Jane McGonigal believes that we can make the world a better place by playing games that are designed to help solve life’s big challenges. I first heard Jane speak two years ago, when we were both speakers at the inaugural Ignite LA. Last night I watched her TED talk (in beautiful HD thanks to Hulu Plus!). Her message is worth sharing.
A few interesting stats to consider before you watch. A student spends just over 10,000 hours attending school from 6-12th grade. The average teen in the U.S. will spend just over 10,000 hours during that same period playing games — about 22 hours a week (a part-time job!).
These gamers have a sense of optimism — they believe they CAN win the game. So what if we change the game to have a real impact on the world around us? Imagine what problems we could solve.
I saw Seth Priebatsch (founder of SCVNGR) talk at SXSW a few days ago, and he had much the same thing to say. Namely that turning the school system into a game would solve, well, pretty much everything.
While he has some valid points (schools exhibit typical game mechanics like allies and enemies, challenges, etc), I have to believe he’s being a bit naive. He suggested replacing the standard A-F grading scale with experience points. That way you don’t “level down” from an A to a D just because you had a bad day. He seemed to think this would prevent people from ever failing.
Except, turning something into a game doesn’t mean people are going to want to play. Not everyone is going to care if they can become a White Knight Level 20 Math Paladin. In fact that might make it even less appealing to some people. Yes, I think the system needs an overhaul but “gamification” (I hate that word) isn’t necessarily the way to go.
SCVNGR is interesting — I’ve been wanting to build a scavenger/pub crawl here in San Clemente using that very app.
As for the game mechanics, I am pretty optimistic that it could be done, but it would require clever and compelling game design.
I’m not sure how it works as far as educating (although Mario Teaches Typing taught all three of my kids to touch type), but games could work wonders for solving specific problems.
Consider for example, a SimCity game that could solve urban planning, energy, job and resource problems. Or a SimPlant game where the goal was to optimize the use of resources, energy and create the optimal design?
By the way, how was SXSWi? I’m jealous, but was way to busy to go.