Shiv on Learning

A great TED video about saving the world by playing computer games

Notes:

• We spend 3 billion hours a week playing games.
• To solve problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity we need to spend 21 billion hour per week playing games by the end of the next decade.
• In games people become the best versions of themselves: The most likely to help at a moment’s notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long as it takes, the most likely to get up after failure and try again.
• In real life when we face failure or obstacles we feel : overwhelmed, overcome, anxious, depressed, frustrated or cynical.  We never have those feelings when playing games.
• WoW is the ultimate collaborative problem solving environment.
• WoW gamers have spent 5.93 million years solving the problems of the virtual world.
• 5.93 million years ago is when the first primate human stood up.
• By Playing games humans are evolving to be a more collaborative and hardy species.
• The average person born into a country with a gaming culture would have spent 10,000 hours playing online games by age 21.
• A student with perfect attendance will spend 10,080 hours in high school between 5th grade and high school graduation.
• Young people are spending as much time playing games as they are in school.
• >500m online gamers in the world, they play at least and hour a day. In the next decade there will be another billion.
• The 2nd biggest wiki in the world the WoW wiki. There is more information about WoW on this wiki than there is about any other subject on any other wiki in the world.

 

Factors that make game such great environments (these may seem familiar):

• As soon as you log in you are given a task to do that perfectly matches your skill level.
• There are lots off calibrators ready to help you achieve your mission.
• There is an Epic story.
• There is constant feedback.
• You are constantly on the verge on a EPIC win.

What are gamers getting so good at:

• Urgent Optimism – The desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle with the expectation of a reasonable chance of success. Gamers always believe that an epic win is possible.
• Social Fabric – Gamers are virtuosos at weaving a tight social fabric. We like people better after playing a game with them.
• Blissful productivity – Gamers are happy to be working hard the entire time if they are given the right work.
• Epic Meaning –

These things make gamers

SUPER-EMPOWREED HOPEFUL INDIVIDUALS - people who believe that they are individually capable of changing the world. (Virtual Worlds not Real)