I backed a project last week on Kickstarter – Gameful: A secret HQ for Worldchanging Game Developers by Jane McGonigal. I think it’s quite an exciting project that is going to take place, as McGonigal builds a network around people who want to create games with outcomes for social change.
In her recent TED talk, McGonigal reveals some pretty amazing stats. At the moment, we (the citizens of planet earth) play about 3B hours a week of online games each week. McGonigal theorises that if we had people around the planet, playing a combined 21B hours of online games each week that were rigged around creating social change, then we could achieve some amazing outcomes. I agree. Talk about a cognitive surplus! Gameful will create a place for game designers to come together and create more of those types of games. In McGonigal’s words – “To make is as easy to save the world in real life, as it is to save the world in games.”
The Squiggly Line 