The Ted Talk featuring Jane McGonigal really intrigued me. She stated that the internal power we gain from playing games can be applied to the outside world. Furthermore, we can make games that help affect how we interact with the real world and in doing so improve the world. McGonigal has a very bright outlook on our future, she thinks that games can be a positive change on our world. She thinks that there are four main “superpowers” that gamers get from their online experiences: blissful productivity, social fabric, urgent optimism, and epic meaning. This is the point that made me questionable, do all or most gamers really gain those four skills from playing online games?
I could understand some people achieving some of those skills but McGonigal is insistent that all gamers have these traits. Now I’m not a World of Warcraft player but I do enjoy video games. I can understand the social fabric to an extent because when I was younger I did develop friends over Xbox Live, people I had never met in real life and people I will never meet in real life and that’s the problem. ALthough these voices over my speaker were real people and I interacted with them multiple times a week it didn’t make me any better at being social in reality (I was a very shy kid) and if anything gave me more reason not to go and find more present friends because I had these friends across the country. As for blissful productivity, yes in the game I seemed productive and I was on task but in reality it took away from my school work. McGonigal states that at the current rate gamers are spending the same amount online as they are in classes from 5th to 12th grade. I may have been present at school but my schooling and homework was always delayed and procrastinated to play video games. I do not believe the type of productivity can be transferred to the real world. As for urgent optimism and epic meaning, I was optimistic about games and got a lot of meaning from them but that didn’t transfer over to my real life. That is from my personal experience but I would like to hear if others think those four skills are obtainable from games.
The examinations of how video games affect our lives is so interesting! I personally think they are a waste of time! As you mentioned, they often take away from real productivity by making you ‘feel’ productive. And they make you ‘feel’ like you have friends when you really don’t. This all sounds awful to me.
However, there are some studies that show that some shoot-em-up video games dramatically improve math skills in females. Weird? Others claim that they increase violence in men. One thing is for certain. People spend a lot of time (and money) on video games and they must affect their lives somehow. However, I’m not sure I believe they are doing all the “good” that McGonigal speaks of. I’d like to see more raw evidence.