can do it again today.
We have been playing computer games together for more than three decades now. By that count, we’ve accumulated our own eighteen years’ worth of preparatory good gaming, and then some. We have the collaboration superpowers. We have the interactive technology and global communication networks. We have the human resources—more than half a billion gamers and counting.
More than three thousand years after the ancient Lydians harnessed their game skills and abilities to reinvent the world, we are ready to do the same.
We are ready for humanity’s next epic win.
WE CAN
no longer afford to view games as separate from our real lives and our real work. It is not only a waste of the potential of games to do real good—it is simply untrue.
Games don’t distract us from our real lives. They
fill
our real lives: with positive emotions, positive activity, positive experiences, and positive strengths.
Games aren’t leading us to the downfall of human civilization. They’re leading us to its reinvention.
The great challenge for us today, and for the remainder of the century, is to integrate games more closely into our everyday lives, and to embrace them as a platform for collaborating on our most important planetary efforts.
If we commit to harnessing the power of games for real happiness and real change, then a better reality is more than possible—it is likely. And in that case, our future together will be quite extraordinary.
Acknowledgments
I could not have written this book without the inspiration, collaboration, advice, and support of the following individuals. I wholeheartedly thank:
Chris Parris-Lamb, my agent at the Gernert Company, for having the vision for this book before I did, for convincing me to write it, and, most importantly, for donning a blindfold and running through a labyrinth the very first time we met.
+50 Courage
 
Laura Stickney and Alex Bowler, my wildly talented editors at Penguin Press and Jonathan Cape, for so much editorial wisdom and encouragement. Thank you for finding what was important in the book and bringing real clarity to my ideas. (And for ensuring that I used the word “awesome”
fewer
than a hundred times in the final manuscript.)
+50 Epic Guidance
 
Everyone at Penguin Press, Jonathan Cape, and the Gernert Company, for taking seriously the idea that games can make us better and change the world—and for lending your great skills and talents to this project.
+100 Teamwork
 
My brilliant colleagues at the Institute for the Future, for always bringing the next decade into focus, and especially my mentors, who taught me how to think about the future: Marina Gorbis, Jean Hagan, Bob Johansen, and Kathi Vian.
+100 Foresight
 
Everyone at the Leigh Bureau, for helping me hone my story about the power of games, and for finding opportunities to deliver it to amazing communities and organizations around the world.
+50 Encouragement
 
The conference organizers who invited me to give the talks that inspired this book—Hugh Forrest (for SXSW), Eric Zimmerman (for the Game Developers rant), Susan Gold (for the IGDA Education Summit), and June Cohen, Kelly Stoetzel, and Chris Anderson (at TED); and the Conference Associate program at the Game Developers Conference, for providing aspiring game developers with a foot in the door.
+20 Life Changer
 
The great game designers and game researchers whose work inspired and informed this book—most influentially, Edward Castronova, Katherine Isbister, Raph Koster, Frank Lantz, Nicole Lazzaro, and Katie Salen.
+20 Big Ideas
 
The positive psychologists whose research helped me understand why we love games so much; their research is the engine for my game design, especially: Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Dacher Keltner, Sonja Lyubomirsky, and Martin Seligman.
+25 Well-being, +25 Happiness, +25 Life Satisfaction, and +25 Flow
 
The amazing game developers and creators who taught me the craft—especially Elan Lee, Sean Stewart, Jim Stewartson, Ian Fraser, and Finnegan Kelly.
+100 Creative Genius
 
The players of EVOKE, The Lost Ring, Superstruct, CryptoZoo, World Without Oil, Top Secret Dance-Off, Bounce, Cruel 2 B Kind, and Tombstone Hold ’Em, for daring to go where no gamers had gone before.
+50 Gamefulness
 
My closest collaborators on these projects—Kiyash Monsef, Robert Hawkins, and Nathan Verrill on EVOKE; Jamais Cascio and Kathi Vian on Superstruct; Ken Eklund and Cathy Fischer on World Without Oil; Greg Niemeyer and Ken Goldberg on Bounce; Ian Bogost on Cruel 2 B Kind; Julie Channing, Edwin Veelo, Toria Emery, and all the global puppet masters on The Lost Ring; and Elan Lee on Tombstone Hold ’Em.
+100 Superheroic Collaboration
 
Mike and Paula Monsef, for encouraging me to write and always wholeheartedly participating in my games.
+200 Nurturing
 
My parents, Kevin and Judy, who bought a used Commodore 64 for me and my sister when we were in fifth grade so that we could practice writing on Bank Street Writer and learn to program our own games in BASIC.
+500 Love
 
My twin sister, Kelly, for her support through the process of writing this book—and for telling me more than ten years ago (in a flash of empathic insight) that, based on my childhood talents and strengths, I should invent a career for myself combining game design and public speaking. It sounded crazy. But she was right.
+1000 Compassionate Willpower
 
And most of all, my husband, Kiyash, who is my all-time biggest epic win, and the best possible ally in making a life worth living. “You know, sweetheart, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: nobody knows what’s going to happen at the end of the line, so you might as well enjoy the trip.”
+1000 Curiosity, +1000 Wonder, +5000 Meaning
Appendix
HOW TO PLAY
This list is designed to help you learn more about the games in this book—and to get firsthand experience playing them. If you want to become actively involved in the community of people who are already making and playing world-changing games, these resources will show you where to start.
 
HOW TO FIND OUT MORE
To read more case studies and learn about new and upcoming alternate reality games, forecasting games, happiness hacks, crowd games, and collaboratories, visit the website for this book,
www.realityisbroken.org
.
WHERE TO GET INVOLVED
 
If you want to help create, playtest, sponsor, or commission a game designed to have a positive impact—to improve players’ lives, to solve real problems, or to change the world—join the social network Gameful, at
www.gameful.org
. Other organizations dedicated to a similar mission include Games for Change (
www.gamesforchange.org
), Games Beyond Entertainment (
www.gamesbeyondentertainment.com
) and the annual academic Games, Learning, and Society Conference (
www.glsconference.org
).
 
WHAT TO PLAY
Many of the alternate reality and world-changing games described in this book are free and available to play online or on your mobile phone. Others are no longer playable, but have been archived online for public viewing. The best online resources for learning about or playing these games are described below. Because many of the games in this book are, at the time of publication, still in beta or prototype form, their availability may change; we will track their availability and the emergence of new games at the book’s website,
www.realityisbroken.org
.
The games below are arranged in alphabetical order, with the chapter in which they are described listed after their name.
 
BOUNCE
(Chapter 9) A beta version of this cross-generation conversation game, developed at the UC Berkeley Center for New Media by Irene Chien, Ken Goldberg, Jane McGonigal, Greg Niemeyer, and Jeff Tang, is available in English and Spanish at
http://heidegger.ieor.berkeley.edu/bounce/
.
 
CHORE WARS
(Chapter 7) A beta version of the chores-management game, created by Kevan Davis, is playable at
www.chorewars.com
.
 
COME OUT & PLAY FESTIVAL
(Chapter 9) Find out when and where the annual street festival for new mobile, social games is happening at
www.comeoutandplay.org
.
 
THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS
(Chapter 9) Find out more about how to play this social street game, invented by Simon Evans and Simon Johnson, at
http://swarmtoolkit.net
, or watch a short documentary at
http://vimeo.com/1204230
.
 
CRUEL 2 B KIND
(Chapter 10) A short documentary of the game of benevolent assassination, created by Jane McGonigal and Ian Bogost, is available at
www.cruelgame.com
, where you can also download a kit for running your own Cruel 2 B Kind game.
 
DAY IN THE CLOUD
(Chapter 8) You can play the archived version of this in-flight game, developed by Google Apps and Virgin America, wherever you are—even if you’re not on an airplane!—at
www.dayinthecloud.com
.
 
EVOKE
(Chapter 14) You can join the EVOKE game network for social innovation, created by Jane McGonigal and Kiyash Monsef, and developed by the World Bank Institute and Natron Baxter Applied Gaming, at
www.urgentevoke.com
.
 
THE EXTRAORDINARIES (NOW KNOWN AS SPARKED)
(Chapter 12) Join the microvolunteering game, created by Jacob Colker and Ben Rigby, or design your own nonprofit mission, at
www.sparked.com
. Find out more at
http://blog.beextra.org
.
 
FOLD IT!
(Chapter 11) You can solve protein-folding puzzles for science at
http://fold.it/portal
, a collaboration between the University of Washington departments of computer science and engineering and biochemistry.
 
FOURSQUARE
(Chapter 8) Sign up for this social life-management game at
www.foursquare.com
, or search your smart phone’s app store or market for the Foursquare mobile phone app.
 
FREE RICE
(Chapter 11) Play games to help end hunger at
http://freerice.com
, a nonprofit website run by the United Nations World Food Programme.
 
GHOSTS OF A CHANCE
(Chapter 9) Explore the archive of the Smithsonian Museum’s experimental game and sign up to play a ninety-minute version at the museum at
www.ghostsofachance.com
.
 
GROUNDCREW
(Chapter 12) Organize your own team of agents to tackle any social problem at
http://groundcrew.us
, and learn more about the company behind the platform and its founder, Joe Edelman, at
http://citizenlogistics.com
.
 
HIDE & SEEK FESTIVAL AND SANDPIT
(Chapter 9) Keep track of new mobile, social immersive experiences and games being invented and publicly playtested in the United Kingdom at
www.hideandseekfest.co.uk
.
 
INVESTIGATE YOUR MP’S EXPENSES
(Chapter 11) Play with the crowdsourcing tool and read updates about the
Guardian
’s political investigation of UK parliament members at
http://mps-expenses.guardian.co.uk
.
 
JETSET
(Chapter 8) See more screenshots from the airport game developed by Persuasive Games, and download it for your iPhone, at
www.persuasivegames.com/games/game.aspx?game=jetset
.
 
LOST JOULES
(Chapter 12) Learn more about this pending smart-meter game project, powered by Adaptive Meter, at
http://lostjoules.com
.
 
THE LOST RING
(Chapter 13) To learn more about The Lost Ring, created as a partnership between McDonald’s, AKQA, Jane McGonigal, and the International Olympic Committee, explore the player-created wiki at
http://olympics.wikibruce.com/Home
or watch the interactive case study at
http://work.akqa.com/thelostring/
.
 
NIKE+
(Chapter 8) View all the Nike+ challenges and sign up to join the running game at
www.nikeplus.com
; an inexpensive Nike+ sensor and an iPhone or iPod are required to play.

Other books

The Fat Flush Cookbook by Ann Louise Gittleman
Pearl Harbor Betrayed by Michael Gannon
Haunted Love by Cynthia Leitich Smith
The Kingdom of Brooklyn by Merrill Joan Gerber