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January 3 - January 8, 2025
The truth is this: in today’s society, computer and video games are fulfilling genuine human needs that the real world is currently unable to satisfy. Games are providing rewards that reality is not. They are teaching and inspiring and engaging us in ways that reality is not. They are bringing us together in ways that reality is not.
We are starving, and our games are feeding us.
all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.
That’s because there is virtually nothing as engaging as this state of working at the very limits of your ability—or what both game designers and psychologists call “flow.”4
Games make us happy because they are hard work that we choose for ourselves, and it turns out that almost nothing makes us happier than good, hard work.
gameplay is the direct emotional opposite of depression.
The research proves what gamers already know: within the limits of our own endurance, we would rather work hard than be entertained.
“the satisfying, exhilarating feeling of creative accomplishment and heightened functioning.”1
Flow is exhilarating in the moment. It makes us feel energized. A major flow experience can improve our mood for hours, or even days, afterward. But because it’s such a state of extreme engagement, it eventually uses up our physical and mental resources.
it’s this: there are many ways to be happy, but we cannot find happiness. No object, no event, no outcome or life circumstance can deliver real happiness to us. We have to make our own happiness—by working hard at activities that provide their own reward.15
When we can see what we’ve accomplished, we build our sense of self-worth. As Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, argues, “The most important resource-building human trait is productivity at work.”12
Positive failure feedback reinforces our sense of control over the game’s outcome.
Scientists have found that optimism is closely correlated to a higher quality of life in pretty much every way imaginable: better health, a longer life, less stress and anxiety, more successful careers, better relationships, more creativity, and more resilience in the face of adversity.
When we feel a strong sense of agency and motivation, we draw other people closer into our lives. And that’s why so much of the fun failure we experience in games is increasingly taking place in a social context.
teasing plays an invaluable role in helping us form and maintain
By supporting our four essential human cravings, and by providing a reliable source of flow and fiero, the gaming industry has gone a long way toward making us happier and more emotionally resilient—but only up to a point. We haven’t learned how to enjoy our real lives more thoroughly. Instead, we’ve spent the last thirty-five years learning to enjoy our game lives more thoroughly.
Recent research has shown that we don’t even have to know someone to experience the benefits of thanking and being nice to them. Even fleeting acts of gratitude and kindness toward strangers can have a
Crowdsourcing is a way to do collectively, faster, better, and more cheaply what might otherwise be impossible for a single organization to do alone.
“Player investment design lead” is a role that every single collaborative project or crowd initiative should fill in the future. When the game is intrinsically rewarding to play, you don’t have to pay people to participate—with real currency, virtual currency, or any other kind of scarce reward. Participation is its own reward, when the player is properly invested in his or her progress, in exploring the world fully, and in the community’s success.
A SEHI (pronounced SEH-hee) is someone who feels not just optimistic about the future, but also personally capable of changing the world for the better.
