Games Can Make the World Better TED Talk

One of my assignments was to watch the TED Talk by Jane McGonigal called "Games Can Make the World Better." This woman is a genius. She is certainly ambitious with wanting gamers from around the world to play for over 21 billion hours per week, but she believes that this playing can solve the problems of the world, both inside and outside of the game world. 

Ms. McGonigal will definitely be the first one to convince you that playing and learning can be combined. Not only can people learn academic topics from video games, such as currency or vocabulary skills, but they can learn the crucial skills of being able to problem solve and cooperation with others. People need to work together to achieve both short and long term goals. With those goal as the center of gaming, gamers need to communicate with one another and think their way through situations that are right on the verge of what Ms. McGonigal calls the "epic win." This gives players the self-motivation to continue through difficult tasks, even after repeated failure.

In virtual worlds, players are continually earning XP points for completing tasks or achieving missions big and small. This small, but important, release of XP points keeps the gamer engaged in what they are doing and focused to the point of no distraction. Different difficulty levels allow for the acquisition of different amount of XP points. This theory could transfer into education a lot more smoothly than teachers and administrators will give mind to. Of course, some teachers and admin will think of XP points like earning an A or C on a quiz versus test, but students don't get rewarded for earning those. They get handed a paper with a letter written on it, that's the end of the motivation. If students were to earn XP points even for poor grades, they would be more motivated to earn XP points by earning higher grades. These XP points would need to come with some reward system or even an online Avatar.

Ms. McGonigal believes there are four pieces that come together and urge gamers to be better people who can make the world better. These four pieces are Urgent Optimism, Social Fabric, Blissful Productivity, and Epic Meaning. If these four pieces are what resonate with all gamers, children and adults alike need to play more games. There is so much negativity in the world and so many problems that gamers can solve by having that optimism. Games teach people how to focus and keep their eye on the prize, no matter that failure is bound to happen along the way. Social Fabric is what collaboration is all about. Every single day I have my students work together in class, even with people that they may not typically associate. It is so important for humans to be able to communicate with one another in a productive manner. This optimism and sense of community leads to gamers being productive in their own quests and with one another. In online games, people connect with one another or even large groups to work through a task. The completion of an objective through optimism and working together gives meaning to what they are doing. Ms. McGonigal believes that we can harness that fire within games and have gamers solve problems in the real world as well.