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

Description

How we can harness the power of games to solve real world problems and improve our lives. We are living in a world full of games. More than 31 million people in the UK are gamers. The average young person will spend 10,000 hours gaming by the age of twenty-one. The future belongs to those who play games. In this ground-breaking book, visionary game designer Jane McGonigaI challenges conventional thinking and shows that games - far from being simply escapist entertainment - have the potential not only to radically improve our own lives but to change the world.

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. In 2009, BusinessWeek called her one of the 10 most important innovators to watch. She has given keynote addresses at TED, South by Southwest Interactive, the Game Developers Conference and was a featured speaker at The New Yorker Conference.

Inspiring and engaging * Daily Telegraph * An intriguing and thought-provoking book * New Statesman * Despite her expertise, McGonigal's book is never overly technical, and as with a good computer game, anyone, regardless of gaming experience, is likely to get sucked in * New Scientist * McGonigal is persuasive and precise in explaining how games can transform our approach to those things we know we should do. McGonigal is also adept at showing how good games expose the alarming insubstantiality of much everyday experience. McGonigal is a passionate advocate... Given the power and the darker potentials of the tools she describes, we must hope that the world is listening -- Tom Chatfield * Observer * McGonigal brilliantly deconstructs the components of good game design before parlaying them into a recipe for changing the offline, 'real' world' * Literary Review *