How Gamers May Save the World

I'm a gamer and yet I'll admit that I was skeptical. As much as I'd love to believe that my maneuvering of pixels is productive, I secretly know that it isn't.

But then Dr Jane McGonigal began her lecture and my perception started to shift.

The cynic in me noted that she designs games. She has authored books and completes lecture circuits telling people to play more games. She has a vested (and monetary) interest in this.

However, her arguments are sound. Her data is backed up and peer reviewed. The things that she highlights have been witnessed by myself in many hours of gaming. Just because I want to believe it and she's getting paid every time she says, it doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't true.

Perhaps gamers really can save the world. I know that gaming has changed my life for the better, on numerous occasions. It's all a matter of scale.

Watch for yourself to see what you think.

The more I heard what Dr McGonigal had to say, the more pieces pinged in my memory.

Stress relief?  Health benefits? The first time I walked into the pixel streets of Lumbridge, I was suffering from nervous exhaustion in real life. My heart had enough of a murmur for extended tests to be conducted. I was crippled with panic attacks.

Runescape sorted all of that out. My heart's fine.

Society and community? When I was made redundant, it was a fellow gamer who gave me a job. He enjoyed reading my gaming blog and wanted to employ my writing skills for his company. This Wizzley article is dedicated to a man who met his wife in a MMORPG. In two week's time, I will be staying at the homes of two people whom I met gaming. This is all off the top of my head. Give me a moment to think and I'll be recounting such anecdotes all day.

In fact, I already did, when I wrote on Suite101 about parenting teenage gamers, and how parents miss the very real education opportunities eagerly grasped by their off-spring.

Urgent optimism? One of the things so often commented upon is my sheer stamina in writing. People can't get their heads around how I remain so motivated to write. Have they never read my Tips and Tricks articles? From the very first, I've been treating Wizzley like a gaming platform. I set my own levels and hiscores. I strive towards the goals of Editor's Choice Awards, higher readership figures, comments, likes and all the rest. I'm gaming! How can you not be optimistic when you're gaming?!

Epic meaning?  Straight off the top of my head there's that moment with Skilla4Lyfe and his mission. Only level 3 combat, he could have been killed by any passing low level boss. He wanted to take on a high level, so to complete a difficult quest.

It should have been impossible. But there were between eight and twenty people, at any one time, escorting him through the mazes. We teamed together to clear this path, striving ever to see the impossible done. He finished his quest. We collectively cheered. Job done.

These are the same minds who, on a gaming forum, once saved a life. A player had indicated that she was going to suicide. No-one knew her real name, her location nor even the country in which she lived. But on the case were several hundred people used to taking on impossible odds and solving quests.

By the time they'd finished, her local police officers were paying a visit to her parents. Intervention came in the nick of time.  Gamers NEVER let one of their own fail to level up. We defeat ALL the bosses, pixel or otherwise.

These are the minds forming a whole generation. These are the minds spear-heading the immediate future of the human race. At least they are in the countries with a massive gaming culture.

The project we were working on had became very stressful and highly pressured. There was tension between members of our team. Our employer sent us on a team-building day.

We got paid to chuck balls at each other and play with bits of string. This was gaming in a socially acceptable, business environment.

Pilots use flight simulators to gain their licenses. The military uses war games to ape what would happen if a nuclear attack was actually imminent. ("Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?")  I recently played a video game to test my reactions as a coastguard operating on the River Mersey. These are all useful real life scenario employments for gaming.

But some of the best moments of out the box thinking have come when gamers have run amok in their own games. No body of people can find and exploit a bug like those in an MMO. Take, for example, the Corrupted Blood Incident in World of Warcraft or the Falador Massacre in Runescape.

Both were unexpected. Both weren't intentional game-play mechanics by the manufacturers. Both pitted players into a situation where there were no precedents for their behavior. The best and worst came out in people on those days. Ingenious solutions were quickly imagined. The data for researchers into crowd control was invaluable.

When I was growing up, there were no video games, give or take a bit of Pong. But there were games. There have always been games. It may have been kicking a ball around a football pitch, or role-playing Star Wars over the old quarry, but they each involved problem-solving. They required you to think quickly and react to unknown stimuli. They made us inventive.

Now a whole generation has grown up immersed in deeper, more complex games. It's going to be quite startling to see what legacy they carry into this world.