Playing Games to Advance

          In February of 2010, Jane McGonigal presented redefined thinking about video games in a presentation at TED entitled, "Gaming can make a better world." Voyaging away from the common ideas where video games are marketed propaganda seeking to promote numb thinkers within our society, McGonigal detours from these perceptions with the aid of her personal history with video games and the research she has conducted involving this topic.

          Sharing a similar positive vibe towards our digital entertainment escapes, Rusel DeMaria is the author of the 2007 literary publication, "Reset: Changing the Way We Look at Video Games." Just as McGonigal is quick to acknowledge there is a value and purpose behind these electronic games, DeMaria also voices on the positivity they bring forth. On the surface, one may easily proclaim video games are time trashing factors similar to reality TV, whereas you are becoming worse than a "couch potato," because you're not being actively engaged with a stimulating factor. No so fast! De Maria recognizes playing games in general encourage and regularly exercise our internal processors, such that "chemicals are released when our attention is engaged, other chemicals when we are confronted by novel situations, and still more chemicals when we feel rewarded." Evidently we are very engaged with our surroundings even if we remain visually emotionless during play (DeMaria). Ah! Lacking emotional responses during game play will not always be a true reality. For one, there is a far wider spectrum of games available than simply opting for Poker. McGonigal identifies gamers have a range of expressions showing their inner thoughts such as by "the crinkle of the eyes up, and around the mouth is a sign of optimism, and the eyebrows up is surprise." Games do indeed provide a spectrum of emotions, because we react to the turns and pushes of the game just as we would outside of the miniature world.

          McGonigal draws reference to an outside quote coming from Carnegie Mellon University, which proclaims due to the popularized structure of gaming, someone "in a country with a strong gamer culture will have spent 10,000 hours playing online games by the age of 21." Wow! In part this sounds crazy minded, however, would this not be a realistic computation? Ten thousand hours is indeed a deal of time to do anything, although it all winds down to actually being simply 416 days and 16 hours, or 1 year, 51 days, and 16 hours. However you wish to look at it, this is time being invested in something of interest. Similarly, De Maria exclaims these types of "activities that completely absorb the mind" are among the most "timeless quality," by such they have a lasting impact on who we are due to the time investment we have made.
          Finally, McGonigal alludes to a story traveling back in time to the ancient Kingdom of Lydia. She examines a story told by a Green historian named Herodotus, who proclaimed the kingdom encountered a dreadful famine. The then citizens of Lydia were said to have terminated their 18 year famine "by eating on one day, and playing games on the next... because games are so engaging, and immerse us in such satisfying, blissful productivity, they [the people of Lyida] would ignore the fact that they had no food to eat" (McGonigal). It's marvellous how things work out in the end, is it not?

Works Cited

DeMaria, Rusel. Reset: Changing the Way We Look at Video Games. Reset: Changing
     the Way We Look at Video Games, 2007.

Gaming can make a better world. Performance by Jane McGonigal, 2010. TED,
     www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world. Accessed 5
     Mar. 2017.