~Leveling Up in Life~

How can alternate realities make difficult activities more rewarding?  I'm constantly asked that by my friends and family and I have finally found a answer thanks to Jane McGonigal author of Reality is Broken.  Many people think of gamer's as these anti-social people who are "nerds" and don't do anything else besides game all day.  Well that is mostly true, truth be told, but compared with games, reality is pointless and unrewarding.  Games help us feel more rewarded for making our best efforts.

McGonigal states, "If I have one regret in life, its that my undead priest in smart than I am.  Technically speaking, its true: if you were to add up every A I've gotten in my real life, through junior high through graduate school, the total still wouldn't come close to my World of Warcraft character's intellect stat (McGonigal 146).  But I guess you can't measure how much smart you really get once you finish school, can you?

Many of you guys are in club or some type of sport and that can be very stressful and out of control.  Being out of control is a fundamentally stressful feeling.  "Researchers have shown that it takes a huge hit on both our happiness and our physical health.  And it's not just in the moment that we're negatively affected" (McGongial 149).  Feeling that negative feeling that we often experience makes us feel endangered or powerless, our immune system suffers as well and we experience higher levels of anxiety, depression, and pessimism for the rest of our lives (McGongial 149-150).

Many of my friends say I'm this happy person and I can be fun to be around, but I can what people don't know is that I can actually be a pretty depressed person.  I just don't show it.  But games, of course, help me feel like I am in control.  Real gameplay (LARP) is always considered voluntary meaning that while progressing towards our goals and getting better at a game creates a sense of power and mastery.

My character is obviously smarter than me with a 56,305 Intelligence Stat

Playing something over and over helps give you a sense of mastery and in the end  makes you feel better because you have control over what you are doing.

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