Gaming

Today in class we were talking about how people think that we can use video games to solve some of the worlds largest problems. For me the lecture today wasn't totally convincing for me so I decided to look into it further online.

Online I have found some articles talking about how and why they think video games can help solve world problems. The main article I will be referencing is " http://www.businessinsider.com/jane-mcgonigal-on-how-games-can-change-our-future-2012-6 " and it is a synopsis of what Jane McGonigal spoke about at the World Innovation Forum. The first reason they had come up with was that gamers are apart of an enormous community. They showed the statistics for Call of Duty, Angry Birds, etc and how so many people play these games already and how diverse all of these gamers are. The next reason was that gamers log a ridiculous amount of gaming hours and that redirecting these problems into a game version will have people spend a longer amount of time on these projects. They spoke about how there is a study that gamers are more creative than those who do not play games and that it will bring in a lot of out of the box thinking.

Towards the end they say that 1 billion gamers would be ready to work with scientists, economists, etc but you have to tell them what the next challenge is. The way I took that is that yes they can tackle these challenges but only if the challenge is laid out in front of them, they cannot just come up with things on their own without a guide.