Jane McGonigal on Blissful Productivity

As a planet, we collectively spend 3 billion hours a week playing computer and video games.  Today’s youth are contributing a particularly heavy share of that load: The average young person in the UK will have spent 10,000 hours playing games by the time they turn 21. It’s enough to make you ask: Shouldn’t we all be doing something better with our time? Something more productive than, say, slaying virtual monsters, racing virtual cars, and managing virtual football teams?

 But the gamers (and they make up more than a third of the UK population) may be on to something: It turns out that gameplay is extraordinarily productive. It may not increase GDP. But it does produce, more cheaply and reliably than almost any other activity, the positive emotions – such as delight, curiosity, pride and bliss – that scientists say are crucial to our health and success in real life.

It turns out that people who experience on average 3 positive emotions for every 1 negative emotion they feel live 10 years longer. They’re more successful at work, school and personal pursuits – and they also have longer, happier marriages. Scientists say it doesn’t matter where you get these positive emotions – it just matters that you sincerely feel them. And if you watch the faces of gamers while they play – whole-heartedly engaged,  passionately motivated, and intensely rewarded – you know that they’re not just playing games. They’re also building up their inner reserve of good feelings.

They’re also producing social capital. Research from major universities such as MIT and Stanford show that we like and trust other people more after we’ve played a game together -- even if they’ve beaten us. More importantly, scientists have discovered that we’re more likely to help someone in real life after we’ve helped them in a cooperative game.  Games aren’t just making us happier – they’re also building up our social bonds. No wonder 40% of total hours spent on Facebook are spent playing games. Our 3 billion hours a week gaming are producing the two most important aspects of well-being – positive emotions and positive relationships. There’s simply nothing better to be doing with our free time.

 

Jane McGonigal will be delivering the next of our Sunday sermons on the subject of 'Productivity', see: www.theschooloflife.com/sermons and is the author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, published by Jonathan Cape in the UK in Feb 2011.

Comments

[Jacob]

Jehan, I'm going to have to disagree with you when you say that no popular games today teach useful skills. Games can teach hand-eye coordination, problem solving (including both pattern recognition and counter-intuitive thought), memorization skills and teamwork, among others as well. And the article has just said that it doesn't matter where the positive emotions come from, even if they are "cheap and manipulated," which I verily disagree with, just that it's important for people to get them. And gamers do. And the whole last paragraph says that gaming creates and strengthens social bonds (based on research from Stanford and MIT), so how can you still say that "at the end of the day, nothing is accomplished"?

[Jehan Tremback]

gaming is mental masturbation. it may be causing positive emotions, but they are cheap and manipulated by well known behavioral mechanisms. at the end of the day, nothing is accomplished. the most we can hope for from games is that they teach skills and knowledge that could someday be used in the real world. no popular games today do this.