After experiencing a concussion that left her feeling anxious and depressed, Jane McGonigal sought healing through gaming. As part of her recovery process, McGonigal designed a game called โJane the Concussion Slayer,โ which was later re-titledย โSuperBetter.โ
During a widely viewed TED talk, McGonigal said that after playingย the game for awhile, her psychical pain was still there, but the depression she had experienced started to go away. She began hearing from others around the world who had adopted her idea and made themselves the hero of their own real-life-based video game. As they did, they boosted their resilience and experienced what doctors called โpost-traumatic growth.โ
McGonigalโsย new book, โSuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver, and More Resilient,โ explores the SuperBetter game, as well as research that suggests gaming can help make you the hero of not just your own video game, but your own life story.
In a Longreads interviewย last week, McGonigal talked about some of the findings outlined in her book:
โThe games you already play can benefit you, or the games that you yell at your spouse or your kids to stop playing can benefit them, if you play in the right time and in the right ways.
โOne of the early findings from the neuroscience of gaming, around 20 years ago, I think, was when they first started seeing what a big dopamine rush was involved with video games. It was as much of a dopamine rush as when somebody injects methamphetamines. The effect is pretty clear: the more dopamine you have flowing and are able to access, the more motivated and goal-oriented you are. And you tend to discount the effort required to achieve your goal, and focus more on the benefits of achieving your goal. So if you are very low dopamine, thatโs what we see in clinical depression: No matter how many goals they think about or how many future good things they try to imagine, they donโt have the dopamine necessary to feel action-oriented.
โThis is one of the things that happens with traumatic brain injury and with concussion: your brain chemistry changes so that you literally canโt imagine anything positive in the future. Thatโs why I was having suicidal ideation. No matter what goals you try to set for yourself, your brain is just like, โOh, donโt do it, itโll never work, itโll never pay off.โ Whatever happiness you try to imagine in the future, your brain just doesnโt believe you. No dopamine, no hope, no motivation.
โThis helps explain why gamers never give up and why you can see a player trying to tackle the same stupid level fifty times in a row and they still have hope. โI think Iโm gonna do it next time, I just gotta give it one more try.โ They donโt want to go to sleep, they donโt want to quit. The dopamine is really firing them up.
โThere are benefits besides that. We know that a high level of dopamine primes your brain to continue thinking in that pattern. So if you are playing a game and can step away and use that dopamine high to tackle a real-life challenge, thatโs actually really productive, right? You can think about priming your brain for a hard day of real-life challenges with something like Tetris, Candy Crush Saga, or whatever is your thing.
โWhyย this happens is that every time we take an action that has a possible consequence, we can either be successful or we can fail and learn why we failed. In both cases, the brain releases a little hit of dopamine: it is the learning and motivation chemical. Games are just constantly taking action. If I rotate this piece, will it fit? If I fire at this angle, will it hit? If I go this way, will my opponent be able to follow? You are constantly making predictions and taking actions that you get immediate feedback on. That explains why video games, in particular, give us this incredible dopamine rush: there are really very few other activities that require us to be constantly taking actions that can pay off or making a prediction that weโre going learn something from. You do that for hours when you play games, so your dopamine is just through the roof.โ
The full Longreads interviewย is well worth the read. We recommend the book, too, which shows how gaming is an example of media as a force for good.
Asi Burak, presidentย ofย Games for Change, had this to say about McGonigalโs book: โIn โSuperBetter,โ sheย reveals to the world a great secret that avid game players kept for years: games are not a waste of your time; they can make you stronger, happier and more mindful. Reading this book is a compelling quest for anyoneย โย whether you play games regularly, or you just have an open mind about them.โ
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