"[DDO] can make a better world"

[Kromize]

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

Watch it, and learn.

[Trillea]

Very interesting ideas, love her optimism, love the social networking aspect, but not sure if it will ever really amount to much.

[Borror0]

Very interesting ideas, love her optimism, love the social networking aspect, but not sure if it will ever really amount to much.
There's a lot more potential to it than you probably think. People are very sensible to external reward systems (http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2010/2/22/external-rewards-and-jesse-schells-amazing-lecture.html) so gamifying everything (http://www.raphkoster.com/2010/02/18/gameifying-everything/) might be used to beneficial uses. External reward systems, like loot, XP or favor, add meaning to otherwise meaningless actions. That's why we complain about poor loot or XP in a quest: we need those incentives to justify our actions in the virtual world.

The real problem in approach, IMO, is that she's focusing on making games that affect the real world rather than make the real world more like games.

Unless you spent your gaming time on games who focus on making the world a better place, the chances that you're affected by her actions are relatively limited - except if one such game goes viral, perhaps. Unfortunately, those games are not commercial success by any means.