Jane McGonigal famous quotes

Scientists have demonstrated that dramatic, positive changes can occur in our lives as a direct result of facing an extreme challenge - whether it's coping with a serious illness, daring to quit smoking, or dealing with depression. Researchers call this 'post-traumatic growth.'
-- Jane McGonigal

#Smoking #Challenges #Growth

There is no problem that doesn't have some underlying need for more optimism, stamina, resilience and collaboration. And games are, I believe, the best platform we have for providing that.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Believe #Games #Optimism

A game is an opportunity to focus our energy, with relentless optimism, at something we’re good at (or getting better at) and enjoy. In other words, gameplay is the direct emotional opposite of depression.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Opportunity #Emotional #Opposites

Reality is broken. Game designers can fix it.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Reality #Games #Broken

If you can manage to experience three positive emotions for every one negative emotion … you dramatically improve your health and your ability to successfully tackle any problem you're facing.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Negative #Three #Emotion

When we play a game, we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we're more likely to reach out to others for help.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Determination #Creativity #Games

Gamers always believe that an epic win is possible and that it's always worth trying and trying now.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Believe #Epic #Winning

When we're in game worlds, we become the best version of ourselves, the most likely to help at a moment's notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long at it takes, to get up after failure and try again.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Games #Long #Trying

My goal for the next decade is to try to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Real #Games #Goal

My favorite part of running is the thinking time.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Running #Thinking #My Favorite

Every game designer should make one explicitly world-changing game. Lawyers do pro bono work, why can't we?
-- Jane McGonigal

#Games #World #Lawyer

Things like depression and obesity are global challenges.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Challenges #Obesity

Game developers know that people have more fun when they're in large groups. They feel more fired up when the challenges are more epic.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Fun #Epic #Games

Growing up, I was prone to anxiety.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Growing Up #Anxiety #Growing

I want to see a game designer nominated for a Nobel Prize.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Games #Want #Designer

Clinically speaking, depression is a pessimistic sense of your own capabilities, and despondent lack of energy.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Energy #Pessimistic #Capability

The idea of the 'lone gamer' is really not true anymore. Up to 65 percent of gaming now is social, played either online or in the same room with people we know in real life.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Real #Ideas #People

There are people who are very dismissive of games and gamers.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Games #People #Gamer

My mom is a public school teacher and works with third grade students.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Mom #Teacher #School

If you make it a game, gamers will play it no matter what your motivation is in making it.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Motivation #Games #Play

I've been running since high school. My boyfriend was on the track team, and I'd run with him.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Running #Team #School

I'm not a fan of simulations. Where, 'Oh, we'll go play a simulation of world peace and figure out how to make peace' and then somehow magically that will get translated into the real world. No, that's not the kind of games that I make.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Real #Games #Play

It seems like what happens when we play games is that we go into a psychological state called eustress, or positive stress. It's basically the same as negative stress in the sense that we get our adrenaline up, you know, our breathing rate quickens, our pulse quickens.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Stress #Playing Games #Breathing

When you strip away the genre differences and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Games #Differences #Goal

The more we consume, acquire, and elevate our status, the harder it is to stay happy.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Stay Happy #Harder

A dramatic decrease in oil availability is not at all far-fetched.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Oil #Availability #Dramatic

Games are unnecessary obstacles we volunteer to tackle.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Games #Volunteer #Obstacles

Avatars are a way to express our true selves, our most heroic, idealized version of who we might become.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Self #Might #Way

A traumatic event doesn't doom us to suffer indefinitely. Instead, we can use it as a springboard to unleash our best qualities and lead happier lives.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Suffering #Quality #Events

I want gaming to be something that everybody does, because they understand that games can be a real solution to problems and a real source of happiness. I want games to be something everybody learns how to design and develop, because they understand that games are a real platform for change and getting things done. And I want families, schools, companies, industries, cities, countries, and the whole world to come together to play them, because we’re finally making games that tackle real dilemmas and improve real lives.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Country #Real #School

The real world just doesn’t offer up as easily the carefully designed pleasures, the thrilling challenges, and the powerful social bonding afforded by virtual environments. Reality doesn’t motivate us as effectively. Reality isn’t engineered to maximize our potential. Reality wasn’t designed from the bottom up to make us happy.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Powerful #Real #Challenges

If you are a gamer, it’s time to get over any regret you might feel about spending so much time playing games. You have not been wasting your time. You have been building up a wealth of virtual experience that, as the first half of this book will show you, can teach you about your true self: what your core strengths are, what really motivates you, and what make you happiest.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Regret #Book #Playing Games

It's a bit counter-intuitive to think about the future in terms of the past. But...I've learned an important trick: to develop foresight, you need to practice hindsight. Technologies, cultures, and climates may change, but our basic human needs and desires - to survive, to care for our families, and to lead happy, purposeful lives - remain the same.' p 5
-- Jane McGonigal

#Past #Technology #Thinking

The single biggest misconception about games is that they're an escapist waste of time.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Playing Games #Waste #Wasting Time

Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Optimism #Desire #Belief

Game design isn’t just a technological craft. It’s a twenty-first-century way of thinking and leading.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Thinking #Games #Design

We've been playing games since humanity had civilization - there is something primal about our desire and our ability to play games. It's so deep-seated that it can bypass latter-day cultural norms and biases.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Playing Games #Civilization #Humanity

Games that make you feel good about yourself are good games to be playing.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Games #Feel Good #About Yourself

Compared with games, reality is disconnected.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Reality #Games

We can boost our immune systems by strengthening our social networks and decreasing stress.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Stress #Social Network #Boost

I see a future in which games once again are explicitly designed to improve quality of life, to prevent suffering, and to create real, widespread happiness.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Real #Games #Suffering

It may have once been true that computer games encouraged us to interact more with machines than with each other. But if you still think of gamers as loners, then you’re not playing games.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Thinking #Playing Games #Loner

Games are work. There are economies popping up in games now because people value them.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Games #People #Economy

I worry a lot about people using games just for marketing, to get people to buy more stuff, which I think would be the worst possible use.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Thinking #Games #People

Games are providing rewards that reality is not.
-- Jane McGonigal

#Reality #Games #Rewards