Our PAXEast experience started off with me rolling up to Justin’s place at 6:30 a.m., Dunkin Donuts coffee in hand and a little bleary-eyed. We quickly got on the highway and had a pretty good commute until Medford, where we crawled the rest of the way into the city. It was a grey foggy morning – we couldn’t see the tops of the buildings as we emerged from the underground portion of I-93 into the Financial district. We found some parking that favored convenience over value and ventured forth into the fog towards the barely visible outline of the BCEC. As we crossed the large pedestrian bridge we began to hear cheering and knew that we had arrived at the right place. We crossed Summer Street just as the doors opened and saw a line of thousands snaking its way at a pretty brisk pace into the convention center.
I was really jazzed about seeing the keynote, so I went straight to the line for the main hall while Justin and Jarod hit the swag line. While in line I got to chat with some nice guys who had made the trip down from Toronto for the con. This was their first PAX and I tried to fill them in on what PAXEast had been like last year and what they could expect. After a long wait, we finally made our way into the main theater for the Keynote.
I provided a preview of Jane’s McGonigal’s work earlier this week, but to summarize, Jane has done work on demonstrating how gaming can actually be a positive experience in peoples’ lives.
She started off the keynote by saying that she was nervous about having to fill Wil Wheaton’s shoes, and broke the ice by talking about her first PAX experience at PAX 2008. She showed some fun pictures of her wearing a Katamari costume, beating Portal at 3 a.m. in the morning, and the fact that her dog is named Meche after the character in Grim Fandango. She finished the introduction by talking about three games she’s designed that we’ve never heard of: Barkball, Chicken Soccer Bowling, and Tombstone Hold-em.
Jane then introduced the main topic of her address: “The top secret science behind why games make you a contagious vector of awesome 101.”
She provided a statistic that we play 3 billion hours of games a week in the world, and asked some rhetorical questions:
Is it worth it?
Is it a waste of time?
Are gamers not good at life?
McGonigal then went on to answer those questions by saying that not only is gaming a good thing but we actually need 21 billion hours of gaming a week in the world.
She then mentioned another statistic – we spend 10000 hours of gaming by the age of 21. That coincidentally is the same number of hours that we spend in the classroom from the 1st to 12th grade. Therefore there was a second mastery and education going on beyond the primary in-school education people are receiving.
Jane then went on to state that scientific studies had revealed the following:
• If we play social games or games that involve helping others 30 minutes a day, it increases the amount of time we spend helping people in real life by a factor of 3. Playing cooperative games heighthed what Jane refers to as our “cooperative radar;” acting in a cooperative manner in games causes us to look for ways to help others in the real world.
• 67% of 7000 gamers who played rhythm games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero ended up learning how to play real instruments that they didn’t know how to play before. 73% of existing musicians played more after playing rhythm games.
• Playing with an avatar that you feel is attractive for 90 seconds makes you more confident in the real world for 24 hours. People are more confident in their jobs, creatively, and in flirting with the opposite sex.
• Soldiers who spent 3-4 hours a day playing games in Afghanistan had the lowest incidence of PTSD, depression, and other negative psychological effects of combat.
• Gamers had fewer nightmares and highest incidence of lucid dreaming (awareness that you are dreaming and controlling your dream).
Next McGonigal discussed the effects of stress on the human body: increased heart-rate, quick breathing, sweating, for example. While most stress in our lives has a negative effect, stress experienced through gaming actually creates a positive kind of stress called “eustress.” The difference in the stress experienced through gaming is that because we chose the challenge, we experience it as exhilaration, drive, and ambition.
McGonigal then outlined 10 powerful emotions activated by gaming.
1. Joy
2. Relief
3. Love
4. Surprise
5. Pride
6. Curiosity
7. Excitement
8. Awe and wonder
9. Contentment
10. Creativity
Jane then explained that, contrary to the popular belief that being successful makes us happy, it is the opposite: being happy makes us successful. Happiness leads to:
• Better grades in school
• More popularity, social support
• Higher achievements in personal goals
• More raises and promotions at work
• Longer, more satisfying marriages
In order for this happiness effect to be maximized, it was important that positive emotions be experienced in a 3:1 ratio – 3 positive emotions for every 1 negative.
McGonigal also highlighted the fact that emotions are contagious. Emotional reactions spreads to an average of 6 people in at least three iterations – therefore our happiness can potentially spread to 216 other people.
She then stated that it was important that gamers realize that understanding all these factors came with a responsibility. She provided the example of the first Spiderman movie – there is a scene in the movie when Peter Parker first realizes his powers and decides to put them to work in professional wrestling. It was only after Peter realized that he needed to use his powers to help others that he started to achieve truly great things.
McGonigal emphasized the fact that it was time for gamers to start doing stuff in the real world to show what we can do – to take advantage of the powerful positive effects of gaming and use the confidence that gaming gives us in experiencing that we are powerful and overcoming obstacles and applying them to challenges and problems in the real world.
The keynote ended with a massive game of thumb-wrestling involving the entire auditorium. While it was a fun way to end the talk on a light-hearted note, I felt very moved by the information that McGonigal had provided during the keynote. It’s time that gamers shrug off the negative stereotypes that have been applied to us by those who don’t understand our culture. Gamers need to arm themselves with the information McGonigal has to share to counteract the cynicism that exists in the world about gamers and our lives. I hope that in our own little way we can contribute to that conversation, pass along some positive energy, and do some good in the world.
