Collaboration Superpowers

Part of why playing video games is so fun is because it feels like you have superpowers.  By the age of twenty-one, the average young American has spent somewhere between two and three thousand ours reading books - and more than ten thousand hours playing computer and video games.  Think that's crazy? Well think of it like this... to put those numbers in perspective, ten thousand hours is almost exactly the same amount of time an average American student spends in the classroom from the moment they start fifth grade all the way though high school graduation - if they have perfect attendance (McGongial 266).

One of the biggest traits you have to have both in real life and while gaming is collaboration.  Collaboration is a special way of working together.  "It requires requires three distinct kinds of concerted efforts: cooperating (acting purposefully towards a common goal), coordinating (synchronizing efforts and sharing resources), and co-creating (producing a novel outcome together)" (McGonigal 268).  Online gamer's are increasingly doing both collaborating while actively opposing them.  Thanks to two factors: the fundamentally collaborative aspects of playing any good game, and new game technologies and design patterns that support entirely new ways of working together. (McGonigal 268).  Gaming really just comes down to shared concentration, synchronized engagement, mutual regard, collective commitment, and reciprocal rewards.  Have you done this in any of your games?  Whether they are virtual or real life these things are always present.

Spending a long time playing this game when I should be studying so I can get better at this game. LOL

Creating a team and fighting together as a whole working on our communication skills so that we can outsmart the enemy team

Citation: McGonigal, Jane. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print.