Jane McGonigal is a game designer and games advocate whose number one goal, according to her biography, is to see a game developer win the Nobel Peace Prize. She holds a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and has contributed to many studies, including ones I've cited in papers this semester! Overall, she's been called one of the 20 most inspiring women in the world in O Magazine, one of the 20 most important women in videogaming by Gamasutra, one of the top ten innovators to watch by Business Week, and one of the 50 most important game developers by Game Developer Magazine.
Her consistent message is that games make the world a better place. They are a place where we are rewarded for how much work we put in, where we can set and achieve goals, and where we can represent our best selves. She also believes that games can change the world for the better. One of her games, Cruel 2 B Kind, is not played on any console but is, in fact, played in the real world. She describes it as “a game of benevolent assassination.” In it, you are given three “weapons,” which are each random acts of kindness. This weapons are things like welcoming people to your city, complimenting a target, offering to help, expressing admiration, and wishing your target a happy made-up holiday. Each player also is weak to one of these weapons. The game is played in a public space, such as a park, and, though there is a point scoring system, the purpose of the game is more about catching innocents in the crossfire of your vicious attacks as you tell them that you really like their shoes.
Another one of Jane's games is a website called SuperBetter. This website is essentially the gamification of the healing process. Whether one is healing from a broken leg, chronic pain, or a major depressive episode, SuperBetter exists to expedite the healing process and help the user get, not just better, but SuperBetter. The game first came to her in the form of Jane the Concussion Slayer when, in 2010, she had a concussion that wasn't healing properly. She identified anything that triggered her symptoms (such as bright lights and crowded spaces) as enemies, and anything that made her feel just a bit better (such as cuddling her dog or walking around the block) as power-ups. She developed a secret identity and gathered her sister and husband to help as her allies. Prior to this, she had been overwhelmed with suicidal ideation. Because she had to rest to help heal her concussion, she was severely limited in the kinds of things she could do, including no video games, no work, and no caffeine. Compounding this with constant headaches and pain, there wasn't much that made her life worth living. After she started playing Jane the Concussion Slayer, her symptoms were still there, but, as she puts it, she stopped suffering. When she started to post about her experiences, she attempted to generalize the game and renamed it SuperBetter.
As more people began to participate, it became clear that there was something behind this. More people were feeling happier and more connected to their friends and family. Jane attributes this to something called post-traumatic growth, which is a type of reaction that certain people have after traumatic experiences to reevaluate their life priorities and reconnect with friends and family. In her TED Talk, The game that can give you 10 extra years of life, she talks about the types of resilience that influence whether a person is likely to experience post-traumatic growth and how to build those types of resilience, so that people can gain the benefits without the prerequisite of trauma.
I personally was lucky enough to see her speak at the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco in 2013 and also have had my life personally improved by SuperBetter. I'll admit that this is a bit of a stretch from games in education, but Jane McGonigal is a powerful voice for games as good.
If you did watch her TED Talk, what did you think? If you didn't, it's worth it.
Bonus: here are the results from a study examining whether SuperBetter actually helped improve symptoms of depression. Spoiler alert: it does.
This was a reallyyyyy interesting article Kelsey - I really enjoyed reading it! It's something that no one else has really done or talked about. I agree that games play a major role in society and by creating games that are geared towards promoting kindness and doing good things, children will be affected by them and learn from an early age that doing good deeds results in rewards and will then apply what they've learned to themselves. A lot of the games that are coming out now are all about fighting or music - both of which usually have negative connotations. I feel like this is why our society is so violent; because kids are introduced to such actions at such an early age, they think of it as normal to bully and fight with others. It's important that we learn from studies such as these and apply what we've learned to making better games that actually promoting good things.
ReplyDelete