Can Gamers Save the World?

No, gamers can't save the world. Not yet. Jane McGonigal is an optimist. Addicts are not.

However, McGonigal shines some light on the issue of gaming addiction. "Why we're better in games than we are in real life" is a gutsy topic for a PhD. I want to explore a few of the points she makes in her TED Talk, why some of them make sense and some of them don't.

In terms of making sense, McGonigal says, "When we're in game worlds, I believe that many of us become the best version of ourselves, the most likely to help at a moment's notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long as it takes, to get up after failure and try again." For me, that's definitely true. I find myself leaping into the fray without a second thought to help a stranger in trouble. I personally held the mantle of leadership for a team that accomplished things together that no one thought we would do, challenged our naysayers and found success and rewards aplenty. And it took a lot of work. People came in on off-schedule days. One particular fight, we put in over 200 attempts before we succeeded, but the success was resounding. Every time we were discouraged afterwards, we could call up the past for inspiration.

In games, as in reality, it's not so clear cut. Experienced online gamers know there's a significant portion of the population that is the worst version of themselves. Affectionately known as "trolls," they are the digital sadists who find their joy in the torment of others. Sometimes the sadists and the heroes are the same people. I have been both. I have been the flag waving general of morale and beneficience, and I have been the fiery nemesis swooping out of the sky to terrorize the innocent for no reason beyond entertainment.

In terms of addiction, she really hits home when she says, "The problem with collaborative online environments like World of Warcraft is that it's so satisfying to be on the verge of an epic win all the time, that we decide to spend all our time in these game worlds. It's just better than reality." She doesn't state this as an opinion. She states it as a fact, and it is a fact, a fact that renders players suffering from clinical depression vulnerable to losing their ability to be responsible to that continually satisfied desire for success.

The greatest thing that McGonigal has forgotten, the real reason gamers can't save the world, is the existence of the creator. When she asks, "What about games makes it impossible to feel that we can't achieve everything?" that's the answer: Someone made them. We know who designed the problems. We might even know their names and faces. And if something goes haywire, if something becomes impossible, those designers will give us a patch, it will be fixed, and impossibility becomes possibility by virtue of outside interference. The challenges aren't insurmountable because they are specifically designed to be surmountable.

When McGonigal tries to transfer our virtuoso "blissful productivity" outside of created worlds, we lose that confidence in design. No one has designed poverty and climate change as challenges with a definite possibility of solution, at least no one mortal and comprehensible. Having watched the Talk when it was new, I signed up for her game, "Evoke." It was too real, terrifyingly real. While she might discover incredible creativity in her attempts to push gamers into the real world, she is ignoring the major flaw -- the lack of design. Life is not a game.

Comments

[elyob]

So I can't request a patch for real-world haywire?

[Danielle Wilson]

I wish! Well, you can put in a request, but there are no guarantees.