Book Review: “Reality is Broken” by Jane McGonigal

Jane McGonigal (2011). Reality is broken : why games make us better and how they can change the world. New York: Penguin Press.  http://realityisbroken.org

For background, I should note that I’ve been playing computer games probably longer than Dr. McGonigal has been alive, and certainly longer than computers have had screens and mice.  (Yes, children, you actually can create typewriter-based computer games.) I’ve expended my share of time in games, so much so that I’m pretty much gamed out.

My interest in games, especially massively multiplayer and alternate reality games, was reignited by Ed Castranova’s early work.  Castranova is famous for, among other things, proving beyond a doubt that virtual worlds have real economies.  But what got my attention was the results of his 2001 survey of Everquest players, in which 20% said the game is their “primary residence” (i.e, the live in Norath and commute to Earth for work), and another 22% said they would live in the game if they could.

OK, something is going on here, and I’ll regret it if I don’t pay attention.

Jane McGonigal Wants to Hack Reality

McGonigal gives her take on exactly what is going on.

The introduction sets out her thesis and manifesto:  Games are “better” than “reality”. This situation is really not satisfactory:  How can we make “reality” better?  This book, along with her many papers, talks, and games, constitutes a concerted effort to use “games” to make the world a better place.

Games make us happy, she says, because they operate on some important psychological principles, which are not usually found in ordinary life.  These principles are laid out in several chapters, with supporting research, practice, and theory. The chapter titles give you the idea:

• More Satisfying Work
• Fun Failure and Better Odds of Success
• Strong Social Connectivity
• Becoming Part of Something Bigger than Ourselves

This is a framework for understanding games, and specifically for understanding why they are fun and “addictive”, and why people will spend significant fractions of their life playing, and, also, how they change the player.

If games are so much better than real live (so much so that “reality is broken”), and people are “better” in games, too; what should be done?

McGonigal takes a radical and fearless approach: use what we know about games to make “real life” more gamelike.  This is not to say, let’s make life “meaningless fun”, what she means is let’s solve problems that matter using the principles that make games work so well.

The second section explains her project of “Reinventing Reality”. Basically, using the methods used to create great games to create activities that improve the real world and change real human behavior.

Walking the Walk 

McGonigal sketches some recent games that illustrate this idea. There are lot’s of pointers to interesting games to try out, and perhaps inspire the reader’s own creativity. For instance, she discusses quite a few recent alternative reality games, such as World Without Oil and Cruel 2 B Kind. These “games” are designed to be fun, but have real world goals and, she says, real world effects.

One of the more remarkable games is a first-person account of McGonigal’s 2009 struggle to recover from a concussion. In the depths of this debilitating brain injury, she created the game SuperBetter, which applies the design principles she has described to enable people to create their own environment to overcome illness or injury. She recounts how the game works, and how it helped her.

Not every game will appeal to you, perhaps most will not.  But, as she says, “We can play any games we want”, so it’s up to us to make up better games.  And that’s what she is trying to do with a ‘meta’ game, the ‘Gameful’ web site, AKA, “the secret hideout” (http://gameful.org).

Gameful is basically a social web site, built on conventional web technology.  The overall theme is, “everyone can and should design their own games (for improving real life)”. However, the basic social web tech is overlaid with a bunch of “gamelike” features, e.g., points and levels that are awarded for actively participating in the community.  So, ‘gameful’ is sort of a game for creating games.  Or something—I’m not sure there is a term for it.

Discussion

Frankly, I enjoyed earlier works of McGonigal a lot more than this book.  “I love Bees”, and the “Puppetmaster Problem” are great papers and describe astonishing games cum psychology experiments.  RiB is much more serious and ambitious, and far less weird.  Some of the material is pretty basic (e.g., Chapter 1).  I know why she had to include it, but it is a grind for anyone who is already familiar with the background material.

I’m sure there are grounds for criticism of her ideas.  Throughout the book, we can see McGonigal’s own goals and style clearly. The games employ pretty conventional themes (quests, super powers, spy thrillers, etc.), and mostly build on conventional computer and network platforms.  These are a rather limited and culturally biased collection of ideas, mostly the games bore me.

There are certainly a raft of cultural assumptions baked into this very Californian view of  human nature and “the future”, which isn’t going to fit everyone.  For instance, I have to imagine that many religious believers will have their own ‘epic stories’ they want to be part of, and probably significantly different takes on what the world’s problems are, and how to solve them.  But, of course, everyone can use the design principles to improve the world the way they see it.

Overall, this book is both radical and soundly argued, and, as all great leaders do, she is walking the walk. She has to be taken seriously.

I especially recommend this book for folks thinking about what they want to do in life, entering college, or similar.  You may get some good ideas here.

Final summary:  She made me think hard.  I have no higher praise to give.