Saturday, November 17, 2012

Post 5: "Gaming Can Make a Better World" by Jane McGonigal

In this video the author altercates  that humanity can be saved by maintaining an active life in the virtual world. This is because she believes that by playing video games people develop many skills that are necessary for our survival, such as extreme optimism, social fabric, productivity, and epic meaning. She states that "if we want to survive the next century on this planet, we must go from 3 billion hours a week to 21 billion hours a week," relating to how long we should play video games. McGonial's goal for the next decade is to try to make it as easy to save our world in the real life as it is to save it in the real world, and she believes that it is possible. I feel like the theme of the video is to point out that video games aren't harmful as many people believe, but they are actually necessary and substantial for a more peaceful environment and a better development of humanity. As stated by the author, gamers become "super-empowered hopeful individuals," and exceptional problems solvers. the key to our survival and solution to our problems.