Thoughts on D.Min class - Day 4

We've finished more than half of the week-long class - time sure flies when you're having fun!

Today's main topic was about games.  I first heard about Jane McGonigal when her first first TED talk went viral in 2010.  She talked about her work with creating games and her experience/research with gamers - and how she believed that gaming had the potential to make the world a better place.  Her book, Reality is Broken, written about this same subject (published in 2011), was one of our class readings.

I really appreciated how McGonigal's book (as well as her TED talk) tries to address and reframe the stereotypical bias against games and gamers.  She explains in detail why games provide such satisfaction and happiness - even when you know you can't (always) win (chapter 2-4).  She also makes a case that the reason why so many people play games and are 'gamers' in our world today is that reality is so 'broken' that it doesn't offer the satisfaction and happiness that games do (she offer many 'fix' sections throughout the book)  Finally, she argues that if we were to create games, or ways, in which people worked together like in massive multi-player online games (MMPOG), we can use those skills and resources to solve some of our world's most challenging problems (like poverty, climate change, food security, etc.).

It's an amazing different way to think about our world, happiness, community building, and working hard together.  We need to rethink the role of 'games' in our world, and how it can actually help us be 'happier', and help us move toward working together better.  As religious leaders, we can 'translate' her concepts and solutions to our religious contexts to further God's realm in our world...so that we, as God's hands and feet, can change the world for the better, for all of God's children.  It could be the best MMPOG ever!