Top 76 Jane McGonigal Quotes
#1. My goal for the next decade is to try to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games.
Jane McGonigal
#2. Whenever I do talks around the country, I map out my run. Gives me something fun to do and to look forward to doing.
Jane McGonigal
#3. When we know our strengths, we're more likely to use them.
Jane McGonigal
#4. Every game we play activates our brain, and it's the same brain we have in real life as we have in the game.
Jane McGonigal
#5. I want to see a game designer nominated for a Nobel Prize.
Jane McGonigal
#7. When you strip away the genre differences and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.' page 21
Jane McGonigal
#8. No object, no event, no outcome or life circumstance can deliver real happiness to us. We have to make our own happiness - by working hard at activities that provide their own reward.15
Jane McGonigal
#9. I didn't accomplish what I set out to do, but I realized I had set out to do the wrong things
Jane McGonigal
#10. Game developers know that people have more fun when they're in large groups. They feel more fired up when the challenges are more epic.
Jane McGonigal
#11. It seems like what happens when we play games is that we go into a psychological state called eustress, or positive stress. It's basically the same as negative stress in the sense that we get our adrenaline up, you know, our breathing rate quickens, our pulse quickens.
Jane McGonigal
#12. 'Superbetter' looks more like a social media platform or a social network than a typical video game. You know, there aren't any 3-d spaces to explore. You don't have this avatar that you're building up. It's more about thinking like a gamer.
Jane McGonigal
#13. Positive health means becoming whole-heartedly engaged with our own health care. It means not outsourcing our health to the health care system. It means getting rid of the fear and paralysis we too often feel, and instead cultivating a sense of agency.
Jane McGonigal
#14. The more we consume, acquire, and elevate our status, the harder it is to stay happy.
Jane McGonigal
#16. There's no reason why the 'Lost' alternate reality game had to be officially made by the 'Lost' production crew.
Jane McGonigal
#17. A dramatic decrease in oil availability is not at all far-fetched.
Jane McGonigal
#18. Today, I look forward and I see a future in which games once again are explicitly designed to improve quality of life, to prevent suffering, and to create real, widespread happiness.
Jane McGonigal
#19. Any time I consider a new project, I ask myself, is this pushing the state of gaming toward Nobel Prizes? If it's not, then it's not doing anything important enough to spend my time.
Jane McGonigal
#20. There are people who are very dismissive of games and gamers.
Jane McGonigal
#21. I don't want a gamer to feel like they have to commit their whole life to changing the world.
Jane McGonigal
#22. I don't do 'gamification,' and I'm not prepared to stand up and say, 'I think it works.'
Jane McGonigal
#23. I'm always thinking about whatever game I'm working on. My brain works subconsciously on design pretty much every hour I'm awake.
Jane McGonigal
#24. It may have once been true that computer games encouraged us to interact more with machines than with each other. But if you still think of gamers as loners, then you're not playing games.
Jane McGonigal
#25. Scientists have demonstrated that dramatic, positive changes can occur in our lives as a direct result of facing an extreme challenge - whether it's coping with a serious illness, daring to quit smoking, or dealing with depression. Researchers call this 'post-traumatic growth.'
Jane McGonigal
#26. many gamers have already figured out how to use the immersive power of play to distract themselves from their hunger: a hunger for more satisfying work, for a stronger sense of community, and for a more engaging and meaningful life.
Jane McGonigal
#27. When we play a game, we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we're more likely to reach out to others for help.
Jane McGonigal
#28. Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.
Jane McGonigal
#29. I worry a lot about people using games just for marketing, to get people to buy more stuff, which I think would be the worst possible use.
Jane McGonigal
#30. I've been running since high school. My boyfriend was on the track team, and I'd run with him.
Jane McGonigal
#31. When we're in game worlds, I believe that many of us become the best version of ourselves: the most likely to help at a moment's notice. The most likely to stick with a problem as long as it takes. To get up after failure and try again.
Jane McGonigal
#32. A traumatic event doesn't doom us to suffer indefinitely. Instead, we can use it as a springboard to unleash our best qualities and lead happier lives.
Jane McGonigal
#33. Game design isn't just a technological craft. It's a twenty-first-century way of thinking and leading.
Jane McGonigal
#34. Over time, the games we play can change how we think and what we're capable of. And it's easy to maximize the benefits so the changes are positive.
Jane McGonigal
#35. The Gamifaction Movement is trying to help companies engage their audience and community by using game mechanics and wrapping them around shopping or achievements, so you get achievements for coming to a store or purchasing things, like rewarding activities.
Jane McGonigal
#36. 'SuperBetter' is fundamentally about a mind shift. It's about claiming your power to be in charge of how you spend your time and energy, and focusing it on the things that matter the most to you. Focusing on things that will bring real happiness, real well-being.
Jane McGonigal
#37. Evidence shows that having even weak social connections in a stressful situation is really good for your health and your ability to handle that situation.
Jane McGonigal
#38. You need to develop mental habits that allow you to activate the same brain patterns we activate during gameplay.
Jane McGonigal
#40. There is so much more knowledge than most people realize about how to maximize the benefits of play and minimize the potential harms.
Jane McGonigal
#41. We are moving towards a new form of collective intelligence.
Jane McGonigal
#42. When my life is stressful, my favorite game is called 'Pop It,' where you pop balloons and prizes fall out. It's a five-minute game that focuses my mind and gives me extra attention when I'm stressed.
Jane McGonigal
#43. Clinically speaking, depression is a pessimistic sense of your own capabilities, and despondent lack of energy.
Jane McGonigal
#44. I remember the first year at the Game Developers Conference I wore these big red giant knee-high boots. Nobody cared. You can wear anything you love, because that's what you do in games. You make yourself who you want to be.
Jane McGonigal
#46. Gamers always believe that an epic win is possible and that it's always worth trying, and trying now. Gamers don't sit around.
Jane McGonigal
#47. Games are unnecessary obstacles we volunteer to tackle.
Jane McGonigal
#49. I ran through most of college and ran through most of grad school. When I was writing my dissertation for my Ph.D., it was literally the only hour of the day that I wasn't working. It was nine months of torture, but I made sure I got out to run.
Jane McGonigal
#50. You can't play the same game every day for years. New games are key.
Jane McGonigal
#51. Research shows that when we're under stress or facing a major obstacle, we tend to focus on our weaknesses and what we're afraid of.
Jane McGonigal
#52. Although I'm perceived as very optimistic and upbeat, it comes out of being the opposite of that - feeling isolated or lonely, looking for meaning and the kinds of things that ease that suffering in life, and finding them in large-scale social interaction, like theater and games.
Jane McGonigal
#53. The single biggest misconception about games is that they're an escapist waste of time.
Jane McGonigal
#54. We have to accept as a society that games are not escapist. They really do change us.
Jane McGonigal
#55. The idea of the 'lone gamer' is really not true anymore. Up to 65 percent of gaming now is social, played either online or in the same room with people we know in real life.
Jane McGonigal
#56. Avatars are a way to express our true selves, our most heroic, idealized version of who we might become.
Jane McGonigal
#57. In entertainment, we have a comfort level with crisis.
Jane McGonigal
#58. Even if you never increase your physical or social resilience, seeking out more positive emotions every day alone can add a full decade to your life.
Jane McGonigal
#59. My mom is a public school teacher and works with third grade students.
Jane McGonigal
#60. We've been playing games since humanity had civilization - there is something primal about our desire and our ability to play games. It's so deep-seated that it can bypass latter-day cultural norms and biases.
Jane McGonigal
#61. When parents or gamers ask me, 'What's the best game to play?' I say that playing face-to-face is more beneficial than playing online.
Jane McGonigal
#62. A game is an opportunity to focus our energy, with relentless optimism, at something we're good at (or getting better at) and enjoy. In other words, gameplay is the direct emotional opposite of depression.
Jane McGonigal
#63. Every game designer should make one explicitly world-changing game. Lawyers do pro bono work, why can't we?
Jane McGonigal
#64. What's really amazing about games is how they change our emotional response to challenges
Jane McGonigal
#65. If you can manage to experience three positive emotions for every one negative emotion ... you dramatically improve your health and your ability to successfully tackle any problem you're facing.
Jane McGonigal
#66. Things like depression and obesity are global challenges.
Jane McGonigal
#67. Games are work. There are economies popping up in games now because people value them.
Jane McGonigal
#68. Game designers are obsessed with emotion. How do we create the emotions that we want gamers to feel, and how can we really make it this intense, emotional experience?
Jane McGonigal
#69. Games that make you feel good about yourself are good games to be playing.
Jane McGonigal
#70. What if we started to live our real lives like gamers, lead our real businesses and communities like game designers, and think about solving real-world problems like computer and video game theorists?
Jane McGonigal
#71. I'm not a fan of simulations. Where, 'Oh, we'll go play a simulation of world peace and figure out how to make peace' and then somehow magically that will get translated into the real world. No, that's not the kind of games that I make.
Jane McGonigal
#73. When we play games, our brains respond differently to stress and obstacles. We're better able to control our attention and ignore distractions.
Jane McGonigal
#74. We can boost our immune systems by strengthening our social networks and decreasing stress.
Jane McGonigal
#75. There is no problem that doesn't have some underlying need for more optimism, stamina, resilience and collaboration. And games are, I believe, the best platform we have for providing that.
Jane McGonigal
#76. If you make it a game, gamers will play it no matter what your motivation is in making it.
Jane McGonigal
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