McGonigal’s, TED talk titled Gaming Can Make a Better World is a video that introduced some radical ideas. The main point of her talk stressed the idea that gaming can help people solve real-world problems. She uses the game World of Warcraft as an example of how gamers collaborate to solve problems in their virtual world.

In my opinion, her idea seemed a little far out. Personally, I don’t understand how video games can help “save the world.” They may introduce ideas that can give gamers “solutions” in case of a crisis. But if you’re too busy playing video games I don’t think you have the time to go out and save the world. I do however, plan on playing her online game Evoke, a game based on saving the world. (Which I will post a review about at a later date.)

Now, I do agree with Howard Rheingold in his article, Learning, Playing, Designing: Video Games in School I believe that video games are extremely useful for education. Especially for K-12. The reason why I enjoy video games in education is because of the rewards and incentives. I’ve heard a talk before on TED (can’t find the video) where a man introduced how educational video games were extremely beneficial when trying to teach kids. He claims that they were so great because they engaged the gamers and rewarded them.