Jane McGonigal Quotes

Scientists have demonstrated that dramatic, positive changes can occur in our lives as a direct result of facing an extreme challenge - whether it's coping with a serious illness, daring to quit smoking, or dealing with depression. Researchers call this 'post-traumatic growth.'

A game is an opportunity to focus our energy, with relentless optimism, at something we’re good at (or getting better at) and enjoy. In other words, gameplay is the direct emotional opposite of depression.

Gamers always believe that an epic win is possible and that it's always worth trying and trying now.

When we play a game, we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we're more likely to reach out to others for help.

Reality is broken and we need to make it work more like a game.

There is no problem that doesn't have some underlying need for more optimism, stamina, resilience and collaboration. And games are, I believe, the best platform we have for providing that.

When we play games, our brains respond differently to stress and obstacles. We're better able to control our attention and ignore distractions.

I didn't accomplish what I set out to do, but I realized I had set out to do the wrong things

What's really amazing about games is how they change our emotional response to challenges

If you can manage to experience three positive emotions for every one negative emotion … you dramatically improve your health and your ability to successfully tackle any problem you're facing.

My goal for the next decade is to try to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games.

I want gaming to be something that everybody does, because they understand that games can be a real solution to problems and a real source of happiness. I want games to be something everybody learns how to design and develop, because they understand that games are a real platform for change and getting things done. And I want families, schools, companies, industries, cities, countries, and the whole world to come together to play them, because we’re finally making games that tackle real dilemmas and improve real lives.

Compared with games, reality is disconnected.

Games are unnecessary obstacles we volunteer to tackle.

The real world just doesn’t offer up as easily the carefully designed pleasures, the thrilling challenges, and the powerful social bonding afforded by virtual environments. Reality doesn’t motivate us as effectively. Reality isn’t engineered to maximize our potential. Reality wasn’t designed from the bottom up to make us happy.

Every game we play activates our brain, and it's the same brain we have in real life as we have in the game.

Game design isn’t just a technological craft. It’s a twenty-first-century way of thinking and leading.

A dramatic decrease in oil availability is not at all far-fetched.

My favorite part of running is the thinking time.

Game developers know that people have more fun when they're in large groups. They feel more fired up when the challenges are more epic.

I see a future in which games once again are explicitly designed to improve quality of life, to prevent suffering, and to create real, widespread happiness.

The idea of the 'lone gamer' is really not true anymore. Up to 65 percent of gaming now is social, played either online or in the same room with people we know in real life.

It may have once been true that computer games encouraged us to interact more with machines than with each other. But if you still think of gamers as loners, then you’re not playing games.

When you strip away the genre differences and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.

When we're in game worlds, 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.

Games that make you feel good about yourself are good games to be playing.

The single biggest misconception about games is that they're an escapist waste of time.

If you are a gamer, it’s time to get over any regret you might feel about spending so much time playing games. You have not been wasting your time. You have been building up a wealth of virtual experience that, as the first half of this book will show you, can teach you about your true self: what your core strengths are, what really motivates you, and what make you happiest.

I'm not a fan of simulations. Where, 'Oh, we'll go play a simulation of world peace and figure out how to make peace' and then somehow magically that will get translated into the real world. No, that's not the kind of games that I make.

We can boost our immune systems by strengthening our social networks and decreasing stress.

Games are work. There are economies popping up in games now because people value them.

Games are providing rewards that reality is not.

It's a bit counter-intuitive to think about the future in terms of the past. But...I've learned an important trick: to develop foresight, you need to practice hindsight. Technologies, cultures, and climates may change, but our basic human needs and desires - to survive, to care for our families, and to lead happy, purposeful lives - remain the same.' p 5

The more we consume, acquire, and elevate our status, the harder it is to stay happy.

Games are such a powerful intervention in health and wellness.

Any time I consider a new project, I ask myself, is this pushing the state of gaming toward Nobel Prizes? If it's not, then it's not doing anything important enough to spend my time.

A traumatic event doesn't doom us to suffer indefinitely. Instead, we can use it as a springboard to unleash our best qualities and lead happier lives.

Over time, the games we play can change how we think and what we're capable of. And it's easy to maximize the benefits so the changes are positive.

You need to develop mental habits that allow you to activate the same brain patterns we activate during gameplay.

It seems like what happens when we play games is that we go into a psychological state called eustress, or positive stress. It's basically the same as negative stress in the sense that we get our adrenaline up, you know, our breathing rate quickens, our pulse quickens.

Cory Doctorow is a fast and furious storyteller who gets all the details of alternate reality gaming right, while offering a startling, new vision of how these games might play out in the high-stakes context of a terrorist attack. Little Brother is a brilliant novel with a bold argument: hackers and gamers might just be our country's best hope for the future.

I don't want to be a saint; I just want to help people.

Clinically speaking, depression is a pessimistic sense of your own capabilities, and despondent lack of energy.

If you make it a game, gamers will play it no matter what your motivation is in making it.

I've been running since high school. My boyfriend was on the track team, and I'd run with him.

Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.

I worry a lot about people using games just for marketing, to get people to buy more stuff, which I think would be the worst possible use.

Things like depression and obesity are global challenges.

Every game designer should make one explicitly world-changing game. Lawyers do pro bono work, why can't we?

Growing up, I was prone to anxiety.