Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's the lady sitting in the middle seat
Speaker 1: who has to get up to pee, but you're in
Speaker 1: the window seat and you're soil releeve. She does because
Speaker 1: that means you don't have to ask again the aisle
Speaker 1: to get up. Ali ward back with another episode of Ologies.
Speaker 1: Oh video games, video games? What's their deal? How do
Speaker 1: they affect our brains? Have we got an ology for y'all? Okay, first,
Speaker 1: I do have some thanks. Thanks to everyone who's pledging
Speaker 1: some of your latte money or tossing me a quarter
Speaker 1: a week on Patreon for making it possible for me
Speaker 1: to get my physical butt in the same space as theologists,
Speaker 1: or in this case, to pay a recording studio to
Speaker 1: do our first ever remote interview. Very exciting. Thanks to
Speaker 1: everyone sporting ologies merch out in the wild, that's at
Speaker 1: ologiesmerch dot com, t shirts, hatspins, all of that. Thank
Speaker 1: you to everyone who rates and subscribes and reviews, and
Speaker 1: you'll leave such nice notes. For example, Namon says, I
Speaker 1: love this podcast so much. I found it when searching
Speaker 1: for podcasts to help me sleep. Sadly, I found a
Speaker 1: podcast to binge and stay up even later. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Ally Word for the podcast that has everything from biology
Speaker 1: to beauty. I never did solve my sleeping problem, but
Speaker 1: I don't really mind anymore, So thank you for the podcast.
Speaker 1: Well thanks for the review. Try the Fancy Nancy. Just
Speaker 1: lay in bed. You think of a category and then
Speaker 1: you think of something that starts with an A and
Speaker 1: a B and a C. If you didn't listen to
Speaker 1: the Sleep episode, that's in part two of the Sleep Episode,
Speaker 1: and it's named after my very fancy mom, fancy Nancy,
Speaker 1: who came up with it. Okay, anyway back to litology.
Speaker 1: Who's excited and we all are, so Litology, let's get
Speaker 1: right into it, pals. So it's a real word. It
Speaker 1: means the study of games, and it comes from the
Speaker 1: Latin lu dare, meaning to play yay. So it was
Speaker 1: coined sometime around the nineteen fifties. So it didn't mean
Speaker 1: video games back then because time machines had not yet
Speaker 1: been invented. But nowadays it can encompass gameplay and sports
Speaker 1: and cards of course Beatbop video games. So this ologist
Speaker 1: has been being in my periphery for years. My sister
Speaker 1: told me about her Ted talk and she was discussing
Speaker 1: her game Super Better that can help folks who are
Speaker 1: healing from an illness or going through anxiety or depression.
Speaker 1: So I've been a fan of hers for years, and
Speaker 1: I reached out to her. I like chewed my fingernails
Speaker 1: waiting for a response. She said she was down to record,
Speaker 1: but our schedules just couldn't get aligned. So finally I
Speaker 1: took the plunge. She ducked into a recording studio in Berkeley.
Speaker 1: We taped this remotely, you guys, and it wasn't awkward.
Speaker 1: She's so so good. She has a PhD from University
Speaker 1: of California at Berkeley in performance studies, and she's designed
Speaker 1: games since two thousand and three. So she taught game
Speaker 1: design and game theory at UC Berkeley in the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Art Institute. She's been named as one of the
Speaker 1: twenty most Inspiring Women in the World by this lady
Speaker 1: named Oprah in a magazine called Oprah, and she's a speaker.
Speaker 1: She's author of the book Reality Is Broken, Why Make
Speaker 1: Us Better and How They Can Change the World, and
Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller Super Better, a Revolutionary approach to
Speaker 1: getting stronger, happier, braver, and more resilient. And she's the
Speaker 1: director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for
Speaker 1: the Future. She's legit, so I was so nervous before
Speaker 1: taping this because she's just a high badass. She couldn't
Speaker 1: have been more affable and great. And we chatted about
Speaker 1: IRL games, board games, animosity, Fortnite, the line between play
Speaker 1: and addiction, League of Legends, gambeling, lottery, tickets, off brand Atari,
Speaker 1: what Tetris does to the brain, video games and violence.
Speaker 1: Should kids play games? We talked about aliens, soup and
Speaker 1: how games can change your life for the super better.
Speaker 1: So let's press start on a truly life changing conversation
Speaker 1: with loudologist doctor Jane McGonagall.
Speaker 2: Hi Allie, Hi Jane, how are you. O'm great? I'm
Speaker 2: so excited to talk to you in person. Let me
Speaker 2: unsep my jacket so I don't it might make okay,
Speaker 2: So I'm going to take that off. It'll be better,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: So Hi, First off, doctor McGonagall, it's lovely to talk
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 2: You could also call me professor McGonagall. For all the
Speaker 2: Harry Potter fans out there.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, does that happen a lot?
Speaker 2: Yes? When when that character started to exist, it made
Speaker 2: my life so much more fun.
Speaker 4: The starfting ceremony will begin momentarily.
Speaker 3: Do people spell it right now?
Speaker 2: No, not at all, but they pronounce it correctly, which
Speaker 2: never happened growing up, So it has helped a lot.
Speaker 1: And I do have questions starting right off growing up.
Speaker 1: You have a twin sister. Did you guys grow up
Speaker 1: playing a bunch of board games? How do twin sister
Speaker 1: past the time?
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so first of all, we should talk about
Speaker 2: board games definitely during this interview, because some new research
Speaker 2: came out showing that normal board games are really bad
Speaker 2: for your relationships, like they lower your oxytocin levels. So
Speaker 2: we do have memories growing up playing board games that
Speaker 2: we always fought at the end of them, and you know,
Speaker 2: I never do you remember like games like Sorry, where
Speaker 2: you would you know, mercilessly take out other people's pieces
Speaker 2: and move them to the beginning of the game Monopoly,
Speaker 2: where like one person gets power and then lords it
Speaker 2: over everybody else for an increasingly unfun hour. Yeah, traditional
Speaker 2: board games are poorly designed for social interactions and are
Speaker 2: terrible for you. So yes, I do have memories growing
Speaker 2: up playing with them. Unfortunately, my sister never recovered from
Speaker 2: those early experiences and would never play like video games
Speaker 2: or anything else with me after that. But yeah, and now,
Speaker 2: I mean literally, just a couple of weeks ago, I
Speaker 2: saw this study showing that traditional board games lower oxytocin levels,
Speaker 2: like you trust each other less. And it makes perfect
Speaker 2: sense because the games are As a game designer, I
Speaker 2: can point out all the ways that they are poorly
Speaker 2: designed to, you know, lead to negative social experiences rather
Speaker 2: than positive ones, the old school ones, the new ones
Speaker 2: are better.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that validates so much because I remember
Speaker 1: even when you would win at Monopoly, you feel bad
Speaker 1: because you were hosing everyone in your family. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: I'm an asshole, I'm like such a slum lord.
Speaker 3: Right now, what do I do?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: And I don't know. I think people maybe know this now,
Speaker 2: But Monopoly was originally designed as a had a gogical
Speaker 2: tool to teach people the evils of capitalism, and it
Speaker 2: was supposed to make you feel bad. You were supposed
Speaker 2: to play it and say, wow, this is awful and
Speaker 2: terrible and let's be socialists, and so it was designed
Speaker 2: to make you feel bad, and so in that extent
Speaker 2: it works, But playing it for fun not a good idea.
Speaker 1: Oh my word, I just went down a hole on
Speaker 1: this one. Quick aside. So Monopoly was actually the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds brainchild of an anti capitalist activist, and she
Speaker 1: was a comedian and a writer. She was an unmarried woman,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Maggie, and she made it as a cautionary tale
Speaker 1: and in her old timey words, let the children see
Speaker 1: clearly the gross injustice of our present land system, and
Speaker 1: when they grow up, the evil will be remedied. Such
Speaker 1: high hopes, Lizzie. But perhaps the irony was just too
Speaker 1: lost on us. And that's why a land baron who
Speaker 1: shits in a golden toilet is presiding over the nation. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So the game had a very sexy original title. It
Speaker 1: was called The Landlord's Game, and Elizabeth Maggie worked her
Speaker 1: ass off on it, and then some JABRONI played it
Speaker 1: at a house party and she was ripped off. She
Speaker 1: made five hundred bucks, he made millions because capitalism. So
Speaker 1: when did you start liking gameplay? At what point did
Speaker 1: you start playing video games or did you start to
Speaker 1: realize it maybe designing was something you'd want to do,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: I have some really positive early memories of my dad
Speaker 2: bringing Home an Odyssey, which was kind of like the
Speaker 2: knockoff cheap Atari because we were like a knockoff cheap
Speaker 2: family growing up, and so it had like knockoff pac
Speaker 2: Man called Casey Munchkin that was really a bad version,
Speaker 2: like it wasn't well designed either, and it was impossible
Speaker 2: to win. But yeah, he would bring home, he brought
Speaker 2: home these cartridges and he would play with us and
Speaker 2: teach us how to get better. And I say really
Speaker 2: positive early memories of spending time with my dad kind
Speaker 2: of learning these new games and getting better. And he
Speaker 2: taught me chess, and our grandfather taught us poker and
Speaker 2: roulette at a very early age, like we were like
Speaker 2: five or six learning how to play poker. So there
Speaker 2: was a lot of gameplay in my family. And then
Speaker 2: we got a Commodore sixty four, which for computer geeks
Speaker 2: that was like one of the first at home computers
Speaker 2: you could learn basic programming. And so in like fifth grade,
Speaker 2: I started making my own computer games, and the very
Speaker 2: first one I ever made was called You Be the Judge,
Speaker 2: and I think it was inspired by watching a lot
Speaker 2: of Divorce Court and People's Court on daytime TV. So
Speaker 2: you got to be the judge. And also you were
Speaker 2: a cat because I had to use like as ki
Speaker 2: art and I couldn't draw like a person that well,
Speaker 2: so I made you a cat and you had a
Speaker 2: little gavel that was animated and you would hear people
Speaker 2: send some money and decide if they were guilty or not.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's so I watched so much People's Court.
Speaker 2: To you, I absolutely.
Speaker 3: Was it.
Speaker 1: Was it gratifying to you when you started, even as
Speaker 1: a kid, designing games. Was it gratifying to see something
Speaker 1: that you had imagined be a reality? At what point?
Speaker 1: What really got you hooked in that?
Speaker 2: It was totally the experience of having somebody sit down
Speaker 2: and play with it. Actually made board games also, we
Speaker 2: would my sister and I would create life size board
Speaker 2: games in our basement because we had this weird, like
Speaker 2: sixties psychedelic tile and so we would use each tile
Speaker 2: as like a space and you would have to like
Speaker 2: go to prom and things like that, and then we
Speaker 2: would have people come over and play that, or I'd
Speaker 2: have people playing my computer game. And it was watching
Speaker 2: how people would react and you know, did they laugh,
Speaker 2: were they surprised, did they try really hard to figure
Speaker 2: something out? It was the ability to provoke I guess
Speaker 2: all of these really positive emotions and see people like
Speaker 2: try and be challenged was really interesting to me, and
Speaker 2: I think through my whole life that has been the
Speaker 2: single thing that's most interesting to me is that the
Speaker 2: greatest joy you have as a game designer is the
Speaker 2: first time people start to play with it and you're like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I had no idea that's what people
Speaker 2: would do. Are going to change these twelve rules and
Speaker 2: change this constraint and refigure, you know, what the goal
Speaker 2: is so that they do something different. But watching people
Speaker 2: react and how it brings out good things in them
Speaker 2: and maybe things you don't want to bring out of them,
Speaker 2: and you can change it. It's like kind of like
Speaker 2: being a chef and changing like the ingredients you're throwing in.
Speaker 1: Oh, just a fistful of delight, maybe a sprinkle of
Speaker 1: reflective sadness. I mean, after all, she had a PhD
Speaker 1: in performance studies, so the doc knows what's up, and
Speaker 1: you also studied performance. So do you feel like there's
Speaker 1: something almost like watching people watch a performance or watching
Speaker 1: someone watch a play or a movie that you've designed
Speaker 1: or written. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean in the same way that theater or choreography,
Speaker 2: you need a performer to make it real, right, the
Speaker 2: script or the choreography as it's designed. When somebody embodies it,
Speaker 2: it comes to life. And when different people perform a
Speaker 2: play or perform a dance or a song, they bring
Speaker 2: something different to it and express themselves through it. It's
Speaker 2: the same with a game, when when you design a
Speaker 2: game or code a game, it's it's not real until
Speaker 2: a player comes to it, and then they bring something
Speaker 2: different to it. And with games you get an even
Speaker 2: wider range I think of interpretation and expressivity, and so
Speaker 2: they do very much have that kind of idea in common.
Speaker 2: That people bring these artworks to life and that they
Speaker 2: are the essence is actually funny. When I was really
Speaker 2: I was a theater geek also growing up so like
Speaker 2: double geek theater geek geek geek.
Speaker 1: Jane says that when she was around eleven, she saw
Speaker 1: a one woman play starring Lily Tomlin called The Search
Speaker 1: for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, which was
Speaker 1: written by Lily Tomlin's now wife, Jane Wagner, and in it,
Speaker 1: one character named Trudy is a homeless woman who encounters extraterrestrials.
Speaker 1: She's trying to teach them what art is.
Speaker 2: As you would do, and so she's showing them Andy
Speaker 2: Warhol paintings of soup cans, and then they hold up
Speaker 2: soup cans and they're like, is this art? And she's like, no,
Speaker 2: this is the art. This is a painting. And there's
Speaker 2: this whole thing. And then at the end of the play,
Speaker 2: they go to the show. They go to the with
Speaker 2: the Homeless Lady, and they forget to watch the play.
Speaker 2: They were watching the audience and all of their reactions
Speaker 2: and their laughter and their goose bumps, and the aliens
Speaker 2: are like, you know, the play is suit, but the
Speaker 2: audiences art. And I'm telling you that, like has. I
Speaker 2: think that has. That's the most influential thing I in
Speaker 2: my whole life I ever saw or heard. Because then
Speaker 2: I became obsessed with you know, how the people who
Speaker 2: interact with art or theater or games, they're the art.
Speaker 1: So the people are the art. And Jane says when
Speaker 1: she was first starting her PhD work, she was kind
Speaker 1: of the weirdo because everyone else was studying the games themselves,
Speaker 1: but she was studying the players and how the games
Speaker 1: affected them. But I think it's good to be the
Speaker 1: weirdo because that usually means that you have an impact
Speaker 1: to make and you're the first person to be doing something.
Speaker 1: So if you ever whisper to yourself, shit, why am
Speaker 1: I a weirdo? Congratulations because you're probably doing something right.
Speaker 1: And when did you start designing games as a job?
Speaker 3: When did it become your career?
Speaker 2: It's such a wacky road. I mean when I was
Speaker 2: in college, I worked with the New York City Department
Speaker 2: of Parks and Recreation and I helped run these like
Speaker 2: really big, large gale recreation events, like an Easter egg
Speaker 2: hunt for thirty five thousand kids and you know, Central Park.
Speaker 2: And I always think of that as some of my
Speaker 2: early game design work, because you know, they are games
Speaker 2: are not digital, but you come out and play. And
Speaker 2: when I went to grad school I started my PhD
Speaker 2: program at Berkeley. I was meant to be studying scientists
Speaker 2: and specifically quantum physicists and how they collaborate and how
Speaker 2: they communicate their research with the public, so not at
Speaker 2: all games. I got a side gig my first semester
Speaker 2: as a PhD student. There was a new game company
Speaker 2: in San Francisco, that they wanted to essentially play games
Speaker 2: in reality. They were inspired by the Michael Douglas movie.
Speaker 2: The game and.
Speaker 1: Sumer Recreation Services call that number why they make your
Speaker 1: life fun.
Speaker 2: That's so which you know, he can't tell is it real?
Speaker 2: Is it the game? It's a bunch of actors pretending
Speaker 2: to be real people, and they give emissions and his
Speaker 2: whole life is transformed and he has these amazing revelations
Speaker 2: about you know, the meaning of everything. But also it's
Speaker 2: really confusing because the game is played in reality. And
Speaker 2: so this company was like, we're going to do that,
Speaker 2: but we're going to be nice and it's going to
Speaker 2: be fun and silly, and you're not going to be confused.
Speaker 2: They're still running all these reality games and you run
Speaker 2: around the city and do missions like pay funal ring
Speaker 2: and they'll give your code and then you'll find a
Speaker 2: box and a pile of leaves and the code opens
Speaker 2: the box and there's a raft inside and you have
Speaker 2: to take the wrapped out on a lake and then
Speaker 2: you find like the snorkel equipment. You have to find
Speaker 2: something at the botty of the lake, and then like
Speaker 2: there's I mean, it's like you know, you get to
Speaker 2: be really adventurous in reality. Anyway, they hired me and
Speaker 2: that was like, that was the beginning. That was how
Speaker 2: I earned my credentials to go to the Game Developers Conference.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm totally a game developer.
Speaker 1: So working in theater turned to working in live events,
Speaker 1: turned to working in live events with mobile phones, and
Speaker 1: then when did that go digital? What happened? Well, nine
Speaker 1: to eleven did. Jane had just moved to San Francisco
Speaker 1: a few weeks before after leaving in New York for
Speaker 1: six years.
Speaker 2: Something weird that happened while we were processing all of
Speaker 2: that was that an online community of gamers that we'd
Speaker 2: been a part of earlier that year, playing this online
Speaker 2: game called the AI Web Game. It was very collaborative.
Speaker 2: You're like forty thousand people on one team, all trying
Speaker 2: to solve the same puzzle. I mean kind of like
Speaker 2: early Reddit in a way, like everybody's trying to solve
Speaker 2: the same problem using message boards. And that community came
Speaker 2: back to the message board even though the game had
Speaker 2: ended a couple months earlier, and they were like, can
Speaker 2: we solve nine eleven? I mean it wasn't even called
Speaker 2: that yet, but like, can we solve this. Can we
Speaker 2: figure out what happened? When it started to emerge that
Speaker 2: it was a distributed terrorist network, they're like, great, we're
Speaker 2: a distributed network of collective intelligence. We can understand how
Speaker 2: they might think or operate. We can figure out what
Speaker 2: security holes they they snuck through. And they started to
Speaker 2: want to use their game skills to help. And that
Speaker 2: was really interesting to me because I was feeling powerless
Speaker 2: and everyone around me was feeling like just like frozen,
Speaker 2: and here's this online community people saying, wait, we are
Speaker 2: super collaborative, super collective intelligence. We you know, save the
Speaker 2: world in this game. It would be stupid not to
Speaker 2: try to use those skills to help when the world
Speaker 2: really needs it, and that that desire that that was
Speaker 2: literally the day I'm like, I think maybe I should
Speaker 2: study video games and gamers and how they collaborate instead
Speaker 2: of how physicists do, because I wanted to find out like,
Speaker 2: is this delusional, is this crazy wishful thinking because we're
Speaker 2: also overwhelmed, or are there problems that gamers could solve
Speaker 2: and are there questions they can investigate and ways that
Speaker 2: they could use their skills in real life? And eventually
Speaker 2: I started designing, you know, digital games, just to see
Speaker 2: if I could be the person to come up with
Speaker 2: that bridge, Like I'm going to make a game that
Speaker 2: has real problems in it so that gamers can test
Speaker 2: out this hypothesis that they have.
Speaker 1: How did they do with their research into nine to eleven?
Speaker 2: You know, it morphed pretty quickly into trying to be
Speaker 2: of service. So what wound up actually practically happening was
Speaker 2: getting people out to donate blood and volunteer, so it
Speaker 2: became sort of more like community mobilization. But the same
Speaker 2: group of people then started investigating things like government corruption
Speaker 2: and cold cases, and they created a kind of spin
Speaker 2: off site called Collective Detective, and so they kind of
Speaker 2: continue to play with us and see what they could
Speaker 2: do over the next couple of years, and that was
Speaker 2: really when I started designing games. Those are the people
Speaker 2: who showed up first to play.
Speaker 1: So side note, I went to go look up Collective
Speaker 1: Detective and the website has no pages, there's nothing to click,
Speaker 1: simply the text investigating the Mysteries of Austin Appointments by
Speaker 1: referral only. So I'm both spooked and intrigued. Do you
Speaker 1: have a favorite game that you have designed.
Speaker 2: Mmmm, oh, of course. I mean when I think the
Speaker 2: one that's nearest and dearest to my heart would be
Speaker 2: Top Secret Dance Off. Don't know if you are familiar
Speaker 2: with this one.
Speaker 1: So I have not played Top Secret Dance Off, as
Speaker 1: it gained huge popularity almost ten years ago, but it's
Speaker 1: not in the app store, unlike her other hit games Super.
Speaker 2: Better, I have Super Better, of course, but yeah, a
Speaker 2: few more, yeah, more people play. It's super better than
Speaker 2: Top Secret Dance Off because I actually had to shut
Speaker 2: it down after about six months because it was taking
Speaker 2: over the players lives and I just like could not handle.
Speaker 2: Like the average time spent in the game was about
Speaker 2: six hours a day, which was it was too much.
Speaker 2: But so the idea behind the game is, let's say
Speaker 2: you want to dance, but you're shy, Like this is
Speaker 2: a lot of my games are based on my own problems.
Speaker 2: You really want to dance. Dancing is great for you,
Speaker 2: it feels good, but you're super shy. Maybe if you
Speaker 2: could dance in disguise, then it would bring out like
Speaker 2: the top Secret Dancer in you. So the premise of
Speaker 2: the game was you start the game by creating your avatar,
Speaker 2: which is not a digital avatar. It's a disguise that
Speaker 2: you put on in real life and you introduce yourself
Speaker 2: to the community by doing the first dance quest, which
Speaker 2: is to dance without moving your feet. So this introduces
Speaker 2: your avatar, which like people were wearing like masks and wigs,
Speaker 2: and I mean, it's just amazing. Just invented the most
Speaker 2: beautiful characters. And then there's a series of dance quests
Speaker 2: that you unluck like dance subside down and dance on
Speaker 2: a crosswalk and it was and then you power up
Speaker 2: with things like plus one creativity and plus one coordination
Speaker 2: and plus one courage, and the points were given to
Speaker 2: you by other players. This is two thousand and nine.
Speaker 2: So people became like essentially like today's Instagram stars, but
Speaker 2: like for but for being characters and dance videos, and
Speaker 2: you didn't know who these people were. But I have
Speaker 2: since had the opportunity to meet many of these people
Speaker 2: in real life and they're amazing. But it got really
Speaker 2: popular and weird places, like it was super popular in
Speaker 2: New Zealand for a while, and I went down there
Speaker 2: to give a talk and like all the morning shows
Speaker 2: had me on TV and they're like film crews following
Speaker 2: me around like it was a weirdly popular thing in
Speaker 2: New Zealand. But what I loved about it is because
Speaker 2: you got all your points from other players, and you
Speaker 2: could only give people positive feedback, and if you gave
Speaker 2: them a point, you had to explain why. So it's
Speaker 2: just like you post a video and then you'd have
Speaker 2: one hundred comments from people giving you points in these
Speaker 2: really amazing strengths and also saying wonderful things about you've
Speaker 2: never seen so much just love and people expressing themselves.
Speaker 2: And finally, anyway, eventually shut the game down because it
Speaker 2: just like got out of control and I was self
Speaker 2: funding it and it was you know, I'm not an entrepreneur,
Speaker 2: so I mean, I probably should have tried to get
Speaker 2: VC funding or something, but I just shut it down
Speaker 2: and said, it seems like.
Speaker 1: A lot of your games have really amazing intentions. You
Speaker 1: changed the way people live or think. So after designing
Speaker 1: a bunch of games, including Cruel to Be Kind, I
Speaker 1: Love Bees, The Lost Ring, and of course Top Secret
Speaker 1: Dance Off, Jane was working in her home office and
Speaker 1: she stood up quickly. She hit her head on an
Speaker 1: open cabinet door and suffered a concussion, which must have
Speaker 1: hurt like a bitch so bad. Now, recovery was really rocky,
Speaker 1: and she ended up developing her huge game Super Better
Speaker 1: to help others dealing with anxiety and depression and recuperation.
Speaker 1: So for more on this, you can see her ted talk,
Speaker 1: which was ranked in the top twenty most engaging TED
Speaker 1: Talks once lot higher than Bill Gates's dead Talk. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying, and so, how how far into game development
Speaker 1: did this happen? And can you tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit about about Super Better and about kind of your
Speaker 1: recovery with that and how it made you look at games.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this happened in the summer of two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine. So this was actually after we've been doing
Speaker 2: Topsic a dance off for about six months, and I
Speaker 2: was in the middle of writing my first book on games.
Speaker 2: So I had sold the book and I had to
Speaker 2: write it, and I was like halfway through it, and
Speaker 2: so I was already like totally persuaded that games bring
Speaker 2: out the best in us and games can change the world.
Speaker 2: That already finished my PhD. I was well into this
Speaker 2: and writing the book on it when I did get
Speaker 2: this concussion that you know, I was supposed to heal
Speaker 2: in a few days, and then it was supposed to
Speaker 2: be a few weeks, and then it was supposed to
Speaker 2: be a few months, and it actually, I mean, it
Speaker 2: took years to feel essentially one hundred percent again. But
Speaker 2: during that time, you know, I had to stop writing,
Speaker 2: which created a lot of anxiety because the book was
Speaker 2: due in a few months. I had to stop my
Speaker 2: other work because I couldn't think clearly. I had to
Speaker 2: stop running. I couldn't exercise it all because I was
Speaker 2: having so much vertigo and nausea with like even just
Speaker 2: moving my head. I couldn't socialize. I'd like go out,
Speaker 2: and even just being around like fluorescent lights would make
Speaker 2: me feel like like I would, you know, essentially would
Speaker 2: fall over, And so I couldn't do anything. Doctors are like,
Speaker 2: you have to stop. You can't you know, have caffeine
Speaker 2: because it's creating triggering symptoms. You can't play video games
Speaker 2: is triggering symptoms. And on top of not being able
Speaker 2: to literally do anything, I also started to have serious depression,
Speaker 2: partly from not being able to do anything, partly withdrawing
Speaker 2: from things like running and work and socialization, but also
Speaker 2: I learned later that you know, one in three people
Speaker 2: with a concussion experienced serious depression, and it seems to
Speaker 2: be part of the brain's way of protecting you that
Speaker 2: it's very dangerous to get another concussion shortly after a concussion.
Speaker 2: It's called second impact syndrome, and you can die. And
Speaker 2: part of what happens when your brain is trying to
Speaker 2: heal is it literally does not want you to like
Speaker 2: crawl out of the cave or get out of bed,
Speaker 2: and want you to protect yourself and just sit stay
Speaker 2: put until it's safe to go out in the world again.
Speaker 2: The part of the brain that anticipates good things happening.
Speaker 2: By the way, I didn't know any of this at
Speaker 2: the time, right I had to learn this because I'm like,
Speaker 2: why why did my brain break? Why do I want
Speaker 2: to die? But I learned later that the part of
Speaker 2: the brain that anticipates good things happening, and when it's
Speaker 2: sort of fired up and you're getting dopamine hits and
Speaker 2: your brain saying, hey, go out there, get that thing
Speaker 2: you want. It's a good food that you're smelling, or
Speaker 2: it's like your partner, your pet and you want to
Speaker 2: hug or a lick, and it gives you energy and focus.
Speaker 2: That part of the brain just says, no, thank you,
Speaker 2: I don't want to imagine anything good happening because I
Speaker 2: want you to stay in bed and let your brain heal.
Speaker 3: How amazing is this?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: Also content learning. Jane went through some pretty tough times
Speaker 1: following her concussion, and we talk a little about suicidal
Speaker 1: ideation after brain injury, which was something I knew nothing
Speaker 1: about because people just don't talk about it.
Speaker 2: And when that part of the brain doesn't fire, you
Speaker 2: get really depressed and even suicidal because you literally cannot
Speaker 2: imagine anything good happening. Your brain just says, nope, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to let you picture that. And I learned,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of after all this is happening to me.
Speaker 2: That's part of why suicidal ideation is so common in
Speaker 2: traumatic brain injury, because it's a very natural response to
Speaker 2: It's a rational response to not believing that anything could
Speaker 2: ever happen that would be good, that nothing will ever
Speaker 2: make you happy. And somehow through all of this, the
Speaker 2: fact that I did research into how games affect our
Speaker 2: psychology and our brain gave me like one kind of
Speaker 2: holy grail ahamoc, like maybe I can force my brain
Speaker 2: back into believing that good things can happen as a
Speaker 2: result of my own efforts and attention, which took me
Speaker 2: years of researching after the concussion to put all the
Speaker 2: pieces together. But it turns out that that is that's
Speaker 2: the fundamental neuroscience of gaming. Your brain says, hey, something
Speaker 2: good could happen. You could go further in the game,
Speaker 2: get a higher score, you could get an advantage on
Speaker 2: your opponent if you take an action, if you make
Speaker 2: a decision, and that part of the brain that believes
Speaker 2: that something good could happen and gives you energy and
Speaker 2: focus and optimism, it goes nuts when we play games.
Speaker 2: That's like the signature finding of the Famior research on
Speaker 2: video gaming.
Speaker 1: So the premise for the work that Jane did was
Speaker 1: trying to bring a gameful mindset to things like recovering
Speaker 1: from traumatic brain injury or depression or anxiety. And she
Speaker 1: went on to develop the thank You game for Oprah,
Speaker 1: and Jane has said that she's secretly curious about how
Speaker 1: games can develop the seven positive traits that Buddhists believe
Speaker 1: can help end suffering. So what are those traits? I
Speaker 1: had no idea Mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, relaxation, concentration, and equanimity.
Speaker 1: So how do we go from game playing to a
Speaker 1: more chill, happy brain? And I ask this for the
Speaker 1: sake of my own brain selfishly, can you tell me
Speaker 1: kind of how games change the way we think or
Speaker 1: what happens in the brain. What happens is dopamine and serotonin,
Speaker 1: Like what's going on in that brainy soup?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, there's like so much I want people to
Speaker 2: know about this, And they're two big pieces, and so
Speaker 2: I want to tell both of them, because not everybody
Speaker 2: like benefits from playing video games. Like for some people
Speaker 2: it can become almost like pathological. It takes them out
Speaker 2: of reality, It takes them out of their social relations
Speaker 2: within their goals. So I want to preface what I'm
Speaker 2: going to say by this doesn't naturally happen for all
Speaker 2: people like the good things, And there are ways that
Speaker 2: you can if you don't have a good relationship with gaming,
Speaker 2: that you can change it so that you're more likely
Speaker 2: to get the benefit. So I just want to preface
Speaker 2: all this by saying, it's not like games are some
Speaker 2: magic pill that you play them and good things happen
Speaker 2: to you. It really depends on how you play and
Speaker 2: why you play, that good things can happen for a
Speaker 2: lot of people.
Speaker 1: Just allow me to reiterate that disclaimer.
Speaker 4: Games are not a magic pill, and not everybody benefits
Speaker 4: from video games, especially if you have a pathological relationship
Speaker 4: to them. However, they can really help in the following ways.
Speaker 2: So that the signature thing that I would say as
Speaker 2: probably the person who has studied I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: think there's ever been a scientific paper written about video
Speaker 2: games that have not read thousands of them. I am
Speaker 2: on it. I would say this sort of signature finding
Speaker 2: has to do with self efficacy. So self advocacy is
Speaker 2: the belief that you have the ability to take actions
Speaker 2: that can help you achieve your goals right, and so
Speaker 2: you have skill, you have resources, you have pathways forward,
Speaker 2: and different people have different kinds of self effogacy, Like
Speaker 2: I might have a lot of self efficacy as a
Speaker 2: cook in the kitchen, but maybe not in my fashion
Speaker 2: sense of what should I wear today? I'm just not
Speaker 2: feeling like I have a lot of talent in that area.
Speaker 2: Different people have self efficacy in different areas. But if
Speaker 2: you have the experience of gaining self efficacy in new areas,
Speaker 2: it can develop a kind of mindset that does translate.
Speaker 2: So if you are often doing things that you're bad
Speaker 2: at and then stay with it and get better, and
Speaker 2: suddenly you have new skills, and you acquire new resources,
Speaker 2: and you have achieved new goals and milestones. Your brain
Speaker 2: gets better at looking at a difficult skill or task
Speaker 2: and saying, let me try it, because I have a
Speaker 2: great and long history of getting better at things that
Speaker 2: I'm bad at. And that's what gaming does for most people.
Speaker 2: Games are designed to be hard the first time we
Speaker 2: play them. They are ridiculously challenging. I mean, you think
Speaker 2: about a game like golf, where the goal is to
Speaker 2: get a small ball and a small hole, and it
Speaker 2: is such a bad method to achieve that goal, like
Speaker 2: to stand really far away from the hole and then
Speaker 2: you stick. It's stupid.
Speaker 4: You've got to make the game a little bit easier.
Speaker 2: Why would we do that to ourselves. We do it
Speaker 2: because we want that experience of being bad and then
Speaker 2: getting better and having to use creativity and use practice
Speaker 2: and determination and learning from others. And so all games
Speaker 2: are like that, whether it's Candy Crush or Pokemon Go,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, you get better over time, and the
Speaker 2: more different games you play, the more your brain gets
Speaker 2: used to being frustrated, hanging in there, feeling optimistic in
Speaker 2: the face of setbacks. And that is the one generalizable
Speaker 2: positive impact of games that we see. No matter what
Speaker 2: kind of game you play, sport, challenging, cooperative board, you're
Speaker 2: playing bridge, you're playing a video game. If we can
Speaker 2: help you get comfortable with not being good at something,
Speaker 2: trying using your skills and ability to get better at it,
Speaker 2: and then you do in fact get better, that that
Speaker 2: can translate to the rest of your life. That's the
Speaker 2: That's a lot of my work has been helping people.
Speaker 2: One make sure you're always playing different games, like the
Speaker 2: person who always plays mind Sweeper or Solitaire like they've
Speaker 2: been playing it for thirty years, not not having this
Speaker 2: benefit you got you got to you got to try
Speaker 2: Fortnite or something like. You got to expose yourselves to
Speaker 2: interfaces you don't understand and communities that are totally strange
Speaker 2: to you, so that you're you're always learning and improving.
Speaker 1: Tell Grams, get on a headset, go play Call of Duty.
Speaker 2: She's gonna love it.
Speaker 1: She's gonna love it. So some people really benefit to
Speaker 1: a point.
Speaker 2: But when you look at the research literature, the people
Speaker 2: who really benefit from this experience are people who feel
Speaker 2: like games are real in a way, like they don't
Speaker 2: see them as a scapist. They don't play games to
Speaker 2: ignore their problems or like shove down negative feelings or
Speaker 2: get away from people who are annoying them. Those people
Speaker 2: tend to not benefit because they see games as separate
Speaker 2: from reality, so they don't bring the same mindset to
Speaker 2: real life. And those are the type of players who
Speaker 2: go on to be like you would call it addicted.
Speaker 2: It's not quite an addiction, but it's a kind of
Speaker 2: compulsive gameplay where they play more than it's good for them,
Speaker 2: and they feel like they just have to keep playing
Speaker 2: because everything else is so terrible. People who can answer
Speaker 2: the question like what does it take to be good
Speaker 2: at this game? What have you gotten better at since
Speaker 2: you started playing this game, and can talk about it
Speaker 2: in a way that's bigger than.
Speaker 1: Just the game, such as, for example, I'm.
Speaker 2: A good communicator under stress with my teammates, or I'm
Speaker 2: really good at thinking of different approaches to a problem.
Speaker 2: I don't just try one way, I try lots of ways.
Speaker 2: Whatever it is that you think it needs you need
Speaker 2: to be good at. If you can talk about that,
Speaker 2: you tend to start bringing those skills to real problems.
Speaker 2: And so like if you're a parent, or you're a
Speaker 2: partner of a gamer, or you're a gamer, just answering
Speaker 2: those two questions can unlock essentially all the good stuff
Speaker 2: of games in reality, not just while you're playing.
Speaker 1: So being a good communicator under stress and looking for
Speaker 1: ways to solve problems both skills are aces. It's weird
Speaker 1: how if in a video game shit starts hitting fans.
Speaker 1: You can think logically or strategically you can overcome it.
Speaker 1: But sometimes in life it's easy just to feel bogged
Speaker 1: down and you just want to lie face down on
Speaker 1: a carpet and be like not today, life, I am defeat.
Speaker 1: But you can ask yourself, Hey, if this we're a game,
Speaker 1: what would I do? First off, let's comb my avatar's hair.
Speaker 1: I never thought about applying it that way.
Speaker 4: That.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it starts hard, gets frustrating, you get better at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, ally, is there is there a game that
Speaker 2: you play?
Speaker 1: I grew up with a lot of a pong and
Speaker 1: like combat and like two pixels on a screen was
Speaker 1: the whole game. It's funny because I feel like I
Speaker 1: don't play as many games as my peers, and I
Speaker 1: think instead I just use social media as a game
Speaker 1: for that same like reward and it's terrible.
Speaker 2: Oh but I know you can't because it's like all
Speaker 2: the has all the sort of sort of motivational aspects
Speaker 2: of games, but it's not. It's no, we got to
Speaker 2: get you off social media and onto Tetris ninety nine.
Speaker 2: Maybe if you like old school games. It's like it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, one hundred people play Tetris against each other
Speaker 2: until there's only one survivor, which means everybody loses. So
Speaker 2: you don't. I mean, you can just just embrace it.
Speaker 3: That's more what I need. And it's funny.
Speaker 1: My my boyfriend plays League of Legend, and my nephew
Speaker 1: and my nieces play Minecraft, and what I find is
Speaker 1: that they play with their friends. They play online, so
Speaker 1: they hang out that way. And I don't know, it
Speaker 1: seems like, is there a difference in games where you're
Speaker 1: playing against a computer versus you are in a community
Speaker 1: and your friends are on a headset and you're all
Speaker 1: yelling at each other trying to like, you know, kill
Speaker 1: it the same elf. Clearly, I don't know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about regarding League of Legends, but I just looked
Speaker 1: it up and there are elder dragons, rift heralds, marksmen,
Speaker 1: jungle monsters. I don't know if any of those are
Speaker 1: elves anyway.
Speaker 2: Huge difference. And it's not that one is better or worse.
Speaker 2: They're they're good for different things, right, So, like, if
Speaker 2: you're dealing with anxiety or depression, a single player game
Speaker 2: is actually really good it because you can pull out
Speaker 2: your phone and play it for a few minutes. Because
Speaker 2: one of the benefits of games is that it can
Speaker 2: stop rumination. Right, So if you're anxious, you're anxious because
Speaker 2: you're imagining things that could go wrong, right, and it
Speaker 2: requires it requires your brain to be actively focused on
Speaker 2: visualizing things that scare you. So one of the best
Speaker 2: treatments for anxiety in the moment is to just stop
Speaker 2: the ruminations, to make a conscious decision not to spend
Speaker 2: time and energy on these thoughts. And so a game
Speaker 2: on your phone, it could be like a mini golf game,
Speaker 2: it could be you know, candy Crush, it could be
Speaker 2: Words with friends. Anything that you can play by yourself
Speaker 2: is fine. Because it stops the thoughts. Same with depression.
Speaker 2: People depression ruminate on very negative thoughts about themselves or
Speaker 2: their circumstances, and if you can stop that flow of thought,
Speaker 2: it's an effective treatment. So single player games are great
Speaker 2: and they are really helpful for things like anxiety, depression,
Speaker 2: and pain, but social games are phenomenal for other things.
Speaker 2: The quality of positive emotions they create, the trust that
Speaker 2: they build. It's interesting you mentioned League of Legends. There's
Speaker 2: been great research showing that people who play League of
Speaker 2: Legends regularly have a stronger social support network than just
Speaker 2: about any other gamer, meaning there are more people in
Speaker 2: their lives who will be there for them if they
Speaker 2: need advice, if they need help in reality like help
Speaker 2: moving or assistance, physical assistance. People play legal licens very
Speaker 2: powerful social support system where the people they play with
Speaker 2: actually you know, will loan them money. There's something about
Speaker 2: the pattern building your heroes together and depending on each
Speaker 2: other to show up for your practicing or for your matches,
Speaker 2: and so that's really interesting. You mentioned that the kind
Speaker 2: of long term relationships we build online are really powerful,
Speaker 2: and there's a term in game research and virtual reality
Speaker 2: research for one of the things that really heightens this,
Speaker 2: which is presence. A lot of these games have a
Speaker 2: really strong presence, which means you feel like you are
Speaker 2: actually with someone, that you feel like you were in
Speaker 2: the same physical space.
Speaker 1: Which brings us to talk Fortnite.
Speaker 2: If Fortnite has a phenomenal presence factor, people who go
Speaker 2: hang out a Fortnite now, so like two hundred million
Speaker 2: players out of nowhere, everybody's playing Fortnite, they feel like
Speaker 2: they are together. And when we physically spend time with
Speaker 2: other people, it's a much stronger bonding. That happens because
Speaker 2: we take cues from body language and facial expression and
Speaker 2: the way that avatars are being designed, and you can
Speaker 2: express yourself through dances and different emotes where you can really,
Speaker 2: i mean your avatar expresses emotion just like you do
Speaker 2: in reality. It allows us to have a kind of
Speaker 2: bonding that I would say previously you would have needed
Speaker 2: to be in the same room with someone. But we're
Speaker 2: seeing both in just talking to gamers, but also in
Speaker 2: the research literature that these games that have this very
Speaker 2: strong presence, it does translate to a real social support system.
Speaker 1: So online friends in real life frinds. The gap is
Speaker 1: kind of closing both can offer social support and often
Speaker 1: hanging out online strengthens your real life bonds. And that's
Speaker 1: all so precious and so wonderful. But if you're wondering
Speaker 1: if there's a digital tipping point, I asked about that,
Speaker 1: like what happens if you're chasing dragons and then you're
Speaker 1: chasing the dragon the addictive nature of it, or what's
Speaker 1: happening with dopamine and how that works? And are we
Speaker 1: getting these like little hits kind of like gambling or
Speaker 1: kind of like, yeah, other pleasurable things in our lives,
Speaker 1: how's that working?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, Ali, there's so much to say here.
Speaker 2: Let me start. Let me start with the gambling question,
Speaker 2: because this I think people, If people can understand this,
Speaker 2: it will alleviate a lot of anxiety around video gaming
Speaker 2: versus casino gaming. The thing that happens in your brain
Speaker 2: where you feel like something good could happen as a
Speaker 2: result of your actions. It is identical in gambling and
Speaker 2: video gaming. Right. The part of your brain that says
Speaker 2: try again, try again, you might win, go ahead, go
Speaker 2: for it, that keeps you at that slot machine, or
Speaker 2: you just need to play another hand in gambling or
Speaker 2: make another bet yes, that is identical to what's happening
Speaker 2: in video gaming. But what happens in video gaming is
Speaker 2: you actually get better at skills and you acquire more resources,
Speaker 2: and you gain more allies who can teach you and
Speaker 2: help you and show you the way. And as opposed
Speaker 2: to luck based gambling where you're just pulling the slot
Speaker 2: lever or scratching off a lottery ticket, you can actually
Speaker 2: get better and improve your chances of winning in video gaming.
Speaker 2: So it is a completely different psychological experience, a different
Speaker 2: neurological experience, because it is not delusional to stay engaged.
Speaker 2: And that is a big difference between video gaming and
Speaker 2: casino gaming is that the games and casinos are designed
Speaker 2: for you to lose. They want you to fail so
Speaker 2: they can take your money. And it is delusional when
Speaker 2: your brain says stay engaged, stay engaged bad. That is
Speaker 2: that is illsocial design and shameful right in my opinion.
Speaker 1: PS side notes, stay tuned for an episode on the
Speaker 1: lottery with a Latologist. You don't believe all do word?
Speaker 1: Please see Lotterycollectors dot com, or you can subscribe to
Speaker 1: the monthly newsletter The Latologist. I've got an itch to
Speaker 1: cover it. They can only be scratched by a dirty
Speaker 1: penny and a dream. But that's a different episode.
Speaker 2: In video gaming, the games are designed for you to
Speaker 2: win and to get better, and the developers are on
Speaker 2: your side and they want you to experience success and
Speaker 2: they want you to develop real skills and build real
Speaker 2: relationships that can help you succeed. And that's the big difference. So,
Speaker 2: even though some of the neuroscience is the same, the
Speaker 2: fact that you actually can improve in games and experience
Speaker 2: real meaningful development and growth and relationship building, it's a
Speaker 2: different application of that kind of neurological experience. And so,
Speaker 2: you know, as we see games kind of spread into
Speaker 2: different areas of our lives, I always say, you know,
Speaker 2: is this a good use of game design? Is it
Speaker 2: manipulating people to do things that maybe aren't in their
Speaker 2: best interest, or is this actually a good use of
Speaker 2: game design. It really depends on is there an opportunity
Speaker 2: for them to really improve and experience success in something
Speaker 2: that's meaningful to them. Maybe, like fitness trackers are gamifying
Speaker 2: the steps you take, and that that actually is good
Speaker 2: for you, and you can take more steps and that
Speaker 2: will have a virtuous feedback cycle where you feel healthier
Speaker 2: and now you're stepping more and you're sharing with friends,
Speaker 2: and it's upward spiral.
Speaker 1: Take a sip of your beverage or blink twice. If
Speaker 1: your brain is like my brain trying to remember where
Speaker 1: your fitbit is and why you haven't charged it in months.
Speaker 2: That's really good. If you're using it just to get
Speaker 2: people to like buy more stuff or click on ads,
Speaker 2: and how do you get better at clicking on ads?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not a good That is not a
Speaker 2: good system, and it doesn't lead to real growth and
Speaker 2: real relationship buildings. So that's that's my philosophy on how
Speaker 2: you know. Even though it's the same a lot of
Speaker 2: the same stuff happening in the brain, it really matters
Speaker 2: if there's an opportunity for growth and success.
Speaker 3: And that actually brings me. I have a ton of Patreon.
Speaker 1: Questions I ask you, Yeah, so many questions, and so
Speaker 1: this is kind of like a lightning round, oky Dook.
Speaker 1: So before the lightning round of questions from folks on
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash ologies, I tell you about a
Speaker 1: few things I like. But before that, each week, a
Speaker 1: portion of the ad revenue goes to a charity or
Speaker 1: a cause that theologists chooses, and this week Jane picked
Speaker 1: ablegamers dot org, which works to make gaming accessible to all. So,
Speaker 1: in their words, we give people with disabilities custom gaming setups,
Speaker 1: including modified controllers and special assistive technology like devices that
Speaker 1: like you play with your eyes so you can have
Speaker 1: fun with friends and family. And they're using the power
Speaker 1: of video games to bring people together improve the quality
Speaker 1: of life with recreation and rehabilitation. So that's ablegamers dot
Speaker 1: org doing awesome stuff. So thank you, Jane. A donation
Speaker 1: was made to them. Now a few words from sponsors
Speaker 1: who make the podcast possible. They're also all linked in
Speaker 1: the show notes. Okay, back to your Patreon questions, which
Speaker 1: are good ones, but that dovetails just wonderfully into one
Speaker 1: Patreon question. I got a ton from Mark Williams, and
Speaker 1: from David Baffa and from Sasha kd. They all asked
Speaker 1: about gamification. And I know that I don't think that
Speaker 1: you love the words, but is the gamification of behavior
Speaker 1: a useful technique? Sasha k wants to know how do
Speaker 1: you feel about gamification of everything?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you are awesome Ali for knowing that I do
Speaker 2: not use a word gamification to describe my own work
Speaker 2: because just historically it's been used not in ways that
Speaker 2: authentically empower or bring the best out of the people
Speaker 2: who are being gamified. So so my philosophy is, if
Speaker 2: you are connecting with somebody's deeply held values, what do
Speaker 2: they want more in their life? They want to be
Speaker 2: a better parent, They want to learn something new every day.
Speaker 2: They want to be braver and get out in the
Speaker 2: world more, be more physically active, you know, whatever it
Speaker 2: is that they authentically want to do that they choose
Speaker 2: for themselves. If you can put a quest system or
Speaker 2: a leveling up system, or a kind of cooperation opportunity
Speaker 2: where they are multipliers, if if you and your friends
Speaker 2: are doing it together, you can add some game design
Speaker 2: elements that help people do more of what they want.
Speaker 2: And if they do it, they're going to experience an
Speaker 2: upper spiral of skill and ability so they can maintain
Speaker 2: it outside of the game. That's an ideal situation for gamification.
Speaker 2: You know, I will always say with my own game
Speaker 2: Super Better, that's not a game I want you to
Speaker 2: play your whole life. I want you to play it
Speaker 2: for a few weeks and then get that upward lift
Speaker 2: and kind of go back to reality and maybe come
Speaker 2: back next year if you need another upward lift. We
Speaker 2: shouldn't be gamifying our whole lives in perpetuity, right. We
Speaker 2: should use it as a way to give us that
Speaker 2: authentic experience of getting better at something that matters to us.
Speaker 2: And then once we're better and we're doing it, that
Speaker 2: authentic value and reward system will replace the need for
Speaker 2: a more artificial game one.
Speaker 1: So if your aunt or your coworker announces every time
Speaker 1: they hit their water goal for the day, don't hate
Speaker 1: the player, hate the gamification. And then a bunch of
Speaker 1: people Colin Matthew, Carla Kennedy, Helen Amy Connor all asked
Speaker 1: about dreams. Why do I dream about Tetris? After playing
Speaker 1: Tetris for a long time? Two people, in particular, Colin
Speaker 1: and Amy both said, I love Tetris, but if I
Speaker 1: play it too long, I start thinking about it all
Speaker 1: the time, and when I close my eyes, I literally
Speaker 1: see little Tetramino swalling. Why does this happen? And is
Speaker 1: it a Soviet mind control conspiracy? Just kidding on the
Speaker 1: last person.
Speaker 2: It is not. First of all, I can say, having
Speaker 2: hung out with the original designer of Tetris. I will
Speaker 2: tell you he's super nice and kudley and it's not
Speaker 2: a secret Soviet mind control mission.
Speaker 1: So quick aside. The creator of Tetris was inspired by
Speaker 1: the math game Pentomenos, which looks just like analogue Tetris. Also,
Speaker 1: he is not an agent of Soviet mind control. His
Speaker 1: name is just Alexi Leonodovic Petchibanoff and he's from Moscow.
Speaker 2: So this is the greatest question because the other public
Speaker 2: service announcement I always like to do about video games
Speaker 2: actually has to do with Tetris and how it takes
Speaker 2: over your mind, because there have been three randomized control
Speaker 2: trials and studies and clinical trials now including one in
Speaker 2: the field with people who experienced traumatic events that show
Speaker 2: that the way that Tetris takes over your brain so
Speaker 2: that you are flashing back to it can prevent flashbacks
Speaker 2: associated with post traumatic stress disorder. And there's actually an
Speaker 2: increasing usage of Tetris within twenty four hours of a
Speaker 2: traumatic event. If you were in a car accident, maybe
Speaker 2: you witness a violent activity, or you were a victim
Speaker 2: of violent activity, that if you play Tetris within twenty
Speaker 2: four hours and before you go to sleep, that your
Speaker 2: brain is more likely to flash back on tetris and
Speaker 2: the event, which reduces the rate of traumatic flashbacks in
Speaker 2: the future. And it happens because Tetris is so visually
Speaker 2: compelling and requires so much visual attention that your brain
Speaker 2: essentially diverts resources from everything else.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 2: It works so hard on this problem that when you
Speaker 2: walk away from it, your brain is continuing to work
Speaker 2: on it. It's like it's when you give so much
Speaker 2: attention to a problem, your brain thinks it's a priority, essentially.
Speaker 2: And so because tetris is so visually challenging, your brain
Speaker 2: essentially thinks like, oh, that's a priority. I'm going to
Speaker 2: keep thinking about it when I walk away, when I
Speaker 2: go to sleep. And so in a way, tetris is
Speaker 2: kind of like this miracle. Even if you're not traumatized,
Speaker 2: If you had a really bad day and you don't
Speaker 2: want to sit there thinking about it, or like stay
Speaker 2: up all night thinking about it, you can use tetris
Speaker 2: to block your brain from flashing back on an experience
Speaker 2: that you don't want to remember. You use the power
Speaker 2: of tetris to flash back on tetris. I mean, I
Speaker 2: can't tell you since I started sharing this research I've
Speaker 2: heard from people who've been through really horrible, terrifying things
Speaker 2: who were able to get the game on their phone
Speaker 2: and play it and felt like they benefited and had
Speaker 2: fewer nightmares and flashbacks than they thought. So to your
Speaker 2: patrons who have observed this, they are correct, and it
Speaker 2: can be used in really powerful ways.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so amazing, just like BRB downloading teches.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can you have it?
Speaker 1: I downloaded Tetris immediately after this interview. Also, this is
Speaker 1: going to be a hole aside about video game music
Speaker 1: and its origins and history and composition. But in researching it,
Speaker 1: I found out that the study of video game music
Speaker 1: is known as lotto musicology. For real, for real, there
Speaker 1: are experts all over the world who do this. So yes,
Speaker 1: you best believe this is on the list. All in favor,
Speaker 1: say bebop booo boo boop.
Speaker 2: Okay, good, Okay.
Speaker 1: I got a ton of questions also about wait, hold on,
Speaker 1: I have so many, so many.
Speaker 3: Different pages of questions, it's crazy. Okay.
Speaker 1: I got a ton of questions about VR like Justin so,
Speaker 1: Dion Dabbelow, Kirana Bergstrom, and Janelle York all wanted to
Speaker 1: know what video game.
Speaker 3: Advances should we look forward to, Like, how do you.
Speaker 1: See the industry developing, and how does VR a an
Speaker 1: AR change game design like virtual reality and augmented.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, so many things. Okay, I'm going to focus
Speaker 2: on a few things. One thing, one advance that we
Speaker 2: are going to see in gaming in general as a
Speaker 2: result of virtual reality, I believe is that gaming will
Speaker 2: become a socially safer and more pleasant space for people
Speaker 2: who have historically experienced more harassment. So for women, people
Speaker 2: who are identified as queer. There can be a lot
Speaker 2: of harassment in social gaming, and that's just a fact.
Speaker 2: I spent a lot of time talking to VR developers,
Speaker 2: and I know that all of the major VR developers
Speaker 2: are very much focused on not repeating the mistakes of
Speaker 2: the past of both social media and video gaming. They
Speaker 2: do not want VR to be a space where anybody
Speaker 2: can come up to you and tell you what they think,
Speaker 2: anybody can come up to you and have an interaction
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 4: What are you looking at? Butt hit?
Speaker 2: They want to invent new kinds of technologies for consent,
Speaker 2: for who can see you, who can touch you, who
Speaker 2: can talk to you. I'm very optimistic that VR is
Speaker 2: going to thoughtfully not replicate the kind of toxic environments
Speaker 2: that we've seen in social media and video gaming in
Speaker 2: the past. That's one thing. Yeah. Another thing that I'm
Speaker 2: excited about in VR is VR esports. So there are
Speaker 2: esports is obviously becoming really popular and accepted. I mean,
Speaker 2: there are college scholarships, there's college leagues, there's more people
Speaker 2: watching online World Championships for the biggest League of Legends finals,
Speaker 2: then watched Major League Baseball World Series and watch the NHL.
Speaker 1: Okay quick aside, just to fact check this, let's look
Speaker 1: at the most watched World Series in recent years. Twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen Chicago Cubs are in the World Series for the
Speaker 1: first time since nineteen oh seven. This is a big deal.
Speaker 1: Game seven, Who's gonna win? The viewership is about triple
Speaker 1: what it usually is for a World Series, with forty
Speaker 1: million people watching the Chicago Cubs take the victory forty million.
Speaker 1: Oh but last year the number of people watching the
Speaker 1: League of Legends Finals was one hundred million. Well that's
Speaker 1: an exaggeration. It was ninety nine point six million. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a lot.
Speaker 2: Sorry Cubs, it's very popular. But I'm interested in esports
Speaker 2: and VR because the esports and VR are often very physical.
Speaker 2: If you look at images or videos of them online,
Speaker 2: you see people leaping and crawling, and there's a real
Speaker 2: blend of physical sport, but also all the things that
Speaker 2: require you to be good in video games and esports,
Speaker 2: the kind of fast reflexes and visual attention and resource
Speaker 2: management that are the kind of strategic decision making that
Speaker 2: we see in traditional video games in esports, so I'm
Speaker 2: excited for VR esports also as a way to have
Speaker 2: both real, physical and beautiful gameplay alongside traditional esports skills.
Speaker 1: Someone developed VR Frogger, but make it like Mission Impossible,
Speaker 1: but ushering toads across freeways. Come on?
Speaker 3: Do for the toads.
Speaker 1: A bunch of people also had questions about parenting. And
Speaker 1: I know that you have twin four year olds, so
Speaker 1: I'm sure this is going to be a thing for you.
Speaker 1: But let's see Matt Soalgato, Carla Hickenlooper, Roda Acaria, Carla
Speaker 1: Kennedy and a few other people asked about addiction to
Speaker 1: like when should people when should kids start playing video games?
Speaker 1: And how much is too much?
Speaker 2: Okay, so you cannot go wrong if you are playing
Speaker 2: the game with them, that's That's the first and most
Speaker 2: important rule. There's no too soon if you are playing
Speaker 2: with them and talking to them about it, and for
Speaker 2: as long as you can continue this, the better. So
Speaker 2: even if it's a single player game, you know, somebody
Speaker 2: they're building something in Minecraft. You are sitting right there,
Speaker 2: You're like, what are you doing? How did you know
Speaker 2: to do that? How did you figure that out? Like, ah,
Speaker 2: looks really hard. What's going on? Talk to your kids,
Speaker 2: let them express their problem solving process, what's motivating them
Speaker 2: about the game. Why is this fun? You want to
Speaker 2: just draw out as much as you can, because it
Speaker 2: allows kids to really reflect on how they learn, what
Speaker 2: they're getting better at, how they are capable of solving
Speaker 2: difficult problems, and staying engage with hard challenges. Games are
Speaker 2: just the most incredible environment for you to validate your
Speaker 2: kids' skills and abilities as a learner, as a creative person,
Speaker 2: as a problem solver. So it's never too early if
Speaker 2: you're playing with them and at whatever age they are,
Speaker 2: the more that you can reflect back to them.
Speaker 1: What if they get annoyed with you?
Speaker 2: They get annoyed with you if it's like a I mean,
Speaker 2: you know if they're playing Fortnite, they don't want you
Speaker 2: asking them necessarily while they're trying to like frantically build
Speaker 2: an escape route. But afterwards, talk to them. I'm talking
Speaker 2: about dinner. And so that's the first and most important thing.
Speaker 2: I Some parents are to tell me like, oh, games
Speaker 2: seem like kind of antisocial. Well, they're probably talking to
Speaker 2: their friends on a headset. Or if you think it's antisocial,
Speaker 2: just sit and play with them, and you've successfully solved
Speaker 2: that problem. And the other thing about in terms of timing,
Speaker 2: I did help you a meta analysis of all the
Speaker 2: studies that have looked at kids and adults how much
Speaker 2: is too much? And I will say that there have
Speaker 2: never been studies showing ill effects when people are playing
Speaker 2: less than twenty hours a week. You do see impacts
Speaker 2: on school performing, on social relationships with people who don't
Speaker 2: play games, on physical health and well being over twenty
Speaker 2: hours per week. So that's just another kind of safe zone.
Speaker 2: And you can say, you know, in our family, we
Speaker 2: don't play more than twenty hours a week. We just
Speaker 2: don't do that, because that's what all the research says.
Speaker 2: It starts to kind of interfere with other goals that
Speaker 2: you have or your physical wellbeings, so we just don't
Speaker 2: do it. And in cases of serious pathological gameplay, when
Speaker 2: people are staying up all night, they're not doing the schoolwork,
Speaker 2: I'm not looking for a job. I always say, get
Speaker 2: it to twenty hours or less. Do not take the
Speaker 2: game away, because if you understand the powerful effects of
Speaker 2: games on things like anxiety and depression and social support,
Speaker 2: you know, taking games entirely away from someone, that's like
Speaker 2: pulling them off an antidepressant or an anti anxiety drug
Speaker 2: without tapering.
Speaker 1: I looked up quitting gaming Cold Turkey, and I did
Speaker 1: find a site called game quitters dot com which suggested
Speaker 1: taking a ninety day detox to re evaluate the role
Speaker 1: of gaming in your life. It also suggested that during
Speaker 1: that time, choose new activities, schedule out your day, and
Speaker 1: stay out of the house as much as possible. So
Speaker 1: maybe it's a good idea to just record how much
Speaker 1: time you're spending on gaming if it's a problem, and then,
Speaker 1: as Jane says, you can just tape her off from there.
Speaker 2: There's really no need to take it away entirely. It's
Speaker 2: about getting it to a safe number of hours. So
Speaker 2: as an intervention, if you need to intervene get it
Speaker 2: down to twenty hours a week, and that is a
Speaker 2: much more effective strategy than trying to get somebody to
Speaker 2: stop playing.
Speaker 3: Oh that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: I love that you've read every paper ever all this information.
Speaker 1: And so a bunch of people asked about violence and
Speaker 1: video games, Emily Brabish and Elizabeth Janelle Yorke, Lauren Murray McKay,
Speaker 1: Sarah Jane, James, Amber Cooper, and then they all kind
Speaker 1: of ask do violent video games cause more violence? Is
Speaker 1: there any link between these ultra real estate violent games?
Speaker 1: And then Don Doherty affleck said, my husband is a lawyer,
Speaker 1: so my question is why does coming home from work
Speaker 1: and killing things in games like Dark Souls help him
Speaker 1: relax after a stressful day.
Speaker 2: Oh that's funny.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 2: Dark Souls is a very specific example that's like almost
Speaker 2: like a masochistic game, Like it's very very hard, okay.
Speaker 1: Ps I looked into this Japanese game of fortresses and
Speaker 1: knights and dragons and bonfires and moodally lit castle interiors
Speaker 1: to find a few things. One you can play as
Speaker 1: a person who has no skin, which looks essentially like
Speaker 1: a human made out of salami, killing things with a sword. Also,
Speaker 1: it's widely considered one of the best and most difficult
Speaker 1: video games ever made. Like there's not even a pause button.
Speaker 1: There's no pause button. They're like, are you in this?
Speaker 1: Or are you in this?
Speaker 2: And so it's funny. I mean, there's like some like
Speaker 2: high powered lawyer who like works really hard and then
Speaker 2: comes home and plays like literally the hardest game is.
Speaker 2: It's definitely revealed something about that person's like personality. They
Speaker 2: really they really do like a challenge. So violence, Okay, Look, statistically,
Speaker 2: we know that ninety six percent of men under twenty
Speaker 2: one play violent video games. And I'd prefer to use
Speaker 2: the term like games with violent content, because obviously the
Speaker 2: most violent game is like football, real football, where you
Speaker 2: are hitting people and causing brain injuries. That is an
Speaker 2: actually violent game. Video games are not actually violent. So
Speaker 2: let's say games with violent content or aggressive themes. Everybody
Speaker 2: plays them. And if you look at the data, violent
Speaker 2: crime has gone down and down and down exactly as
Speaker 2: engagement with violent themed games has gone up and up.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like it's ridiculous. If there were any
Speaker 2: any correlation, let alone causation, you would not see this trend.
Speaker 2: This is like anybody who saidies this, well, that's the
Speaker 2: first thing they will say is over the past thirty years,
Speaker 2: violence crime goes down, particularly in this demographic, the male demographic.
Speaker 2: It probably has to do with getting lead out of
Speaker 2: our paint. I mean, that's you should do a good
Speaker 2: aside on that.
Speaker 1: Okay. First off, the fact that Chaine listens to ologies
Speaker 1: and knows ido asides warms my heart to the point
Speaker 1: of bursting. And also, yes, lead paint. So according to
Speaker 1: an article on mother Jones that delves into the lead
Speaker 1: violence hypothesis, they say lead poisoning degrades the development of
Speaker 1: childhood brains in ways that increase aggression, reduce impulse control,
Speaker 1: and impair the executive functions that allow people to understand
Speaker 1: just the consequences of their actions. Because of this, infants
Speaker 1: who are exposed to high levels of lead are more
Speaker 1: likely to commit violent crimes later in life. So why
Speaker 1: is this? Brain scientists have done scans and found that
Speaker 1: because lead is really chemically similar to calcium, it displaces
Speaker 1: the calcium needed for brain development. So looking at the
Speaker 1: data is staggering. You can see how the bands of
Speaker 1: leaded gasoline and lead paint correspond to these huge drops
Speaker 1: in violent crimes. Ps I have a victimology episode coming
Speaker 1: up in Hell Yeah, we will be talking about.
Speaker 2: That violent crime is going down, violent themed gameplay is
Speaker 2: going up. It's just not there's no data to suggest
Speaker 2: that there is any kind of correlation, let alone causation. However,
Speaker 2: that said two things. There are certain types of gameplay
Speaker 2: that can turn you into a jerk. Not a violent person,
Speaker 2: but somebody who has less empathy for people they perceive
Speaker 2: is weaker than them, and who are kind of moodier
Speaker 2: and may yell at you or be grumpy to you,
Speaker 2: and you're just like, ugh, why are you so obnoxious?
Speaker 2: Or such a jerk? That kind of gameplay is when
Speaker 2: you play in these very aggressive themed games against strangers
Speaker 2: who you don't know and will never see in person.
Speaker 2: We tend to dehumanize those opponents. We don't know who
Speaker 2: they are, we're playing anonymously online, we're trying to beat them.
Speaker 2: We build up in our mind that there's like horrible
Speaker 2: people and we hate them and we feel antagonistic towards them,
Speaker 2: and those emotions that we build up, the frustration, the anger,
Speaker 2: the hatred. It's not like you just walk away from
Speaker 2: the game and they evaporate so they can linger. Some
Speaker 2: people hypothesize that there's a kind of testosterone poisoning from
Speaker 2: this type of gameplay. I mean, poisoning is a little
Speaker 2: strong of a word, but your testosterone gets jacked up,
Speaker 2: and so, yeah, you're kind of a jerk. So you
Speaker 2: shouldn't spend all your time trying to beat people you
Speaker 2: have never met and we'll never meet online. You know.
Speaker 2: Esports is different because these are much more collegial environments.
Speaker 2: You can play against the same people again and again
Speaker 2: and again. You can see them in person at tournaments.
Speaker 2: That's fine.
Speaker 1: And another thought about violence and video games.
Speaker 2: I don't like to play games where I have to
Speaker 2: kill people.
Speaker 1: I hate it.
Speaker 2: When I play Fortnite, I just hide and it's like
Speaker 2: literally a game of hide and seek for me, and
Speaker 2: I build stuff and I like, I've you know, I
Speaker 2: can get the top five finish without killing anyone, and
Speaker 2: to me, that's awesome. I don't like it. I don't
Speaker 2: enjoy it. There's a reason why a lot of people
Speaker 2: don't enjoy it. Like a lot of people don't want
Speaker 2: to simulate violence because we don't enjoy it. And that's
Speaker 2: a natural feeling, and it's why a lot of people
Speaker 2: are turned off by video game culture. It's not abnormal
Speaker 2: to not enjoy violence, like that's a that's also a
Speaker 2: normal thing. If you're turned off by it, that's okay.
Speaker 2: And you don't have to play violent video games, or
Speaker 2: if you play them, you don't have to necessarily engage
Speaker 2: in the violent aspects of them. That is normal and
Speaker 2: that's fine. And I personally feel the same way.
Speaker 1: And this actually goes straight into Crystal Mendoza wanted to
Speaker 1: know what is the deal with Fortnite? Why is it
Speaker 1: so addicting? Is the is it the killing part or
Speaker 1: is it that kind of feeling that you're hanging out
Speaker 1: with friends, like that social aspect.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of things that is kind of special
Speaker 2: about Fortnite. I mean, one of the things is just
Speaker 2: how easy it is to try again. So if you're
Speaker 2: in Battle Royal mode.
Speaker 1: Battle Royal Mode, by the bye is when a bunch
Speaker 1: of players play against each other, it's like a birthday party.
Speaker 2: But you die, you play, maybe you're dead in five minutes,
Speaker 2: you can just play again. You can drop back in
Speaker 2: parachute back down. You don't have to wait for anybody
Speaker 2: this sense of like just abundant opportunity and how fast
Speaker 2: the games are and how quickly you can try again.
Speaker 2: It really powers up that part of the brain that
Speaker 2: thinks that something good might happen, and it's just like like, oh,
Speaker 2: something good didn't happen. I'm out, but wait, I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna play again. Something good could happen now. That rapidity,
Speaker 2: that sort of iterative nature of the game is really
Speaker 2: really wonderful. And they've done such a good job with
Speaker 2: the expressivity of the avatars and how playful the different
Speaker 2: skins are, and you just when you encounter people and
Speaker 2: you see what they're you know what they're avatar is
Speaker 2: dressed as, and you see the emotes that they do
Speaker 2: when something good happens, you just kind of feel like
Speaker 2: you're seeing people. It's really interesting. People feel like there's
Speaker 2: an authentic personality that they're able to express or an
Speaker 2: authentic emotion, and it increases a sense of presence and
Speaker 2: it increases a sense of social being and so so yeah,
Speaker 2: the social side of it is really compelling to and
Speaker 2: I just think it's nice, like to play a game
Speaker 2: where ninety nine people are going to lose, and only
Speaker 2: one person wins. It kind of takes the pressure off.
Speaker 3: There can be one hundred people in the room and
Speaker 3: ninety nine don't believe in you.
Speaker 2: I think it's easier for people to jump in and
Speaker 2: it's you know, when you're playing chess, one person wins,
Speaker 2: one person loses, you were the loser in the battle.
Speaker 2: Real everyone's a loser. So it's a kind of a
Speaker 2: low pressure environment where good things can happen.
Speaker 1: What do you think about video games? In movies and TV?
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you've watched that you love or hate?
Speaker 1: And Stuart Caswell wanted to know from a game designer's
Speaker 1: part of view, what are your thoughts on Ready Player one?
Speaker 1: But yeah, are there any anything in pop culture that
Speaker 1: gets it wrong that you're excited about?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, okay. Well, first of all, every Law and
Speaker 2: Order episode on every franchise of Law and Order and
Speaker 2: as CSI and Criminal Minds has been terrible, always never
Speaker 2: gets anything right. Well, it's obviously little like let's acknowledge
Speaker 2: that even though I like, I love them all and
Speaker 2: I watch this for you every week. But Ready Player
Speaker 2: one is interesting because I had a strong, viscual reaction
Speaker 2: to the book that I still kind of feel, which
Speaker 2: is I just don't believe it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I was maybe the last person on planet Earth
Speaker 1: to know the plot of Ready Player one. I just
Speaker 1: looked it up. It takes place in twenty forty five.
Speaker 1: The world is a desolate hell escape and then to
Speaker 1: escape that, everyone just wears VR headsets. But there's a
Speaker 1: real life game that happens. That's all I'll say. Also,
Speaker 1: would everyone get a ton of forehead sets from wearing
Speaker 1: a headset all the time in the future or would
Speaker 1: it even matter because you just see each other's avatars anyway?
Speaker 1: Is this our future?
Speaker 2: I don't think that that VR is going to be
Speaker 2: the alternative to reality in that kind of really holistic
Speaker 2: way that Ready Player one imagines. I think augmented reality
Speaker 2: is a much more likely future, and that VR will
Speaker 2: be more often used for kind of short term immersions.
Speaker 2: I love VR. For example, it's being used in hospice
Speaker 2: care for people who still have like bucket list items
Speaker 2: but they're dying. VR for kind of reliving past experiences
Speaker 2: when we get this really immersive three sixty footage and
Speaker 2: you can kind of immerse yourself in things that you've
Speaker 2: experienced in the past. Like I think I just don't
Speaker 2: buy the vision of Ready Player one. I just don't.
Speaker 2: I don't see that that's what people want. Kind of
Speaker 2: going back to research, my PhD research methodology was largely ethnography,
Speaker 2: of really trying to understand what drives people and sit
Speaker 2: with the communities and sit with individuals and look for
Speaker 2: patterns that help explain how a society might evolve when
Speaker 2: you see a lot of the same thing bubbling up
Speaker 2: as a motivation and desire in different communities. And so
Speaker 2: I just don't buy Ready Player one as a vision.
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be augmented. If you look
Speaker 2: at what happened with Pokemon Go and how they were
Speaker 2: able to get almost a billion users in just a
Speaker 2: few months, no product has ever scaled as quickly, like
Speaker 2: including the wheel, like more humans used Pokemon Go a
Speaker 2: vaster than anything that's ever been invented. And I think
Speaker 2: that gives us a better glimpse into what the future
Speaker 2: of gaming will be. Like people like Pokemon Go because
Speaker 2: you could still see the world, and you could still
Speaker 2: have face to face contact with other people, and you
Speaker 2: could be physically active which feels good, and get fresh
Speaker 2: air and all of that. So that's my feeling about
Speaker 2: Ready Player one. I don't think we're headed towards that future,
Speaker 2: and I'd love to see like Ready Player two should
Speaker 2: be about the augmented reality version of that world, and
Speaker 2: it might be a better one.
Speaker 1: I asked Jane if she watched Russian Doll on Netflix,
Speaker 1: in which Natasha Leone is a game designer. Jane says
Speaker 1: she didn't watch it because it might feel like work
Speaker 1: to her and Di stress her out. I mean, not
Speaker 1: unlike Fortnite. It's kind of a birthday party. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: I am not a last two questions if we have
Speaker 1: a second, is that cool? The thing that you hate
Speaker 1: the most about video games or your work? The shittiest
Speaker 1: thing about what you do most annoying can be anything.
Speaker 2: Oh god, the most annoying thing is I mean, it's
Speaker 2: just that I hate the shame around gaming that is
Speaker 2: perpetuated by the media and to some extent by anxious parents.
Speaker 2: It makes me crazy, and I think we need to
Speaker 2: stop shaming people for loving games, because we've loved games
Speaker 2: since we were human beings. Some of the oldest artifacts
Speaker 2: in the world are game boards and game dice. We
Speaker 2: need to stop creating unnecessary shame around this because it
Speaker 2: hurts people and it affects ourself image and really damaging
Speaker 2: long term ways. So that is the most annoying thing
Speaker 2: about games is the shaming, and the media has a
Speaker 2: big role to play in it, and we need to
Speaker 2: stop it.
Speaker 3: Video games they seem to have captured America's imagination and
Speaker 3: it's pocket change as well. That's legit.
Speaker 1: What is your favorite thing about video games or about
Speaker 1: what you do?
Speaker 2: I mean, my favorite thing is I love with discovering
Speaker 2: a new game with my husband. Still. We've been together
Speaker 2: since two thousand, so almost twenty years now, and one
Speaker 2: of the first things we did together was play an
Speaker 2: adventure game called grim Fandango one players Lucas Art's browseres
Speaker 2: game you like explore world together and we spent a
Speaker 2: few weeks playing it together. And I still like. I
Speaker 2: love when a new game comes out, whether it's Gone
Speaker 2: Home Game or Fortnite, we can sit and experience it
Speaker 2: together and have the sort of memorable moments in our history,
Speaker 2: like when we found Portal, when we found Braid, when
Speaker 2: we found World of Warcraft. I really love developing a
Speaker 2: skill with him together and having that novelty and that
Speaker 2: exploration and curiosity. There's so many positive emotions that we
Speaker 2: feel when we play, and when you can feel them
Speaker 2: with someone you love, it's really powerful. And so I'm
Speaker 2: always excited when we have time and opportunity to discover
Speaker 2: a new game together.
Speaker 3: Open up a beer and you say good over here
Speaker 3: and play.
Speaker 2: A video game.
Speaker 1: I'm now I'm going to have to learn legal legends,
Speaker 1: stamp download Texas.
Speaker 2: Yes, good victory.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this. I'm so glad
Speaker 1: I finally got to talk to you. I feel like
Speaker 1: I've just towed the line of creepy of like, Hi,
Speaker 1: it's me again.
Speaker 2: Hi, oh no, And I wish you know what if
Speaker 2: I had known that you would interview people like on
Speaker 2: a bench at LAX. Also, we could have done this
Speaker 2: a long time ago, because that is something that I
Speaker 2: find myself sitting.
Speaker 1: So Yes, Jane McGonagall the woman the world needs. So
Speaker 1: befriend someone, and even if you have to do it
Speaker 1: over Skype in a remote sound booth four hundred miles away,
Speaker 1: asks smart people stupid questions, because they have the keys
Speaker 1: that can unlock the Easter eggs that can give you life,
Speaker 1: more lives. So find out more about Jane mcgonagal at
Speaker 1: janemcgonagal dot com. She's also avante game on Twitter and
Speaker 1: I'll link all this in the show notes, including the
Speaker 1: Nonprofitablegamers dot Org and a sponsor links. And Jane's book
Speaker 1: once Again is called super Better, a Revolutionary Approach to
Speaker 1: getting stronger, happier, braver, and more resilient, powered by the
Speaker 1: Science of Games. And also doctor Kelly McGonagall, Jane's sister,
Speaker 1: is a psychologist who studies how to make stress your friend.
Speaker 1: You better believe I'm going to try to make her
Speaker 1: come on the show. Mcgonagal's you all good folks, So
Speaker 1: to find ologies, you can follow ologies on Twitter and
Speaker 1: Instagram at all jeez and I'm Ali Ward with one
Speaker 1: L on both and for t shirts with the ologies
Speaker 1: logo and mugs and toads and pins and hats. All
Speaker 1: that is at ologismerch dot com. You can tag your
Speaker 1: Instagram photos Ologies merch so then I can repost them
Speaker 1: on Mondays if you want. Thank you Shannon Feltis and
Speaker 1: Bonnie Dutch for managing that. Thank you Aaron Talbert and
Speaker 1: Hannah Lippo for admitting the Facebook group full of great folks.
Speaker 1: Thank you to interns Harry Kim and Caleb Patten, to
Speaker 1: assistant editor Jared Sleeper of mind Jam Media, and of
Speaker 1: course to the incomparable Stephen Ray Morris of The per
Speaker 1: Cast and c Jurassic Right, and also to Nick Thorburn,
Speaker 1: who wrote and performed with the theme music. If you
Speaker 1: stick around to the end, you know I tell you
Speaker 1: a secret. This week you get too. Number one. After
Speaker 1: my disgusting botfly video confession last week, Stegosaur ch on
Speaker 1: Instagram dm me asking if I'd ever seen videos of
Speaker 1: mango worms and then roomed my life because I watched
Speaker 1: so many. It's so gross. They make bot flies just
Speaker 1: seem like child's play. Just don't do it. Don't do it.
Speaker 2: Don't do it.
Speaker 1: Don't do it. Don't do it. Also, my other secret
Speaker 1: is that I mentioned dating someone, and for years and
Speaker 1: years I've been super low pro about who I'm dating
Speaker 1: because it's just a vulnerable thing. And also what if
Speaker 1: it ends, and then you have to explain that to people.
Speaker 1: I just I just quiet about it. Anyway, Go get them, kiddos.
Speaker 1: You all mean so much to me. For bye. Pacodermatology
Speaker 1: mombiology or doo zoology lithology technology, meteorology, metatology, methology, zeriology, ethology,