Video Games: Billions of hours, millions of years!

At the recommendation of my commenter, I actually decided to skip starting with Wikipedia (however, when it becomes relevant I will return there to seek out new sources), and I started by searching Jane McGonigal and her book "Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How they Can Change the World." At the moment I haven’t had an opportunity to get my hands on a copy, however her website, Reality is Broken. offers links to a variety of wonderful resources. In addition to the interview that Allison mentioned with Stephen Colbert, Jane has done a TED Talk on this topic, which can be viewed here.

In this 20 minute video, McGonigal discusses quite a few ideas about how video games can help better or fix our broken world. She also discusses how games are helping better our youth. And she presents a few interesting factoids. 1) We currently, as a people, spend 3 billion hours, globally, playing online games… weekly. 2) Globally we as a people have invested 5.93 million YEARS worth of hours playing World of Warcraft ALONE. 3) Per a Carnegie-Melon researcher the average young person in a developed country will spend 10,000 hours playing games by the time he/she is 21; contrasted to the 10,080 hours spent in school (assuming perfect attendance) from the 5^th grade until high school graduation.

All of these things she presents actually help to explore a question I was ruminating on the other day: Social games, and how they can affect players. Now specifically I was wondering about social disorders, such as social anxiety. Can online games be used as an effective alternative treatment regimen? Based on her TED Talk, yes they can and more. It was rather inspiring to listen to, to be frank.

McGonigal’s talk also inspired another question. Can games be developed or turned to helping solve global problems? Gamers are notoriously focused and goal driven. We enjoy meeting and beating challenges. And we aren’t easily deterred. Can craft scientists, mathematicians, psychologists, and game designers work together to start solving real crises? We, as a group, already understand tactics and strategy. Resource management is well within our scope of ability.

So with that in mind I ended up recalling an interesting news story from last year. With this to inspire us, it would seem that yes games and gamers can be put to practical use! In 3 weeks, gamers produced an accurate and workable model of a protein that retroviruses need to replicate; read the full article here. This is, apparently, an accomplishment that scientists were unable to achieve in over a DECADE.  To motivate players they simply gave them points for each chemically stable model a player or team could produce.

Both of these sources are interesting to delve into, however both regard online games. Online gaming is one facet of the world that is gaming.  I haven’t had an opportunity to really explore offline games, which some of my original inquires relate better to. So I now wonder, since online gaming offers such promise to the player (and even the global community) is it only online gaming that has merits? Perhaps offline games are too limiting and isolationist? And I also wonder, especially after watching McGonical’s talk, is it healthy or unhealthy to spend so much time on games? 3 billion hours weekly… it’s staggering. And she wants to multiply that number 7 fold in the next decade!

Watch the Ted Talk below: