The premise of the book, in a nutshell, or should I say a Koopa Shell!? (kill me) is that compared to games, reality is broken. It’s a simple statement with big meaning. Games are designed to challenge us. To make us think. They are set up with achievable, ever-more-difficult goals that we have to meet. Games are designed to tantalize us just a bit more than they frustrate us so that we keep playing. They are designed to give us challenges that we’re ready for.
Reality doesn’t do any of those things because reality is not designed to make us happy.
When a game doesn’t do those things, we say a game is “broken.” It’s sort of like saying a person is broken when we say a game is broken. A broken game is one that may or may not have really good qualities, but something fundamental about its design or feel makes the act of playing it unfulfilling.
So, compared to games, reality is broken. Most of us are not appropriately challenged. We don’t feel fulfilled because a lot of the things we do aren’t meant to make us feel fulfilled.
This was a big deal to me, reading this in the first part of the book. I mean, why did I feel so much more engaged playing Gears of War than I ever have at work? And why do so many others feel the same way?
Maybe most importantly, if so many people feel that way, why are we telling ourselves that reality is broken and that’s just the way it is?
In the book, McGonigal has what she calls “fixes” for reality, ways in which we could take a gaming framework and use it to improve reality. I’ve got some below that I found interesting or problematic.
Compared with games, reality is too easy. Games challenge us with voluntary obstacles and help us put our personal strengths to better use.
This one is really important to me, and the chapter in the book really shines a light on the importance of self-selected work. Why do people choose to do boring, repetitive tasks in Farmville while refusing to do equally boring tasks in real life, even for money? Well, because if you pick your own tasks, chances are you’ll pick something you like. If a boss or organization is feeding you tasks, probably not going to be all that exciting for you.
Compared with games, reality is unproductive. Games give us clearer missions and more satisfying, hands-on work.
Boy howdy. How many of us have unclear parameters in our jobs, or our interpersonal relationships? How often have you wished for a progress bar that would tell you how you were doing during the day, or a life bar of sorts like you see in Mortal Kombat that told you how healthy your relationship was?
Compared with games, reality is hopeless. Games eliminate our fear of failure and improve our chances for success.
If there was one thing I wished bosses everywhere would read, it would be this chapter. Basically, in games we aren’t afraid of failure. We don’t want to fail, but we’re willing to try different things over and over until we find the best way to do it. In fact, games seem to reward behavior like that, especially newer games with hidden extras and side quests. Work does not reward taking side quests very often. And if you tried something several times and only discovered that the first attempt was the best, a workplace will often tell you that you just wasted time trying the other methods. I guess what I’m saying to bosses out there is that if you eliminate the fear of failure, and by that I don’t mean a failure to try but a failure to succeed after making reasonable, rational efforts, you will probably find that creativity so many workplaces ask for from employees.
Compared with games, reality is unsustainable. The gratification we get from playing games are an infinitely renewable resource.
In studies cited in the book, the author points out that the reward of a paycheck doesn’t really increase job satisfaction. At all. Don’t get me wrong, it would be easier to get up in the morning if I knew that my job was financing my yacht-buying habit. But I don’t think the day-to-day would be all that different. Meanwhile, the rewards in games are rewards that are not based in money, or at least real-world money. They can be nearly infinite, really, because they don’t rely on limited, real-world commodities. So what ways can we find to reward ourselves that aren’t so based in the material world?
Anyway, those are just a few of the fixes. I’ll slow down before things get too cosmic.
I’d say the failure of this book, for me, came about 2/3 of the way through. After that point there was a lot of talk about games that were meant to do social good, such as World Without Oil where players had to deal with a scenario of a world without oil and create narrative materials that demonstrated how they dealt with the whole thing.
That’s fun for some people, as demonstrated by the participation, and it certainly works towards the author’s goal of creating games that make reality better. My problem? I haven’t seen a reality-fixing game yet that doesn’t FEEL like a reality-fixing game. Nor, after reading this book, do I know what that would look like.
Take Chore Wars. Chore Wars is a game where players, let’s say roommates, create a list of chores, create narratives surrounding the chores, and assign points to each chore. The idea is that by participating in the game, you can create a different value to chores, assign your own rewards, and so on. However, that FEELS like what it is, which is a way to make chores better. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a good thing. But it still hasn’t made chores into a game. It’s made accomplishing the chores a more rewarding activity, but scrubbing a pee-encrusted toilet still doesn’t seem very gamelike to me, even after adding Space Invaders decals to the bowl.
What I think I’m asking for is a demonstration that these reality fixes work, and what that means is a game that I want to play purely because of the gameplay, and that the benefits to reality are incidental.
Mario Teaches Typing was surely an improvement over Mavis Beacon. No doubt. But don’t think for a minute that I forgot what I was doing. Now, if someone could create a game that taught typing, and it was a genuinely fun, engaging, well-crafted game that resulted in improved typing, that’s something I could get behind.
Or if Mavis Beacon fought Bowser. Option two.