Jane McGonigal’s first book, Reality Is Broken (2011), was an international bestseller. In it she celebrated the positive aspects of gaming. The book, along with Jane’s other work, has been enormously influential. The particular ways in which she framed mainstream psychological and neurological research so as to apply it to video games has subsequently become the game-industry standard. What’s more, even folks who know very little about gaming are familiar with her work. Whenever I tell people about my own work, they immediately tell me about watching one of Jane’s very popular TED talks.
Her highly anticipated new book, SUPERBETTER: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient--Powered by the Science of Games, was just released. It is a book that’s “not about playing games—at least, not exactly.” She explains in the introduction, “It’s about learning how to be gameful in the face of extreme stress and personal challenge.”
Jane was motivated to write the book after she created a game called “Jane the Concussion Slayer.” That game helped her recover from a traumatic head injury. Inspired, she designed a game-system called the “SuperBetter” method to help others recover from personal challenges. The SuperBetter Method is now being used by hundreds of thousands of people—folks with physical injuries, PTSD, depression, or maybe just a simple desire to transform their lives for the better. It is a simple and powerful transformational system with 7 basic gameful rules:
1. Challenge yourself.
2. Collect and activate power-ups.
3. Battle the bad guys.
4. Seek out quests.
5. Make allies.
6. Adopt a secret identity.
7. Go for epic wins.
It turns out that approaching life as if it were a game can be extraordinarily empowering. SuperBetter not only describes all the scientific research supporting the ways in which individuals can benefit from adopting a gameful mindset, it also recounts stories from hundreds of successful SuperBetter players.
When I finished reading the book, I was inspired. I had many ideas about gameful parenting, education, and school reform that I wanted to discuss with Jane.
Here is our conversation…
Jordan Shapiro: Even though your new book is aimed at adults and/or teenagers that could potentially play SuperBetter and really integrate a “gameful mindset” into their everyday lives, I handed it to my ten-year-old son. After reading the inside jacket cover, he was really intrigued by the premise. But I don’t think he even realizes there’s such a thing as “self-improvement” yet, so he wasn’t too into it once he started reading. Still, I’ve been talking about a lot of the ideas with him and they seem to resonate. I’m excited to think about how SuperBetter could impact the way folks work with a generation of kids that are usually just scolded for “video game addiction” or “too much screen time.”
Jane McGonigal: Yes! This is one of my big goals in getting this research out to the public. We are doing an entire generation a huge disservice by telling them, constantly, that one of their biggest passions is a waste of time, or worse, that it will somehow warp their brains or stunt their potential. Not only is this probably false, it is actively destructive.
The research from the past few years convincingly shows that the single worst thing you can do as a parent or educator, if you’re trying to prevent video game “addiction”, is to tell kids that games are a waste of time and that they should stop playing and do something “real” instead. The number one positive predictor of who goes on to develop a compulsive or excessive relationship to games is whether they believe there is a disconnect between “games” and “reality.” If you believe that, you probably use games to escape “real life” and avoid your problems, or to block negative thoughts and feelings. The more you try to avoid these things, the worse they get, and so the more you play, and the worse they get… it’s a vicious cycle.
The kids and young adults who really benefit from games, on the other hand, and who are able to keep their play in balance are the ones who can clearly think and talk about why they play, specifically in terms of positive outcomes and goals. They can see the strengths they’re building while they play, so they’re more likely to use them in everyday life.
My biggest advice to parents and educators is to always ask a kid who loves games, “What makes this game hard? What does it take to be good at this game? What have you gotten better at since you started playing this game?” And then help them build a bridge from their favorite games to other areas of their life. “Hmmm… I wonder if being good at that would help you when you’re dealing with a challenge at school.” Or in sports. Or at home. Help kids see that games aren’t a waste of time, they’re a source of real skills, abilities and character strengths that they continue to possess even when they’re not playing a game.
Also, I hope your son comes back to the book in a few years! Because I think you’re right that 13 or 14 is probably the right age for when you might be able to get absorbed in this kind of thinking. In the meantime, I’ve been told that you can do many of the 100 quests from the book with kids even if they skip all the research and advice parts.
Jordan: One of my favorite parts of the book is where you break down the science of how people can “build self-efficacy vicariously by watching an avatar that looks like you accomplish feats in a virtual world.” You explain how self-distancing can empower and motivate us in incredible ways. When I’m writing about children and learning, I usually use the term meta-cognition, which basically means the ability to think about your own thinking. But it is just another term for the same kind of self-distancing you describe.
Jane: Right! It’s the ability to take a step back and be more aware of your own thoughts and feelings and habits. When you can get some distance, you tend to make better decisions about what you really want to think, feel and do. You’re guided more by your most important goals and values, and less by anxiety, fear of embarrassment or failure, or what others expect of you. And it turns out that talking and thinking about yourself in the third person – which, an avatar is really just a third-person representation of yourself – is the most effective technique to get that kind of perspective.
Jordan: For me, this is one of the most exciting things about how games can impact people’s lives. Consider what it takes for a child or a student to be successful at anything. Even better, remember a time from your own childhood when you were successful. Chances are you first had to create the mental image of your future self. For example, I remember imagining myself being congratulated for my Tony-worthy performance in the school play. And every time I wrote an essay or a research paper, it was the mental image of my teacher being amazed at the quality of my work that kept me motivated.
Basically, I was creating what you call a “Secret-Identity.” I didn’t name him “Theater Jordo” or “Captain Writes-So-Well.” But I might as well have. I had a very clear image of an avatar in my head. And in the places where I could choose to play the game of school as one of those heroes, I was very successful.
Jane: Well this is interesting, because what the research literature suggests is that the real benefits of the secret identity or self-distancing techniques come from thinking about the action and effort required, and not imagining the positive outcomes. So it helps to imagine yourself drawing on your signature strengths – like creativity, determination, love of learning, courage – to do what’s hard. Imagining the positive outcome can actually distract from the real effort required or diminish your motivation to do the hard work. In all the studies I write about in the book, the benefits are coming from thinking positively about the hard work and the skills required and the strengths you have to help you meet the goal, to rise to the occasion. So that’s an important distinction to make!
Jordan: Okay, so even more significant than the motivational impact that comes from adopting a secret identity—or the practice of meta-cognitive self-distancing—is that it has the potential to fundamentally shift the way children think about the skills they master? They learn to think of critical thinking skills or academic content as if they were super powers, or as tools through which they can contribute to the world. That’s a huge “gameful” shift away from the predominant perspective which sees learning as a kind of practice in obedience. For example, students are often asked to prove proper procedural execution of math skills, but not to show that they can apply algebra, like a super power, in a real-life context.
Jane: Yes! That’s exactly it. Now you’ve got it.
Jordan: In a general sense, then, I suspect that if parents, teachers and administrators simply adopted a more gameful understanding of school it would be an epic win for the education system. The adults would immediately have to think deeply about how the “game of school” is currently played. What sort of values are implicitly reinforced through the unintentionally game-like systems, rules and procedures that make up a student’s experience? We’d discover that schools currently reward obedience over understanding. They offer power-ups that are collected through behaviors which run counter to thinking and creativity. And teachers, more often than not, relate to students not as allies, but rather as bad guys—deans and principals being evil Bosses.
Have you ever imagined what the world’s adults would be like if we raised an entire generation within a new “game-of-school?” What if we emphasized coop mode, shifting school from one-player to multiplayer mode? What if we taught them to prioritize “synchronization” above individual achievement?
Jane: I love your thinking here. I’m really struck by the idea that most teachers and administrators wind up playing the role of “bad guy” rather than ally. That seems like a great starting point for reimagining some of the more soul-crushing aspects of school. Let’s play with that idea for a minute. I’m thinking about all the things that allies in the SuperBetter method are encouraged to do for each other. I mean, here, from the book, if you don’t mind me quoting it directly, are the first things we suggest allies do for their “hero,” which in SuperBetter is what we call the person who is tackling a significant challenge, whether it’s getting superbetter at healing their brain from a traumatic injury (which is what I was doing when I invented it) or getting superbetter at finding a new job, writing their first book, or other personal challenges people use the gameful mindset to tackle. So here are some of the ways an ally relates to a hero:
1. Know your hero. Being an ally always starts with getting to know your hero’s current challenge, power-ups, and bad guys. (And their secret identity, if they’ve chosen to adopt one!) Ask your hero to give you a quick rundown.
2. Bring your hero power-ups. Now that you know your hero’s power-ups, offer to activate one together.
3. Help your hero battle a bad guy. Pick a bad guy on your hero’s list, and try to think of a strategy to help him or her successfully battle it.
4. Give your hero a quest. It’s not always easy to see the path forward. You can help your hero by challenging him or her to accomplish a task of your choosing in the next twenty-four hours.
5. Get a report. Ask the simple question, “How is your SuperBetter journey going?” You can spark conversation by asking specifically about different things. “What’s your favorite power-up so far?” “Is there a bad guy you feel you’ve made a lot of progress with?” “Have you done any interesting quests lately?”
6. Hunt the good stuff. One of the most important things you can do is to shine a light on your hero’s hard work and accomplishments. Think of yourself as a detective—your mission is to hunt the good stuff they’re doing, then make a big deal out of it. You’ll want to do more than just say “Good job.” When he or she makes a heroic effort or accomplish a tough goal, ask questions about how they did it. What were their strategies? Where did they find the strength? Ask how it feels now that they’ve done it. Ask what it inspires them to do next. Or tell them what it inspires you to do!
So that’s a little excerpt from the chapter on recruiting alies, but I think it really provokes the imagination to think, what if this was the model for teachers, administrators, and even a model for how students interact with each other?
Jordan: Also, consider the ways in which the current game of school teaches students that stress is an indication of caring, a marker of performance, a signifier of responsibility. We reward those who are often the most anxious with the highest scores—the students who stress all night about the big exams, the ones having panic attacks. It is very sad. We haven’t designed school in such a way that it gives bonuses for deep engagement and thoughtful introspection.
The biggest problem with this, in my opinion, is not just the negative impact it has on individual mental health. It is that we implicitly teach our children to value crisis aversion above all else. We tell them that they should study hard and memorize everything so that come test time, everything is nice and predictable and they can run on auto-pilot. It is like we are systematically teaching them not to play the game.
Wouldn’t it be better if we taught them the positive power of confrontation? If we equipped them to come face-to-face with difficult problems and ideas? Don’t you think that if we built a more gameful school system we’d implicitly cultivate a generation of adults who, because they get rewarded for engaging with bad guys and obstacles, would learn to value engagement over avoidance? Do you have suggestions for how teachers might bring this mindset into their classrooms? Or how parents might use it to help their own kids become more thoughtfully and intentionally engaged with the world around them?
Jane: Well, this is a very practical thing, and some schools inspired by game research are experimenting with this already, but the single most important change we could make to help reduce the fear and avoidance of students is to make tests re-takable as many times as the student wants.
In games, you can replay a level as often as you want. You can replay it if you failed, or you can replay it if you just think you can do better and want a higher score. This should be how tests work in school. We already know from educational research that kids learn better by taking tests than studying for them anyway! That’s because when you study, you tend to reinforce and review what you already know and feel comfortable with, whereas when you take a test you’re forced to confront the gaps in your knowledge or understanding.
So from both a learning perspective and from the point of view that we want kids to be happy, optimistic and not negatively stressed and anxious, there is no reason why exams in schools should only be takeable once. It makes no sense – for 99% of adults, once you get out of school, there is no real-world correlation with this high-stakes, single-shot performance model. It is much more important to stay engaged with difficult tasks, projects or learning goals even if you’ve not got it right or great the first time.
That’s why in the SuperBetter model, we challenge you to battle one bad guy a day – to confront one thing that is currently hard for you, or makes you nervous, or anxious, or worried. This is one of the elements of the “daily dose” of the game that we tested in our NIH-funded clinical trial and also in our randomized controlled study at the University of Pennsylvania. The daily dose is to activate 3 power-ups – quick, little things you can do anytime, anywhere that make you feel happy, healthy, strong, or connected to the people you care about; battle one bad guy, and complete one quest. (A quest is spending time and energy on whatever is your most important goal right now.) Anyway, it turns out that battling bad guys – choosing to engage with things that are likely going to cause frustration, or anxiety, or stress – increases optimism and self-efficacy, and reduces anxiety and depression.
Jordan: You can probably tell that I’m a fan of this book. I’m not usually a big self-help guy but in this case, I think you do such a great job of using game metaphors in empowering ways. There’s just one thing that concerns me: folks aren’t always free to choose the game they want to play.
SuperBetter can be enormously impactful in the places where we have the ability to change our circumstances, but in some parts of our lives, we really do just find ourselves stuck in really bad games. There are bad levels that we need to grind through. I suppose that by applying a gameful mindset we can persevere through these challenges with more resilience. But do you ever worry that your message could backfire? That telling folks that they have the power to change their lives by shifting their mindset could be problematic? What if they really can’t change the game they’re playing? Especially when I think about socio-economic disparity and racial inequality in the U.S., I worry that game needs to change just as much as the players do. What if there are systemic problems that first need to be fixed on a infrastructural level—by the game designers—in order to create a fair playing field?
Jane: Yes, this is important. So, two things. You are absolutely right that the SuperBetter method and mindset works for personal challenges, not societal ones! But I do want to point out that the people who tell their stories in the book are facing absolutely all manner of the most difficult, painful and even terrifying challenges that can happen to a person – and they all talk about feeling like they have, with this gameful approach, become stronger, braver, more resilient, better understood by their friends and family, even happier, even while they’re in the middle of just horrible circumstances.
We’re talking about people who have PTSD from surviving domestic violence, people with terminal cancer or ALS, people who are grieving for the loss of their spouse, parent or child. The four most common challenges people use SuperBetter effectively to deal with are: depression, anxiety, chronic pain and PTSD. I know how ridiculous it sounds to some people that anything that stems from games could help in such serious circumstances. But I really want to let people know that it’s not just trivial or self-chosen challenges—like training for a half-marathon or wanting to adopt healthier habits—that this mindset helps with. It absolutely works for the challenges you did not choose for yourself, that no one would ever choose.
At the same time, everything you say about there being games we are stuck in that we cannot individually play our way out of – structural elements of society related to economic inequality and racism and sexism and xenophobia and every other kind of hateful phobia – this is all true and hugely important. A self-help method will never be able to address these kinds of massive social problems because they are bigger than the self. And yet, I was prompted to focus on the self in my last five years of game design and research because of my own experience of suffering, through the traumatic brain injury, and the depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation that followed it. My traumatic experience did not make me any better able to address the structural issues in society (at least, not as far as I can tell, or not yet!). But it did make me better able to address personal suffering in others, and hopefully offer a tool for people to increase their resilience and come out on the other side of a difficult challenge feeling better able to lead the life they want and to help others do the same.
But I agree that there is a bigger game that needs to be redesigned, and it that society needs some “game tuning” or “balancing” as we say in game design, so that people who start out with an advantage aren’t increasingly advantaged, and everyone else increasingly disadvantaged, the longer the game plays out. And it shouldn’t simply be a game of luck to get out of that position of disadvantage.
Jordan: Anything else you want to add?
Jane: Well, I’d love to let you share something from the book that hasn’t appeared anywhere else. How about the Gameful Strengths Inventory? I think it would be great to communicate what being “gameful” really looks like in practice – and maybe leave readers with the idea that this list of 20 psychological strengths could be a set of goals for parents or educators to be developing. Here’s that inventory
How Gameful Are You?
What to do: Answer each question on a scale of 0–5 points. Give yourself 0 points for “No way!” (you completely disagree with the statement), 5 points for “Heck, yeah!” (you completely, wholeheartedly agree with it), and points in between if you agree a lit bit, somewhat, or a lot. The higher your score (out of a possible 100), the more developed your gameful mindset.
1. I’m optimistic about my future.
2. I frequently look for new things to learn or new experiences to try.
3. Every challenge I face is an opportunity to learn or to grow.
4. I can think of at least one thing I could do in the next hour to feel happy, strong, or productive.
5. I do what matters most to me, even if it’s hard, painful, or scary.
6. I can do things in a new way. I’m not limited to the way things have always been done.
7. I have faith in my ability to accomplish whatever I set my heart to.
8. I feel grateful to many different people.
9. This week I was able to overcome an obstacle.
10. Setbacks don’t discourage me.
11. I feel a strong bond with other people who are going through the same challenge I face or who have already been through it.
12. When I face a problem, I can usually find a way to solve it.
13. I can think of at least one goal I would like to accomplish tomorrow
14. If I’m not sure whether I can do something successfully, I feel motivated to try and find out.
15. I have something specific to look forward to.
16. If I don’t like how I feel, I can change it.
17. I often lose track of time, because I get so immersed in an activity I enjoy.
18. I enjoy coming up with new, creative strategies.
19. I can think of at least one other person who really wants me to succeed.
20. I have the courage to face life and whatever challenges and complications it brings
Excerpts in this interview are from SUPERBETTER: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient--Powered by the Science of Games by Jane McGonigal. Reprinted by arrangement of Penguin Press, part of the Penguin Random House company. Copyright (c) 2015 by Jane McGonigal.
