Most of chapter 6 revolves around the game Halo 3 and, more specifically, the accomplishment of the player base for 10 billion kills against the game series’ antagonists, the Covenant. It targets how the player base came together and helped each other reach the staggering goal in front of them. McGonigal describes the feat as “epic”, and extends this label to what large blockbuster games like Halo can bring to our lives. She explains how these “epic” games can bring us to a sense of awe, which not only drives us to get better (at the game), but drives us to be better (as people). She shows this by exploring how extensive the online Halo community is and how individual members help the rest of the group by sharing knowledge, experience, and good wishes to other players trying to “git gud.”

After reaching the 10 billion kill mark, one player asked how many kills could be achieved with “6 billion humans” (rough approximation of the population circa 2009). This introduced a slight problem with McGonigal’s view of a peaceful gaming world. While the online community of Halo is very large (~15 million), it is nothing when compared to the total number of people alive. Human’s are individualistic, and that bring about problems when it comes to making everybody happy and fulfilled. She explains how the bigger of a group people see themselves as a part of, the happier they are. A massive problem with this is that as a group or cause targets more and more people, it’s focus get widened and widened until it is just pandering to the least common denominator and losses all real substance that it once had. Which might be another explanation as to why many “epic” games involve fighting for the survival of humanity or saving the world; they cast a large net based off the premise, and then can focus on substance instead of getting the most people involved. Real life doesn’t have alien hordes that the human race can rally against. The best we get is when major wars bring countries together, to fight other groups of countries, which just widens the gap between people as they start to form factions within factions and when the war is won, everyone goes back to disagreeing. Games, by providing this external enemy to combat could help this at some level, but they will never be able to truly grab everyone unless real stakes are involved.

On a complete unrelated note, it was weird reading the words “epic games” and not seeing Fortnite or mention of battle-royal style game modes, and it was truly weird hearing someone say good things about the Halo franchise, given its shtick over the past couple of years, but hey, it was a different time.