Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

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Penguin, Jan 20, 2011 - Psychology - 416 pages
“McGonigal is a clear, methodical writer, and her ideas are well argued. Assertions are backed by countless psychological studies.” —The Boston Globe

“Powerful and provocative . . . McGonigal makes a persuasive case that games have a lot to teach us about how to make our lives, and the world, better.” —San Jose Mercury News 

“Jane McGonigal's insights have the elegant, compact, deadly simplicity of plutonium, and the same explosive force.” —Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother 

A visionary game designer reveals how we can harness the power of games to boost global happiness.

With 174 million gamers in the United States alone, we now live in a world where every generation will be a gamer generation. But why, Jane McGonigal asks, should games be used for escapist entertainment alone? In this groundbreaking book, she shows how we can leverage the power of games to fix what is wrong with the real world-from social problems like depression and obesity to global issues like poverty and climate change-and introduces us to cutting-edge games that are already changing the business, education, and nonprofit worlds. Written for gamers and non-gamers alike, Reality Is Broken shows that the future will belong to those who can understand, design, and play games.

Jane McGonigal is also the author of SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient.
 

Contents

Praise
CHAPTER TWO The Rise of the Happiness Engineers
CHAPTER FOUR Fun Failure and Better Odds of Success
CHAPTER SIX Becoming a Part of Something Bigger Than Ourselves
PART TWO Reinventing Reality
CHAPTER EIGHT Leveling Up in Life
CHAPTER NINE Fun with Strangers
PART THREE How Very Big Games Can Change the World
CHAPTER TWELVE Missions Impossible
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Collaboration Superpowers
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Saving the Real World Together
CONCLUSION
Practical Advice for Gamers
Index
Copyright

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About the author (2011)

Jane McGonigal, Ph.D., is the Director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for the Future. Her work has been featured in The Economist, Wired, and The New York Times and on MTV, CNN, and NPR. She has been called one of the top ten innovators to watch (BusinessWeek), one of the one hundred most creative people in business (Fast Company), and one of the fifty most important people in gaming (Game Developers Magazine). She has given keynote addresses at TED, South by Southwest Interactive, and the Gave Developers Conference, and foresight and strategic advice to companies such as Microsoft, Nintendo, Nike, SAP, Wells Fargo, and Disney.

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