Why DO we game?
McGonigal’s ideas, I have to admit, really didn’t interest me. I am too much of a realist to think that society can be fixed by turning life into a more game-based system. On one hand, this is because life is far more complicated than that (it is not a possibility to turn off life and go out for a drink) and on the other, there is no controller in life that you can throw at the screen of reality when you get frustrated.
By the time I finished the book, my real question was why do we game? Certainly, there are some games that are somehow more “enjoyable” than others, but gaming hasn’t really changed much since the 1970s. The graphics get better, but the tasks are still follow this path, get this object, complete this objective. Games still follow the Pacman principle. It has gotten to a point where certain games have begun to critique the concept of gaming (Limbo immediately comes to mind).
So, why? Let’s forget about why life can not be more like a game; why are we so enamored by gaming?