Reality Is Broken - Summary

Introduction: Reality Is Broken

  • The Premise: The central idea is that many people are increasingly drawn to virtual worlds and online games, leading to a significant shift away from real-world activities.
  • Edward Castronova's Prediction: This shift could lead to a social cataclysm greater than those caused by cars, radios, and TV, making global warming seem minor in comparison.

The Exodus to Virtual Worlds

  • Gamers' Discontent: Gamers are portrayed as being dissatisfied with reality, finding it less engaging and rewarding than simulated environments.
  • Examples of Gamers: The notes detail various types of gamers, highlighting their dedication to online games:
    • Professionals excelling in massively multiplayer online games (MMOs).
    • Music enthusiasts mastering virtual instruments in games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
    • World of Warcraft (WoW) fans contributing extensively to wikis.
    • Casual gamers engaging with handheld consoles.
    • U.S. troops using Halo 3 for virtual combat.
    • Chinese players investing in virtual currency.
    • Kids and teenagers preferring video games over other activities.
  • Missing Elements in the Real World: Gamers seek the feeling of being fully alive, the presence of purpose, the sense of community, and the thrill of accomplishment, which are readily available in games but often lacking in reality.
  • Reality's Shortcomings: The real world is perceived as not being designed to maximize potential or happiness, unlike the carefully designed virtual environments.
  • The Perception of Reality: There's a growing consensus that reality is broken when compared to games.
  • Edward Castronova's Term: Economist Edward Castronova describes phenomenon as a "mass exodus" to game spaces.

Statistical Overview of the Gaming Community

  • Active Gamers in the US: 183 million individuals regularly play computer or video games, averaging thirteen hours a week.
  • Global Online Gamer Community: The size of global online community extends to:
    • 4 million in the Middle East.
    • 10 million in Russia.
    • 105 million in India.
    • 10 million in Vietnam.
    • 10 million in Mexico.
    • 13 million in Central and South America.
    • 15 million in Australia.
    • 17 million in South Korea.
    • 100 million in Europe.
    • 200 million in China.
  • Gaming Time in China: Over 6 million people in China spend at least twenty-two hours a week gaming, equivalent to a part-time job.
  • Hardcore Gamers: More than 10 million "hardcore" gamers in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany spend at least twenty hours a week playing.
  • Extreme Gamers: The United States has over 5 million "extreme" gamers who play on average forty-five hours a week.
  • Economic Impact: Digital games are expected to become a $$68 billion industry annually by 2012.

Societal Views on Gaming

  • Differing Perspectives: The increasing time and money spent on games are viewed with alarm by some (parents, teachers, politicians) and eagerness by others (technology industries).
  • Nongamers' View: Nearly half of the U.S. population, who are nongamers, often consider gaming a waste of time.
  • The Underlying Truth: The amount of time people spend in game worlds signifies an important truth: games fulfill genuine human needs that reality does not.
  • Games' Unique Value: Games provide rewards, teach, inspire, engage, and unite people in ways that reality often fails to do.
  • Potential Societal Shift: Without significant changes, society may evolve into one where a substantial portion of the population dedicates their efforts, memories, and successes to game worlds.

Historical Context of Gaming

  • Herodotus' Account: The first written history of human gameplay is found in Herodotus' Histories, describing a similar mass exodus to games during a famine in Lydia.
  • Mancala: The oldest known game, with evidence showing it was played during Egypt's age of empires from fifteenth to eleventh centuries BC.
  • Institute for the Future's Insight: To understand the future, it's essential to look at the past, as basic human needs remain constant.
  • Games as a Fundamental Part of Civilization: Games have been integral to human civilization for thousands of years.

The Lydian Example

  • Crisis in Lydia: During the reign of Lys in Lydia, a great scarcity threatened the realm.
  • Lydians' Solution: The Lydians engaged in games one day to distract from hunger and ate the next day to abstain from games. This remedy lasted eighteen years, and along the way they invented the dice, knuckle-bones. the ball. and all the games which are common.
  • Moral Truths: Herodotus viewed history as a means to uncover moral problems and truths.
  • Active Escape: Games provide a purposeful, thoughtful, and helpful escape.
  • Adaptive Behavior: Playing games was an adaptive behavior for the Lydians during difficult conditions, making life bearable and providing a sense of power and structure.

Modern-Day Hunger and Games

  • Contemporary Hunger: Many people today suffer from a hunger for more engagement from the world around them.
  • Gaming Statistics: Collectively, the planet spends more than 3 billion hours a week gaming.
  • Games as Nourishment: Games are feeding this hunger for engagement.

A Tipping Point: Games vs. Reality

  • Continuation of the Trend: If the current course continues, virtual worlds will become more immersive and provide alternatives to reality.
  • Potential Future: Many people may spend half their time gaming, similar to the ancient Lydians.
  • Reversing Course: Attempts to block gamers' exit from reality include culturally shaming them, restricting video games, or heavily taxing them.
  • Alternative Idea: Instead of choosing between games and reality, use game design to fix what's wrong with reality.
  • Living Real Lives Like Gamers: Lead businesses and communities like game designers and solve real-world problems like game theorists.
  • Ideal Future: Imagine a near future where the real world works more like a game.

The Challenge to Game Makers

  • Call to Action: Game designers should focus on making real life better for as many people as possible.
  • Personal Journey: The author's experiences in the game-design industry and academic research led to this mission.
  • Early Career: The author worked at start-up companies and experimental design labs, designing puzzles and missions for low-end computer and mobile phone games.

Academic Research and Findings

  • Interdisciplinary Approach: The author's Ph.D. research combined psychology, cognitive science, sociology, economics, political science, and performance theory to understand what makes a good game work.
  • Research Focus: Research focused on how games could change the way we think and act in everyday life.
  • Academic Papers: The author published academic papers and a dissertation proposing how to leverage the power of games to reinvent government, healthcare, education, media, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

Applying Game Design to Real-World Problems

  • Consulting Roles: The author was called on to help large companies and organizations adopt game design as an innovation strategy.
  • Organizations Involved: These included the World Bank, the American Heart Association, the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Department of Defense, McDonald's, Intel, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the International Olympic Committee.

The Game Developers Conference Rant

  • Inspiration for the Book: The book was inspired by a rant delivered at the Game Developers Conference, arguing that reality is broken and games should be used to fix it.
  • Industry Response: The rant resonated with the industry, leading to numerous emails and the founding of start-up companies focused on changing reality for the better.
  • Continued Advocacy: The author continued to advocate for using games to reinvent reality at subsequent Game Developers Conferences.
  • Emergence of New Themes: Popular sessions at the conference focused on "games for personal and social change," "positive impact games," "social reality games," "serious games," and "leveraging the play of the planet."

Vision for the Future and Goals

  • Nobel Peace Prize Goal: The author has a personal mission to see a game designer win a Nobel Peace Prize in the next twenty-five years.
  • Reinventing the History of Games: There's an opportunity to reinvent the ancient history of games for the twenty-first century.
  • Games to Alleviate Suffering: Games should be designed to improve quality of life, prevent suffering, and create widespread happiness.
  • Massively Multiplayer Games: These games should be designed to reorganize society in better ways, and to get seemingly miraculous things done.
  • Games as Solutions: Games can be potential solutions to pressing shared problems and tap into our strongest survival instincts.
  • Satisfying Hunger: Games should satisfy our hunger to be challenged, rewarded, creative, successful, social, and part of something larger than ourselves.
  • Stoking Engagement: Games should stoke our appetite for engagement, pushing and enabling us to make stronger connections and bigger contributions to the world around us.

The Power of Game Designers

  • Ascension of Game Designers: Game designers have ascended to powerful positions in society, directing the energies and attention of large masses of people.
  • Expertise: Game designers are adept wielders of power, having honed their craft and refined their tactics for thirty years.

Understanding Gaming's Impact

  • Dismissal of Games: Those who dismiss games will be at a disadvantage in the coming years.
  • Leveraging Games: Those who understand games can leverage their power in communities, businesses, and lives.
  • Scientific Validation: A survey reported in 2009 that 61 percent of surveyed CEOs, CFOs, and other senior executives say they take daily game breaks at work. *Trends in Gamer Culture:
    • *69 percent of all heads of household play computer and video games.
    • 97 percent of youth play computer and video games.
    • 40 percent of all gamers are women.
    • One out of four gamers is over the age of fifty.
    • The average game player is thirty-five years old and has been playing for twelve years.
    • Most gamers expect to continue playing games for the rest of their lives.
  • Growing Gamer Majority: The gap between gamers and nongamers is shrinking.
  • Rob Fahey's Prediction: Games journalist Rob Fahey said, "It's inevitable: soon we will all be gamers."

A Call to Action: Shaping the Future of Gaming

  • Serious Consideration: The growing gamer majority needs to be taken seriously.
  • Collaborative Creation: Decide what kinds of games to make together and how to play them together.
  • Framework Needed: A framework is needed for determining how games will impact real societies and lives.
  • Book's Purpose: This book aims to serve as that framework.

The Potential of Gaming

  • No Time Wasted: Gamers have built up a wealth of virtual experience that can teach them about their strengths, motivations, and happiness.
  • World-Changing Thinking: Gamers have developed world-changing ways of thinking, organizing, and acting.
  • Jump-Start Engagement: The book helps non-gamers engage with the most important medium of the twenty-first century.
  • Understanding Game Design: Readers will understand how good games work and how they can be used to fix real-world problems.
    *Antoine de Saint-Exupery: once wrote: for the future, your task is not to see it, but to enable it.

Desired Future

  • Better Immersive Reality: Create a better and more immersive reality for the world.
  • Gaming for Everyone: Gaming should be a real solution to problems and a real source of happiness.
  • Game Design Education: Everyone should learn how to design and develop games as a platform for change.
  • Collaborative Play: Families, schools, companies, industries, cities, countries, and the world should come together to play games that tackle real dilemmas and improve lives.

Foreseen Impact of Games

  • Positive Impact: Games can make us thrilled to start our day, reduce stress at work, increase career satisfaction, fix educational systems, treat mental health issues, help the elderly, raise democratic participation, and tackle global problems.
  • Augmented Capabilities: Games can augment essential human capabilities, such as happiness, resilience, and creativity.

Necessary Steps to Create This Future

  • Overcoming Cultural Bias: Overcome the cultural bias against games.
  • Building Hybrid Industries: Build hybrid industries and unconventional partnerships.
  • Developing Core Game Competencies: Develop core game competencies to take an active role in changing lives and enabling the future.

Book Structure

  • Part I: Why Games Make Us Happy: Explore the emotions that successful games provoke and how these feelings can positively impact real lives and relationships.
  • Part II: Reinventing Reality: Discover alternate reality games (ARGs) and how they improve our everyday lives.
  • Part III: How Every Big Game Can Change the World: Discover new participation platforms and collaboration environments are making it possible for anyone to help invent a better future, just by playing a game.

Conclusion

  • Expertise in Games: Readers will become experts on how good games work.
  • Inventing New Games: Readers will be ready to invent their own games and create powerful, alternate realities.
  • Limitless Potential: We can play any games we want and create any future we can imagine.