TED 2010: Reality Is Broken. Game Designers Must Fix It | Epicen. Playing digital games is something people do for fun, right? It’s not brain surgery, and it’s certainly never going to change the world. Except game designer Jane McGonigal thinks games can change the world and that game developers have a responsibility to make it happen. Instead of just inviting gamers to escape into a game world that is more attractive than the real world, game developers have a responsibility to steer gamers toward improving the real world.
Director of game research and development for the Institite for the Future, McGonigal says reality is broken and can only be fixed if we make the real world work like massive, multiplayer games. Games — particularly alternate reality games — inspire large groups of people to pool their knowledge and skills to overcome obstacles, and this is precisely what’s needed to tackle global social issues, such as poverty, hunger, disease and climate change, McGonigal says. TED 2010: Full Coverage McGonigal: Yes.