Video games will save the world.

I didn't like Jane McGonigal's TED talk that much on first listen, but the more I think about it, the more I think she's on to something.



All that time I spent playing Grand Theft Auto when I could have been doing useful things… McGonigal's right that the structure of achievement in video games gets at something important in human psychology. The most compelling video games out there find ways to give the player challenging-but-doable tasks. My favorite games made me feel like I was accomplishing a lot, though when I thought about it later I would always realize that I hadn't done much of anything. McGonigal's idea is to build "games" that give the player incentives to do little things. If somebody made a Facebook app that gave people arbitrary "points" every time they volunteered at a soup kitchen or worked at a habitat house or something, I bet some people would get really into it. McGonigal seems pretty sharp, so I hope she finds a way to create something along these lines that really works.