Want to Save Planet Earth? Start By Playing More Online Games

In a lecture by Jane McGonigal, Professor at the Institute for the Future, online gamers spend a total of 3 billion hours a week honing their craft. Snce the first online Warcraft game emerged in 1994 — that’s nearly a combined 6 million years. And if they have any interest in seriously saving our world, it ain’t nearly enough.

While McGonigal’s speech was earlier this year, we feel it’s important enough to recap as a reminder as the year closes out — after all, it is in the interest of saving humanity.

McGonigol has a list of goals she hopes gamers will help accomplish. She concedes that some of her goals may seem impossible (and also laughable, judging by the audience reaction), An example being that over the next decade, “make it as easy to save the real world as it is in online games.”

On the conference screen, she displays a familiar looking photo: the gaming face, crinkled and frowning in intense concentration. It’s the same face we need to see on people all over the world, if we’re gonna solve its future difficulties.

The problem, McGonigol says, is that most gamers feel like they’re better in the gaming world than in the real world. When we’re in the gaming world, we’re more hopeful, but in real life, when we confront problems, we’re not as confident.

That needs to change if we’re going to have a future at all, says McGonigal.

The point is, when we are so immersed in the world of online gaming, we evolve. Worldwide, McGonigol says, there are 500 virtuoso gamers. In the next decade, that will increase to a billion. And with it, so will 4 key attributes inherent to so many online gamers already — ones that improve our chances for world success.

Urgent Optimism

This is, according to McGonigol, “The desire to act immediately, tackle an obstacle, and be positive about it.” Such optimism naturally spreads to…

Gamers Are Social

Sitting in your room by yourself and playing an online game may be more socially constructive than grabbing a coffee with the gf, or even a beer with your buddies, or even going to a party. Building a community, a network of friends you trust to play your game with, to value the same goals and compete with — it improves social connectivity and companionship.

Blissful Productivity.

WOW gamers with full time jobs play an average of 22 hours a week. That’s pretty much a second gig. Why? They’re empowered by the optimism of being in that online world and want to return to immerse themselves in it. We’re happier working hard at something we love than relaxing.

Epic Meaning.

Gamers love to be attached to awe-inspiring missions, to human implanetary scale stories. She points to the giant epic World of Warcraft wiki as an example. This all means that gamers are a certain kind of…

Super Empowered, Hopeful Individual Capable of Changing the World

But, they believe too much that they can change the virtual world, and not the real one. As she points out, economist Edward Castronova believes that we are witnessing nothing short of a ‘mass exodus to virtual worlds and online game environments.” This make perfect sense becauce they feel more rewarded in this world, they feel more optimism, connect more, feel rewarded. But it’s not enough.

According to Herodotus, formal games were invented during Greek times during famine as a way to distract the people from their respective plights: On one day, people would eat. The next day, they would play newly-invented dice games. They passed 18 years of famine this way. Mc believes we use games to escape the real world environment.

According to Herodotus, after 18 years the famine wasn’t getting any better. They would play one last game, divide the kingdom in half, leave the homeland and decide who would go out and seek the new world and find new land and new crops. That game inspired them to come together and move on to another world. This isn’t just a legend; DNA and ecological study proves it might be true. In this case, gaming saved the world.

“We need to make the future, not predict it,” says McGonigol. “We need to be positive and envision the best outcome possible, and empower people and give them the means to create the game.”

To drive her point home, McGonigol presents 3 immersive online games she’s designed, much in the hope of doing what Herodotus believed the ancient Greeks did.

World Without Oil: A game envisioning a future without oil. Gamers must work together to explore alternate economic theories and energy resources, then blog, advertise it and network globally to better the future. According to that ever-persistent peak oil theory, it may be better to play it safe.

Superstruct A Supercomputer has calculated the human race has only 23 years of existence left on the planet. Gamers have to invent the future of energy, deal with hunger, grow new crops, and control population, and focus on the future of space travel. Our past few administrations could have put some stock in this one.

Evoke If you complete this game, you are certified by the world bank as a creative innovator. Work with traditional online gaming skills and apply them to the real world. You’ve got leveling up, sustainability, resourcefulness.

Evoke also features an online graphic novel which details a possible future with many of the above problems. Share these games with young people and old in the developing world. What do we do with all these amazing gamers.

“Gamers are a human resource, to do real world work, and that games were a powerful platform for change. ” Let’s bring gamers together to help change the human race.

Inspiring? Awesome? Futile? It may depend on how you view yourself in the real world. Or maybe the gaming one?

RELATED LINKS:

Race to World First Takes You Inside World of Warcraft Like Never Before

Study Shows Female Gamers Have More Sex Than Non-Female Gamers

[image courtesy of /afk The Movie]

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