Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
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A personal service record isn’t just a profile. It’s a history of a player’s contributions to a larger organization.
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of the best examples of innovative collective context building is the Halo Museum of Humanity,
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Reverence—the expression of profound awe, respect and love, or veneration—is usually an emotion we reserve for very big, very serious things.
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Epic Environments—Or How to Build a Better Place
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Tracks on the Halo 3 sound track have names like “Honorable Intentions,” “This Is the Hour,” and “Never Forget.”
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Epic environments inspire us to undertake epic projects, because they are a tangible demonstration of what is humanly possible when we all work together.
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engenders a sense of honour and duty which actually make you feel like a better person.... What’s the point of going to a better place if you aren’t going to be a better person?”
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collaborative knowledge projects.
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documenting the Halo world
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build up each other’s collect...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
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Halopedia wiki helps players construct the epic saga of the Halo series, the Halowiki (which describes itself as a “sister site” to Halopedia) focuses exclusively on multiplayer strategy and techniques.
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“Close-range weapon mastery” and “Using ancient practices—advice from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War,” to one of my personal favorites: “Retraining your brain to not be afraid to die in the game.”
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When you sign up to play NCAA Football 10 online, the first thing you do is declare a team allegiance. You can pick any one of the 120 real-world college teams represented in the game, from Ohio State, Notre Dame, or Stanford to Florida State, Army, or USC. (I picked my alma mater, California.) For the rest of the online football season, every online point you score in the video game gets added to your team’s score.
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“All play means something.”
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Jean M. Twenge, a professor of psychology and the author of Generation Me, has persuasively argued that the youngest generations today—particularly anyone born after 1980—are, in her words, “more miserable than ever before.” Why? Because of our increased cultural emphasis on “self-esteem” and “self-fulfillment.”
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We want to be esteemed in the eyes of others, not for “who we are,” but rather for what we’ve done that really matters.
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All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.   —RALPH WALDO EMERSON
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a free online game called Chore Wars.
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Chore Wars brilliantly reverses the most demoralizing aspects of regular housework. The results of a chore well done may start to fade almost immediately, but no one can take away the XP you have earned.
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To participate wholeheartedly in something means to be self-motivated and self-directed, intensely interested and genuinely enthusiastic. If we’re forced to do something, or if we do it halfheartedly, we’re not really participating.
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four intrinsic rewards we crave—more satisfying work, better hope of success, stronger social connectivity,
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needs compelling goals, interesting obstacles, and well-designed feedback systems.
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Quest to Learn—And Why Our Schools Should Work More Like a Game
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The New Games Book
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HOW ALTERNATE REALITIES CAN MAKE DIFFICULT ACTIVITIES MORE REWARDING
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Plusoneme.gov someday, to help constituents give better feedback to their elected officials.
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FIX # 8 : MEANINGFUL REWARDS WHEN WE NEED THEM MOST
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Taking full advantage of the moment is an important quality-of-life skill: it builds up your sense of self-efficacy by reminding you that you have the power at any time to make your own happiness.
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Wherever there is a mandatory experience that is unpleasant or frustrating, a surefire way to improve it is to design a good game you can only play in that space.
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The game takes advantage of Virgin America’s sophisticated in-flight entertainment system, which includes seat-to-seat chat and instant messaging; a real-time Google map that displays the plane’s location, altitude, and speed; and WiFi Internet access for laptops, mobile phones, and PDAs.
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Economists have demonstrated that offering people an extrinsic reward (like money or prizes) for something they’re already doing—and already enjoying—actually makes them feel less motivated and less rewarded.
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“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.”
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Nike+
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‘Are you a Lover or a Dancer?’”
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game called, naturally, the Comfort of Strangers.
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create powerful communities from scratch.
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difference between a community and a crowd,
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positive participation
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cultivate a shared interest among strangers,
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give them the opportunity and means to interact with each other around that interest.
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Bounce, a game for a retirement center.
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Luce Foundation Center for American Art.
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Daniel Libbe and Daisy For-tunis.
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Luce Foundation Center.
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To become a member of any community, you need to understand the goals of the community and the accepted strategies and practices for advancing those goals.
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HOW ALTERNATE REALITIES CAN HELP US ADOPT THE DAILY HABITS OF THE WORLD’S HAPPIEST PEOPLE
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Think about death for five minutes every day. (Researchers suggest that we can induce a mellow, grateful physiological state known as “posttraumatic bliss” that helps us appreciate the present moment and savor our lives more.) • Dance more. (Synchronizing physical behavior to music we like is one of the most reliable—not to mention the safest—ways to induce the form of extreme happiness known as euphoria.)
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FIX #10: HAPPINESS HACKS Compared with games, reality is hard to swallow. Games make it easier to take good advice and try out happier habits.
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Researchers have documented the phenomenon of posttraumatic bliss among patients confronting a terminal medical diagnosis. Something seems to click in their minds, empowering them to enjoy their lives more.
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Top Secret Dance-Off