



"For years, we've heard about games being about escaping reality," McGonigal said. "But it became increasingly obvious to me that games have a lot to tell us about how to make reality better."

McGonigal delves deep into the behavorial psychology behind video games in her timely new book, "Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World."





But I think McGonigal makes a persuasive case that games have a lot to teach us about how to make our lives, and the world, better. And I'm not alone. McGonigal was the keynote speaker last week at the first-ever Gamification Summit in San Francisco. The term "gamification" refers to the idea of taking the mechanics and dynamics of video games -- such as progress bars and experience points -- and using them to improve nongame tasks, everything from online shopping to fixing schools to saving the environment.





"We all want to find more meaning in what we do, like we're part of something bigger," McGonigal said. "Games give us a place to feel that, to cooperate and do something that is more satisfying."


But the structures that make video games work don't necessarily require a computer or any technology. McGonigal writes about a charter school in New York that replaced grades with a system that awards points for progress, and allows students to "level up" just like in a video game.

There are plenty of reasons to still be wary about video games. We can't dismiss some of the concerns about desensitizing us to violence, or becoming too addictive. As a parent, I still struggle with how to teach my kids to explore video games in a responsible way.


"Game developers know better than anyone else how to inspire extreme effort and reward hard work," McGonigal writes. "They know how to facilitate cooperation and collaboration at previously unimaginable scales."

Stop and consider the astonishing amount of time that people are now spending on games. In the U.S. alone, there are 183 million active gamers out of a population just under 310 million. Each day in "World of Warcraft" alone, people spend more than 30 million hours playing. And that's just one game.

