Release year: 2011

Thanks to Mikaël G. for suggesting this book to me.

Questions

What is the book about as a whole?

The book is centered on a single question: What if we decided to use everything we know about game design to fix what’s wrong with reality?

What is being said in detail, and how?

The book is divided in three parts.

In part I, it explores why games make us happy. The author claims that every game needs to have these four characteristics:

Goal: provides players with a sense of purpose
Rules: place limitations on how players can achieve the goal. Rules unleash creativity and foster strategic thinking.
Feedback system: tells players how close they are to achieving the goal.
Voluntary participation: everyone who is playing the game knowingly and willingly accepts the goal, the rules, and the feedback.

In short, playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.

When we’re depressed, we suffer from two things: a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity. The book discusses an emotion that provides the most powerful neurochemical highs humans can experience: fiero. This is the emotion we feel when we throw our arms over our head and yell. Games make us happy because they make us experience fiero and pull us out of our depression.

Games induce a sense of flow, a concept defined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to describe “optimal experiences.” Indeed, flow wasn’t supposed to come easily to humans, as it is typically the result of years, if not decades, of learning the structure of an activity and strengthening skills and abilities. Yet, video games, with their fast and tight feedback loops, allow for more reliable hits of fiero. An interesting note is that too much flow can lead to happiness burnout, while too much fiero can lead to addiction.

One crucial strength of games is their power to make failure fun. Indeed, any meaningful learning must be preceded by failure. However, not all failure is followed by learning. If failure makes us give up, we lose our ability to modify our approach and learn something new. Thus, games give us a safe ground to practice emotional stamina in a way that can allow us to stay urgently optimistic in the face of failure. The emotional skills acquired during gameplay can (and often do) translate in real life.

Finally, games make us happy because they give us more opportunities to connect with people. There are two aspects to this. First, by teasing each other in winning/losing situation, we are enjoying the benefits of a social vaccine. If done respectfully, the act of teasing induces trust, which is an essential ingredient to a strong relationship. Also, because video games are deterministic, it is possible to use them as a medium to practice coaching. For example, single player games can be played cooperatively, where one player holds the controller and the other one is giving advice in real time. When other people are successful, we feel pride (instead of resentment and jealousy) when we feel we played a part in it. This kind of activity builds a feeling of community and brings people together in a way that allows them to collaborate more effectively in the real world.

In part II, the author shifts gear and looks at how we can concretely take what we learn from games and implement those learnings in the real world. For example, she details a game called Tombstone Hold ‘Em, a game she designed as part of a marketing campaign for the western-themed video game Gun. The game was to get people to think about death in a concrete way that would make them understand the value of life. It was also to bring people into graveyards, sites that see less and less activity as time goes on, so much so that it is starting to become a problem. In this game, people are invited to play as a group in actual graveyards. The goal is to find which pair of tombstones, when translated into cards, would give the best poker hand within an allotted time limit. While this idea might seem controversial at first, if not blasphemous, the author ensures that the game filled its premise. The fact that players had to be able to read the tombstones often meant that they had to clean them up, pull branches out of the way, etc. Simply put, this game made people see graveyards and death itself differently.

In part III, the author goes on exploring similar ideas from part II, but on a planetary scales. By leveraging the internet, what games could we play that would gives us leverage to change the world for the better? She cites Wikipedia as a successful crowdsourcing effort of massive value to the world. One example the author designed is World Without Oil, an alternate reality game where players start acting in their real lives as if the world ran out of oil. This thought experiment was meant to help predict the impact of an oil shortage, and what short-term solutions would work (or not) to get out of it. The outcome of this “game” is a website that documents the perspective of many players for posterity. This is something that can now be studied by real researchers to prepare for a real crisis.

The book ends with these two sentences, which I absolutely love:

Games don’t distract us from our real lives. They fill our real lives: with positive emotions, positive activity, positive experiences, and positive strengths.

The great challenge for us today, and for the remainder of the century, is to integrate games more closely into our everyday lives, and to embrace them as a platform for collaborating on our most important planetary efforts.

Is the book true, in whole or part?

All of the accounts in this book are documented and are real. The book rang very true to me, especially the first part, which I was able to experience myself by implementing games in the offices where I previously worked.

What of it?

I think the author is onto something. Her life’s mission is to have a game designer win a Nobel prize, and I believe such a thing is bound to happen. Games are highly leveraged tools for organizing behaviors and motivating humans.

This read made me feel better about my passion for games. There was a period in my life where I was consumed by the desire to play games, which was surely excessive. I pushed my mental pendulum as far as I could, so much so that recently I felt shame for wanting to bring games to a friend’s house (the same friend who recommended me to read this book). For example, the book gives many suggestions of games we can play to connect with our friends. As a result, I started playing Scrabble on my mobile, even though I am dreadful at it. It connects me to my partner, my aunt, and friends in new ways.

Moreover, it rekindled in me my passion for games as a way to make the world better. It gave me a framework of what works and what doesn’t, and gave me a vision of how to scale the power of games to something larger than a living room.

Review

I have found this read very interesting. It reignited in me the desire to play games with my fellow humans, which over the years had somehow grew fainter. The world was sending me signals that games were meant for children or immature adults, but this book reaffirmed that I was actually onto something.

This book prompted me to start a new habit in my life, which is to play some games on mobile with my loved ones in a correspondence mode. I now play Scrabble with my loved ones, even though I’m bad at it. This allows me to better appreciate the strengths of the people I already love.

Even though I felt that part 1 featured much content I was already familiar with, and that part 2 and 3 dragged due to the sheer amount of content, this was a worthwhile read. I feel that Jane McGonigal is a visionary and she is right that the actions that will lead to solving planetary problems such as climate change will probably be rooted in games that will allow us to stay organized and motivated.

Félix rating:
👍

⭐ Star Quotes

Introduction

(p. 5-6) ⭐ To understand the future, you have to look back at least twice as far as you’re looking ahead. The goal of history is to uncover moral problems and moral truths in the concrete data of experience. Part I : Why Games Make Us Happy

Chapter 1 : What Exactly Is a Game?

(p. 21) ⭐ Real-time feedback serves as a promise to the players that the goal is definitely achievable, and it provides motivation to keep playing.
(p. 21) ⭐ The freedom to enter or leave a game at will ensures that intentionally stressful and challenging work is experienced as a safe and pleasurable activity.
(p. 22) ⭐ Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.
(p. 28) ⭐ The opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression.
(p. 32) ⭐ When we seek out passive entertainment and low-engagement activities, we’re using them as a counterbalance to how stimulated and overwhelmed we feel.
(p. 32) ⭐ By trying to have easy fun, we often go too far in the opposite direction. We go from stress and anxiety straight to boredom and depression.

Chapter 2 : The Rise of the Happiness Engineers

(p. 36) ⭐ “Flow” is most reliably and efficiently produced by the specific combination of self-chosen goals, personally optimized obstacles, and continuous feedback that make up the essential structure of gameplay.
(p. 45) ⭐ There are many ways to be happy, but we cannot find happiness. We have to make our own happiness—by working hard at activities that provide their own reward.

Chapter 3 : More Satisfying Work

(p. 55) ⭐ Satisfying work always starts with two things:
- a clear goal
- actionable next steps toward achieving that goal
(p. 55) ⭐ If we have a clear goal, but we aren’t sure how to go about achieving it, then it’s not work—it’s a problem.
(p. 57) ⭐ The fastest way to improve someone’s everyday quality of life is to bestow on a person a specific goal, something to do and to look forward. (Sonja Lyubomirsky)
(p. 57) ⭐ To be truly satisfied, we have to be able to finish our work as clearly as we started it. To finish work in a satisfying way, we must be able to see the results of our efforts as directly, immediately, and vividly as possible.

Chapter 4 : Fun Failure and Better Odds of Success

(p. 66) ⭐ When we’re reminded of our own agency, it’s almost impossible not to feel optimistic.
(p. 67) ⭐ As long as our failure is interesting, we will keep trying—and remain hopeful that we will succeed eventually.
(p. 68) ⭐ In many cases, hope of success is more exciting than success itself.
(p. 69) ⭐ Flourishing isn’t about pleasure or satisfaction. It’s about living up to our fullest potential. To truly flourish, we have to be optimistic about our own abilities and opportunities for success.

Chapter 5 : Stronger Social Connectivity

Chapter 6 : Becoming Part of Something Bigger Than Ourselves

(p. 97) ⭐ Value is a measure of importance and consequence. Just because something doesn’t have value doesn’t mean it doesn’t have meaning.
(p. 113) ⭐ True happiness comes not from thinking more of ourselves, but rather from thinking less of ourselves—from seeing the truly small role we play in something much bigger, much more important than our individual needs.
(p. 114) ⭐ “It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.” (Abraham Maslow)

Part II : Reinventing Reality

Chapter 7 : The Benefits of Alternate Realities

(p. 136) ⭐ When you’re saving the world, you can’t be shy about asking for help.
(p. 137) ⭐ Reaching out and really asking for what we need makes a huge difference. It prevents social isolation and it gives people who want to help, but don’t know how, something specific and actionable to do.

Chapter 8 : Leveling Up in Life

Chapter 9 : Fun with Strangers

Chapter 10 : Happiness Hacking

(p. 183) ⭐ Synchronizing physical behavior to music we like is one of the most reliable (and safest) ways to induce euphoria, a form of extreme happiness.
(p. 184) ⭐ Knowing what makes us happy isn’t enough. We have to act on that knowledge, and not just once, but often.
(p. 186) ⭐ Thinking of happiness as a self-help process will doom us to failure. Ideally, happiness needs to be approached as a collective process: activities to be done with friends, family, neighbors, strangers, coworkers.
(p. 186) ⭐ It’s easier to change minds than to change behaviors.
(p. 187) ⭐ “There is one easy step to unhappiness—doing nothing.” (Tal Ben-Shahar)
(p. 203) ⭐ “It is only when we shake free of our fear of death that we can truly enjoy life.” (Epicurus)

Part III : How Very Big Games Change the World

Chapter 11 : The Engagement Economy

Chapter 12 : Mission Impossible

(p. 251) ⭐ Good mission design contains:
- a focused task
- a clearly defined context for action
- a real window of opportunity
(p. 254) ⭐ Smiling even when you don’t feel like it can actually trigger real feelings of confidence and optimism.
(p. 257) ⭐ We can love people when we know what they need.
(p. 265) ⭐ ⭐ Even if you fall flat on your face, you’re still moving forward.

Chapter 13 : Collaboration Superpowers

Chapter 14 : Saving the Real World Together

Conclusion : Reality Is Better

(Read 103) Reality Is Broken