15 - Epic Win: Why Games Are The Future of Learning

by Lennart Nacke

She says: “Let’s make the future!” Jane McGonigal is a pro­lific alternate-reality-games designer and leads game research and devel­op­ment at the insti­tute for the future. Occasionally, she also gives really cool pre­sen­ta­tions with stim­u­lat­ing ideas in them. Nobel prizes for game devel­op­ers? Sure thing. And again, we are talk­ing about using the power of games for every­day life. In her slides, she out­lines the col­lab­o­ra­tive poten­tial of games, appeal­ing to the cen­tral inner crav­ing for hap­pi­ness we humans feel. She sum­ma­rizes her key points for this human crav­ing repeatedly:

  • Satisfying work
  • Experience of being good at something
  • Time with friends/people we like
  • Being part of some­thing bigger

The slides are full of inter­est­ing exam­ples to put mas­sive human col­lab­o­ra­tion to work in a play­ful way to build knowl­edge and solve prob­lems glob­ally. Her point that our school sys­tem at the moment feels “out of heroic con­text” is quite inter­est­ing. Especially in schools, we need to learn to har­ness the dig­i­tal lifestyle and teach col­lab­o­ra­tion as early as pos­si­ble to pro­voke curios­ity in the top­ics that mat­ter for our world in the long term. Enough talk. Please check out her slides.

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