Reality is Broken - Chapter 1

In this chapter, Jane McGonigal is attempting to set the basis for her argument of this entire text. She is saying that more and more gamers are beginning to disconnect from reality. She is saying that we are beginning to see more people participating in a virtual environment then the people whom are participating in real life. Jane McGonigal doesn't see this as a problem instead, she sees it more as a potential solution to other pre-existing problems. She is attempting to suggest that if we could somehow tap into this "system" which all of our gamers are using, we could use this abundance of information to solve huge lingering problems, such as world hunger or on a lesser scale, oil consumption. She is trying to turn these passive gamers into active participators, she is attempting to zero in on a resource which has always been their, but nobody has been able to harness. While this all may sound good and well, it would be much more difficult to execute then she is making it sound. How do you get millions of people who experience joy from watching a zombie explode, experience the same joy by sitting around pondering new ideas to use less oil. let me tell you its going to take more then a good user interface and fancy graphics to fool me into sitting around talking about oil for two hours. so does this then mean that her viewpoints are completely unattainable? No, but you do have to find the perfect balance between work and play. so why then haven't we seen a game of this type on the shelves of our local video store? Their surly are many reasons as to why we don't see games like this, they are too costly to make, not enough interest from the participant  and so on and so-forth. so what we see Jane McGonigal  also suggesting is to gamify our current reality. why cant we turn the whole world into a game, make it fun, make people want to get out there and participate. You go to the library pick up a book read it, you "level up", you go to the store and hold a door for an elderly person you "gain niceness points". what she suggests this would do is promote kind gestures by rewarding people and discipline bad gestures by taking away points. We do already see how companies are beginning to implement these systems today, to much success. We see some companies who reward their employees for being on time and for preforming well at their jobs. This system not only motivates the individuals but it as well motivates tho company as a whole to do better. As for those people who have never played a video-game and don't want to gamify their world, all I can say is grab a controller and start playing. There’s a revolution coming and your going to be stuck right in the middle of it.