Blog Post 5

In the Jane McGonigal TED Talk video, she introduces the idea that video games can be the solution to urgent world problems. She explains that the large population of gamers need to concentrated their time on a game that challenges them to find answers to real world problems. She says that people excell better in games than in real life because they feel like they can achieve anything.

In McGonigal’s writing she is able to answer the “so what?” question by using current examples that people already care about such as obesity, poverty, hunger, or climate change. This shows the audience why this is important and what she hopes to achieve. McGonigal is also able to answer the “who cares?” question by connecting with certain groups of people, and using outside opinions to strengthen her ideas. She explains how the game “World of Warcraft” has millions of users that work endlessly to become experts in the game. This group of people could apply there effort to another game which would allow them to find solutions to bigger world problems. McGonigal also references other professionals that share a similar idea. She uses the example of Economist Edward Castronova, who shares the same idea that people live more efficient lives in games because they are always working to achieve the goal. This shows the audience that other people have interest in this topic other than her.

McGonigal uses her personal game experiments as a technique to further answer the “so what?” question. She created a game called the “Super Struct”, where the human civilization is dying and they have to find solutions to energy, food, health, and security. After eight weeks the players found 500 creative solutions to these problems. This experiment showed that the games do work and they can be the answer to many unsolved problems.