I can see how McGonigal’s idea of ‘gamifying’ our world ties in with ARIS and all the reality-based games that it provides. If games really can bring someone into a ‘flow’ kind of mentality within seconds of opening a game, and we now have games that interact with the world around us, how hard would it me to merge the two (in theory). I haven’t read ahead or anything, so I’m still interested to find out other methods she offers, but that’s just one that I thought of as I was reading. How people can just pull out their phones and begin partaking in those ‘unnecessary challenges’ that games provide.

Still, the social bias is something that needs to be brought up. McGonigal noted it in the very beginning of the first chapter. Gamers/gaming typically isn’t something that smiled upon by our society. It’s exactly like what was said in class yesterday about the media being behind in terms of gaming. So many people are gamers and yet it still seems to some like a hobby that people should drop for more worthwhile things. I, myself, even caught my own bias going into this book. The idea of living your life like it’s a game seemed a little silly to me; however, according to McGonigal “there is nothing trivial about playing a good game. The game matters” (27). And that point struck a chord with me because I have known people who seem to care more about the games they play (sportssportssportssports… and in one case: videogames) than their academics, personal relationships, upkeep, etc. Sure, they’d do the bare minimum, but so they could keep playing. To me, that’s interesting.

**Curious to know if anyone else is a little put off by the idea of approaching real life like a game.