Becoming Friendlier and Happier In Life Using Video Games

You may not think of video games as a tool for building happiness but through games you can become a happier person and learn to reach out and help others more often. In society today it is unusual to have a stranger walk up to you and ask if they would help you. Games help solve this. "Compared with games, reality is hard to swallow. Games make it easier to take good advice and try out happier habits." (McGonnigal 189). Video games commonly have a social aspect of interacting with others and this helps gamers become more used to helping random people with whatever they may need. My favorite game Guild Wars 2 is commonly praised as having the friendliest community of players out of all other MMOs. Why, you may ask? Well the answer is because players are encouraged to help others and are rewarded for doing so until it eventually becomes a natural habit.

In the game there is a mechanic when your health gets down to 0 where you must fight for survival, one last shot at life. In this "downed-state" your character is laying wounded on the ground with a  limited set of skills such as throwing a rock or healing yourself up. If you manage to kill something while downed you will rally back up to continue the fight, however if you don't manage to kill a foe and your downed-state health bar reaches 0 you die for good. 

This shows me in downed-state with my limited skills and the words "fight to survive!" on my health bar.

This mechanic allows for other players to revive their friends in order to keep them in the fight. You can revive someone while they are downed and in doing so will bring them back up just as if they had rallied. This promotes a sense of friendship and makes you feel happy inside, knowing you were able to help someone out. The two biggest happiness activities known to science are showing gratitude and acts of kindness, even if you don't know the person (McGonnigal 189). This mechanic provides both of these activities to each player in this situation. The player reviving gets an act of kindness and the player being revived expresses gratitude. In this way players are able to practice small acts of kindness that eventually build social habits when in the real world, making you a happier person overall.

This picture shows me reviving someone in downed-state who got a little too close and personal with some enemies.

When I see someone downed while playing I always go out of my way to help them. Usually I don't even realize it, I just go over and help them out. I do this because it has become a habit to help others when they need your assistance. I want to know, when playing games, what is something friendly you habitually do that makes everyone happy?

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