Gaming can make a better world.docx

1、Gaming can make a better world Gaming can make a better world Jane McGonigalIm Jane McGonigal. Im a game designer. Ive been making games online now for 10 years, and my goal for the next decade is to try to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games. No

2、w, I have a plan for this, and it entails convincing more people, including all of you, to spend more time playing bigger and better games.Right now we spend three billion hours a week playing online games. Some of you might be thinking, Thats a lot of time to spend playing games. Maybe too much tim

3、e, considering how many urgent problems we have to solve in the real world. But actually, according to my research at The Institute For The Future, its actually the opposite is true. Three billion hours a week is not nearly enough game play to solve the worlds most urgent problems.In fact, I believe

4、 that if we want to survivethe next century on this planet, we need to increase that total dramatically. Ive calculated the total we need at 21 billion hours of game play every week. So, thats probably a bit of a counterintuitive idea, so Ill say it again, let it sink in: If we want to solve problem

5、s like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity, I believe that we need to aspire to play games online for at least 21 billion hours a week, by the end of the next decade. (Laughter) No. Im serious. I am.Heres why. This picture pretty much sums up why I think games are so essential

6、to the future survival of the human species. (Laughter) Truly.This is a portrait by a photographer named Phil Toledano.He wanted to capture the emotion of gaming, so he set up a camera in front of gamers while they were playing. And this is a classic gaming emotion. Now, if youre not a gamer, you mi

7、ght miss some of the nuance in this photo. You probably see the sense of urgency, a little bit of fear, but intense concentration, deep, deep focus on tackling a really difficult problem.If you are a gamer, you will notice a few nuances here: the crinkle of the eyes up, and around the mouth is a sig

8、n of optimism, and the eyebrows up is surprise. This is a gamer who is on the verge of something called an epic win. (Laughter) Oh, youve heard of that. OK, good, so we have some gamers among us. An epic win is an outcome that is so extraordinarily positive you had no idea it was even possible until

9、 you achieved it. It was almost beyond the threshold of imagination. And when you get there you are shockedto discover what you are truly capable of. That is an epic win. This is a gamer on the verge of an epic win. And this is the face that we need to see on millions of problem-solvers all over the

10、 world as we try to tackle the obstacles of the next century - the face of someone who, against all odds is on the verge of an epic win.Now, unfortunately this is more of the face that we see in everyday life now as we try to tackle urgent problems. This is what I call the Im Not Good At Life face,

11、and this is actually me making it. Can you see? Yes. Good. This is actually me making the Im Not Good At Life face. This is a piece of graffiti in my old neighborhoodin Berkeley, California, where I did my PhD on why were better in games than we are in real life. And this is a problem that a lot of

12、gamers have. We feel that we are not as good in reality as we are in games.And I dont mean just good as in successful,although thats part of it. We do achieve more in game worlds. But I also mean good as in motivated to do something that matters, inspired to collaborate and to cooperate. And when we

13、re in game worlds I believe that many of us become the best version of ourselves, the most likely to help at a moments notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long at it takes, to get up after failure and try again. And in real life, when we face failure, when we confront obstacles, we of

14、ten dont feel that way. We feel overcome, we feel overwhelmed, we feel anxious, maybe depressed, frustrated or cynical.We never have those feelings when were playing games, they just dont exist in games. So, thats what I wanted to study when I was a graduate student.What about games makes it impossi

15、ble to feel that we cant achieve everything? How can we take those feelings from games and apply them to real-world work? So, I looked at games like World of Warcraft, which is really the ideal collaborative problem-solving environment. And I started to notice a few things that make epic wins so pos

16、sible in online worlds.So, the first thing is whenever you show up in one of these online games, especially in World of Warcraft, there are lots and lots of different characterswho are willing to trust you with a world-saving mission, right away. But not just any mission, its a mission that is perfe

17、ctly matched with your current level in the game. Right? So, you can do it. They never give you a challenge that you cant achieve. But it is on the verge of what youre capable of. So, you have to try hard, but theres no unemployment in World of Warcraft. There is no sitting around wringing your hand

18、s, theres always something specific and important to be done. And there are also tons of collaborators. Everywhere you go, hundreds of thousands of people ready to work with you to achieve your epic mission.Thats not something that we have in real life that easily, this sense that at our fingertips

19、are tons of collaborators. And also there is this epic story, this inspiring story of why were there, and what were doing. And then we get all this positive feedback. You guys have heard of leveling up and plus-one strength, and plus-one intelligence.We dont get that kind of constant feedback in rea

20、l life. When I get off this stage Im not going to have plus-one speaking, and plus-one crazy idea, plus-20 crazy idea. I dont get that feedback in real life.Now, the problem with collaborative online environments like World of Warcraft is that its so satisfying to be on the verge of an epic win all

21、the time that we decide to spend all our time in these game worlds. Its just better than reality. So, so far, collectively all the World of Warcraft gamers have spent 5.93 million years solving the virtual problems of Azeroth.Now, thats not necessarily a bad thing. It might sound like its a bad thin

22、g. But to put that in context: 5.93 million years ago was when our earliest primate human ancestors stood up. That was the first upright primate.Okay, so when we talk about how much time were currently investing in playing games, the only way it makes sense to even think about it is to talk about ti

23、me at the magnitude of human evolution, which is an extraordinary thing. But its also apt. Because it turns out that by spending all this time playing games, were actually changing what we are capable of as human beings. We are evolving to be a more collaborative and hearty species.This is true. I b

24、elieve this.So, consider this really interesting statistic; it was recently published by a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University: The average young person today in a country with a strong gamer culture will have spent 10,000 hours playing online games by the age of 21. Now 10,000 hours is a reall

25、y interesting number for two reasons. First of all, for children in the United States 10,080 hours is the exact amount of time you will spend in school from fifth grade to high school graduation if you have perfect attendance.So, we have an entire parallel track of education going on where young peo

26、ple are learning as much about what it takes to be a good gamer as they are learning about everything else in school. And some of you have probably read Malcolm Gladwells new book Outliers. So, you would have heard of his theory of success, the 10,000 hour theory of success. Its based on this great

27、cognitive science research that if we can master 10,000 hours of effortful study at anything by the age of 21, we will be virtuosos at it. We will be as good at whatever we do as the greatest people in the world. And so, now what were looking at is an entire generation of young people who are virtuo

28、so gamers.So, the big question is, What exactly are gamers getting so good at? Because if we could figure that out, we would have a virtually unprecedentedhuman resource on our hands. This is how many people we now have in the world who spend at least an hour a day playing online games. These are ou

29、r virtuoso gamers, 500 million people who are extraordinarily good at something. And in the next decadewere going to have another billion gamers who are extraordinarily good at whatever that is. If you dont know it already, this is coming. The game industry is developing consolesthat are low energy

30、and that work with the wireless phone networks instead of broadband Internet so that gamers all over the world, particularly in India, China, Brazil, can get online. They expect one billion more gamers in the next decade. It will bring us up to 1.5 billion gamers.So, Ive started to think about what

31、these games are making us virtuosos at. Here are the four things I came up with. The first is urgent optimism. OK, think of this as extreme self-motivation. Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediatelyto tackle an obstacle,combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success. Gamer

32、s always believe that an epic win is possible, and that it is always worth trying, and trying now. Gamers dont sit around. Gamers are virtuosos at weaving a tight social fabric. Theres a lot of interesting research that shows that we like people better after we play a game with them, even if theyve beaten us badly. And the reason is, it takes a lot of trust to play a game with someone. We trust that they will spend their time with us, that they will play by the same rules, value the same goal, theyll stay with the game until its over.And so, playing a game together actually builds up bon