The Members Forum

By the age of 21, the typical American has spent 10,000 hours playing computer games, and endured a smaller but much drearier chunk of time listening to sermons about this sinful habit. Why, the experts wail, are so many people wasting their lives solving meaningless puzzles in virtual worlds?

Now some other experts — ones who have actually played these games — are asking more interesting questions. Why are these virtual worlds so much more absorbing than school and work? How could these gamers’ labors be used to solve real-world puzzles? Why can’t life be more like a video game?

“Gamers are engaged, focused, and happy,” says Edward Castronova, a professor of telecommunications at Indiana University who has studied and designed online games. “How many employers wish they could say that about even a tenth of their work force?

“Many activities in games are not very different from work activities. Look at information on a screen, discern immediate objectives, choose what to click and drag.”

Jane McGonigal, a game designer and researcher at the Institute for the Future, sums up the new argument in her coming book, “Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.” It’s a manifesto urging designers to aim high — why not a Nobel Prize? — with games that solve scientific problems and promote happiness in daily life.

In the past, puzzles and games were sometimes considered useful instructional tools. The emperor Charlemagne hired a scholar to compile “Problems to Sharpen the Young,” a collection of puzzles like the old one about ferrying animals across a river (without leaving the hungry fox on the same bank as the defenseless goat). The British credited their victory over Napoleon to the games played on the fields of Eton.

The NYT has the article HERE!