Jane McGonigal, PhD is a world-renowned designer of alternate reality games — or, games that are designed to improve real lives and solve real problems.
She is the Author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World and is the inventor and co-founder of SuperBetter, a game that has helped nearly a million players tackle real-life health challenges such as depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and traumatic brain injury.
Our conversation is about how to design useful games, how games effect us and our kids, and what the future might hold. Please enjoy.
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
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Show Notes
1:22 - (First Question) – Her take on the history of gaming and studying the players themselves
3:44 – Where her passion for gaming really started
4:55 – Her take on flow states
7:47 – Kids and gaming
10:32 – Advice for parents when it comes to the role of games
13:53 – Types of games that develop the right skills for kids
16:20 – Four things all games share in common
16:23 – Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
20:50 – Her take on Carse’s theory about infinite gaming
21:04 – Finite and Infinite Games
26:28 – How to understand gaming culture if you’ve never played a game before
28:28 – Amazon and gaming
31:18 – How fun makes anything more enjoyable
34:55 – How game designers calibrate feedback loops
39:14 – The good and bad of gamifying life
45:01 – What is the superbetter app
52:43 - Why powerups and bad guys are so important in games
57:03 – Secret identity
59:04 – Playing with boundaries
1:00:36 – Most worried about in the gaming world, and most exited about
1:07:32 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Jane
Learn More
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub
Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag