Reality is Broken by Jan McGonigal offers a fascinating look at the application of game theory to our everyday life. The first section covers why games make us feel happy. We set up artificial obstacles and make being successful progressively harder as we become better keeping the gamer in a state of flow. For most of us this state is not present in our daily work and is one of the reasons games can be addictive. She uses the Italian word fiero to discribe the bold and prideful emotion people have when they overcome an obstacle to win in a game or in sports. Athletes will signify this by raising both arms up with fists clenched and hands at either side. It is a modification of a referee's touchdown signal in American football.
She has also created unusual games, one is Graveyard Texas Hold em Poker. Five cards are dealt in a graveyard. People in pairs have three minutes to find another pair of "cards" (tombstones) to add to their hand. The restriction is the two Tombstones must be close enough for two people to touch the stones and also touch each other. The shape of the tombstone determines the suit. For example: A flat grave marker is a diamond. She has people touching because this releases the hormone oxytocin allowing the two people to form a bond.
She discusses the evolution of gaming. It needs to evolve from World of War Craft to games that allow people to accomplish something like helping the UK's Guardian Newspaper investigate Member of Parliaments (MPs) Expenses. The government gave the Guardian a massive jpg. dump of MPs expense reimbursement and the newspaper crowd sourced the evaluation of the information to the public through an online evaluation tool. As a result several MPs resigned and the government was refunded over a million pounds for excess reimbursements.
There is also the Stanford University FoldingatHome project where the excess processing capacity of personal computers and Sony PlayStation's are used for computing power to research the topic of protein folding. Improper protein folding is linked to Alzheimer's disease and many cancers.
Jan McGonigal succeeds in illustrating how appropriately applying game theory can make our reality and the lives of others much better.
Reality is Broken - 8 minutes
Jane McGonigal - Gaming can make a better world - Ted Talk 25 min.
Reality is Broken - 79 minute discussion
The book, Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
is available from Amazon.com.
