The player

Can gaming keep the world from going to hell in a handbasket? asks CIARA O'BRIEN

Can gaming make the world a better place? Games designer Jane McGonigal says so. In March she gave a speech at the TED 2010 conference, claiming that gamers could hold the key to solving real-world problems.

According to McGonigal, rather than see gaming as a threat to society, encouraging a generation of couch potato kids and dulling social skills, we should be spending even more time playing online.

“When we’re in game worlds,” she said, “I believe that many of us become the best version of ourselves,

the most likely to help at a moment’s notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long at it takes, to get up after failure and try again.

“In real life, when we face failure, when we confront obstacles, we often don’t feel that way. We feel overcome. We feel overwhelmed. We feel anxious, maybe depressed, frustrated or cynical. We never have those feelings when we’re playing games, they just don’t exist in games.”

So, World of Warcraft, which has been classed as addictive and potentially relationship-wrecking due the depth of involvement of its players, could also help you to be a better person.

Saving the world in WoW, practicing the habits of heroes and learning to collaborate with others could be the key to solving the world's problems, teaching us self-motivation, strengthening relationships and increasing knowledge.

All this will take some time. With that in mind, instead of playing games for three billion hours a week, we should be playing far more than that.

“If we want to solve problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity,” suggested McGonigal, “I believe that we need to aspire to play games online for at least 21 billion hours a week, by the end of the next decade.”

Of course, there are some flaws with that argument. McGonigal admits that games bring out that impulse to step up and be heroic. But it’s easy to be a hero in a world where real consequences are non-existent. In the real world we’re also limited by circumstances, physical abilities and other obstacles.

But we have to start somewhere. McGonigal showcased some of the games that could help change the world, including one that challenges you to live without oil – a real-world challenge still to come.

So next time, someone criticises the amount of time you spend gaming, inform them that, in fact, you’re laying the foundations for a better society.

theplayer@irishtimes.com