Jane McGonigal’s: Gaming Can Make a Better World was a video that for the first ten minutes I was going to judge as absolutely ridiculous until I reached the end. In the beginning, I though her claims were superficial, unjustified, and overly optimistic. It seemed like she took some facts and ran with the idea to create an impossible claim that gaming can make a better world. For example, she said that everyone should devote his or her time to gaming because it can create a better world. The statistics she gave was that gamers spent about 10,080 hours immersed in these games—which are about the same as the hours you would spend on your education from fifth grade to high school if you had perfect attendance (McGonigal). I don’t understand how spending hours in a virtual world can possibly be productive to fighting world problems such as poverty in developing nations. I also do not agree with her claim that developing countries need to play games to help their situation. The question is: Would you not use the money spent on the gaming to actually help with the problems in the third world countries?

As I finished the video, I changed my views and agreed with McGoniagal to some extent. McGonigal explained how through gaming, people develop “urgent optimism,” are able to form relationships and trust with people, and work hard to solve a problem. Players constantly get feedback and are rewarded with positive remarks. This enables them to become a “super-empowered, hopeful individuals” (McGonigal). In the end, she talked about the games that she had created. They mirrored real life problems and allowed gamers to come up with creative solutions.

This logic made perfect sense. I am fascinated with the brain, especially with how to be more efficient and how we learn. The more that I read about it, the more research I find on how much of a difference optimism can have on the brain.

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I completely agree when she says she hopes for people to “imagines epic wins” which will empower them. One of the suggestions that I learned from an expert was to write on a piece of paper what you imagine your future to be like but in the present tense. As an illustration, I could write, “I am graduating WVU and I received a letter from a top law school saying that I was accepted” I would then imagine the event as already happening which would then empower me to accomplish that very task. Similarly, I believe gaming allows a person to reach a motivated and optimistic mindset, which will then allow them to be the perfect candidates when trying to solve such dismal problems.