McGonigal starts the chapter in a very genius way by exposing and disassembling the baseless bias that surrounds gamers and gaming culture—bias that is actually pretty deeply woven into modern culture and language, much to my surprise. Nobody escapes it, not even the victims of the bias themselves: so many times do we casually associate game jargon with exploitative behavior, blissfully unaware that we’re propagating the very stigma that surrounds gamer culture. I have noticed it myself, even in bigger, more professional fields like eSports. Whether it be your common, Giants T-shirt clad individual boldly claiming “Yeah but games are children’s play, not real sports.”—even though they share virtually all of the traits a ‘real’ sport has— or the faculty of a certain college snickering in the back of the room while a group of students give a serious presentation on why they need an eSports club, eSports IS rejected. Often it’s solely because it has to do with video games which then incurs the stereotypes and kaboom! goes any productive argument after that.

To that extent, I think it was very wise of her to decimate, or at least bring to light, the bias surrounding games before she actually began with the book. McGonigal predicted the non-gamer audience she would gather and tended to their enlightenment at the very beginning. She then goes on to propose a 4-footed framework which defines most games. As everyone has probably read that part anyway, I’ll skip reiterating that and just mention which one I liked the most: Voluntary Participation. I feel like this wasn’t discussed enough to do it proper justice as this is actually the thing that separates despicable 9-5 jobs from enjoyable First-Person Shooter games. Both things do have the other 3 traits: an objectives, rules, and a feedback system; however, it’s the I’m-volunteering-to-do-hard-work part that makes only the latter fun. We as a species generally hold freedom of will in very high regard, whether it be a conscious recognition of that freedom or a subconscious one. Sometimes we’re content with just an illusion of willful choice but most times we require some prominent degree of freedom with the action at hand to actually consider it fun, or at the very least, tolerable. It’s interesting to read about how that notion applies to games as well.

Furthermore, the concept of flow appeared to be a very fascinating one to me—mostly because it made a lot of sense. It’s like surfing at the very edge of a huge wave: too slow and you fall behind all the action, too fast and you wipeout. After reading McGonigal’s ideas on the subject, I, for the first time, actively noticed the effort that modern video game developers have been putting in. They’re trying to achieve that perfect balance where the game is neither that painfully easy that it gets boring nor that atrociously difficult that you smash that Alt-F4 power-combo. (Hi Dark Souls) Flow is key to continuing the play, it lets you surf that wave on and on; flow is sustenance for the infinite game. Unfortunately, most games are unable to sustain that flow for long; the wave dies down and so does the hype.

The last idea I would like to comment on is the idea of engineering your happiness. After reading that part, I finally understood my annoying friend’s constant suggestions of ‘finding happiness in the little things’. It seems counter-intuitive, dumb even. Isn’t fun supposed to mean amusement parks or movies or blowouts? I don’t exactly see the fun in reading assignments or homework or laundry, like hello?! Turns out though that you have to find your fun in things yourself and it’s that fun which is green and renewable, clean of all Hedonic adaptation. You can gamify virtually anything to make it more fun (that’s also what a certain professor has done with their course structure ahem). Gamification gives you a sphere of freedom with work that has been forced onto you, and we all know who values freedom! (Hint: It’s not just Americans.) Gamification is relatively easy as well because, fortunately, most work already has 75% of the traits necessary for games: objectives, rules, and feedback. You just put in the Chemical X of self-created freedom and tada! You are now actually having a little bit of fun while washing your boxers.

So, Team JJAAWIC, I’m curious to know about your thoughts on all of this! Have you ever had times where you made something boring into a ‘game’ and had fun with it?