So as a little boy I remember that I used to play hours and hours of video games. I actually wouldn't be surprised if by the end of my school career, like Jane McGonigal references a lot, I wouldn't have had over 10,000 hours of video gaming under my belt. Thankfully as a kid I was able to do all my homework really quickly and still manage to get a good grade. As I got older this got harder to do since the loads got larger and larger, but I still had to have my fix.
When I think about my childhood growing up I think about what was positive in my life and what was negative. The two positives that were there for me no matter what were both the theatre and video games. My parents were also a great influence in my life but due to some overwhelming circumstances they were led away to deal with big problems in the family. That being said they always made sure that they had time for me without a doubt. I was never abandoned or anything like that. But the two things that I seemed to have the most control over in my life were the video games I played, and the shows I got to do.
Now in the theatre I was able to escape for a little while by pretending to be someone else for a while. And when I wasn't on stage I was often down in the dressing room playing cards with the other cast members. In fact when things got particularly tough at home my parents would through a game night. So games were always a very pivotal part of my life.
When I was maybe 6 or 7 my dad bought me and my sister a Super Nintendo. I was beyond thrilled! And with that my video game education began. At first my parents imposed a one hour rule per day just like we had with TV but if we saved them up every week we could play more on the weekends. Which is what I normally did. After all how can you learn if you can't keep going at it hour after hour?!
Well as I grew up the rules became more relaxed and I was able to play when I wanted to. Slowly I started to adopt harder games such as Final Fantasy and games in the league of World of Warcraft. This became a realm for me to escape even further then game nights or theatre would allow. I could be the most powerful person I knew. And this brings me to Jane's book: Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.
In this book Jane talks about a lot of things that games can do. Starting with part one she talks about Why Games Make Us Happy. She talks about Unnecessary Obstacles, Emotional Activation, More Satisfying Work, Better Hope of Success, Stronger Social Connectivity, and Becoming a Part of Something Bigger Than Ourselves. Now the first one she talk about Golf on page 27, and how the goal of the game is to get the ball into the hole with the smallest number of points. She also talks about then how rather then us just walking up to the hole and dropping it in we use clubs to make it harder.
When dealing with problems at home as a kid I didn't want to take the hard route at first. So playing games like golf or Tetris or Portal would have driven me crazy at first. Feeling as lost as I did initially growing up those types of games would have driven me crazy. (I'm very rule oriented.) But as I got older and the games I originally liked got way to easy I had to upgrade and I found that I indeed did like games where I might not know where I'm supposed to go or what to do.
Then she talks about Emotional Activation. She talks about David Sudnow on page 42 and talks about how he played the game Breakout until he was able to beat it with a perfect score. By doing so he reaches a certain happiness called Fiero. An ultimate joy of victory. Then when he beats the game he has no reason to keep playing. Throughout the book Jane talks about how when a game becomes to easy to win then it no longer is a game that one would desire to play. This for me has always been true. I have two breaking points in a game. 1 is when it's now too easy and I'm just waltzing through to the finish line, or 2 where it gets so hard that I can't move forward at all and get stuck. Those two times for me drive me crazy. I obviously want a challenge but I'd like for it to be obtainable. Games nowadays have and are doing a much better job of that then games of the past.
Then she goes onto More Satisfying Work. She talks about World Of Warcraft. While I have never played it I've played games that are off-line and similar such as Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls. These games have, as she calls it on page 57, "Problems" not work to be solved. When we're at our jobs we go to boring work, but here in these games we get to solve work in the disguise of being a "Problem." It to me is the perfect ideal. Later in the book she talks about how to make work become viewed as a "Problem." If more work nowadays were viewed as a game I feel like it would not only get done faster, but with more love and care.
Then she moves onto Better Hope of Success. As a gamer now I don't mind losing, if it is done in a fair and just manner. As a kid I hated losing at all. The only time that I didn't mind losing was when a fellow human being beat me at a game or if I was really close to beating a really hard computer level after winning a bunch in a row. To this day though I prefer losing to another human. I feel less like I was cheated against with a human. For all I know the computer decided that it was time for me to lose and cheated.
During the part with Stronger Social Connectivity Jane talks about Facebook games and the such. At first I really fought against such games because I felt like whats the point of playing if you don't get to find out who won right then. But then I moved away and found myself wanting to play games with people from back home or even my folks. This was a way for me to keep in touch with those I love and not feel like I was stranded on the other side of the world. It also helped me meet some new gamers who I now play with often.
Then the final part of the first part is Becoming a Part of Something Bigger Than Ourselves. She talks about Halo 3 and their 10 billion kills together as a community. While I've never been a part of something like that as far as a game point of view, I can say that I really have enjoyed being a part of something bigger than me with things such as benefits and the such. When they say that we helped raise more then the charity has ever raised before it makes me feel great!
I have to run for now but more on Parts 2 and 3 later today!
Jason
PS Read the book! It's great!
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