I’m currently reading what I think just might be my favorite book of the year: Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal. It’s about how game designers can change the world for the better – using elements of game design they have used throughout the years.
I’ve been a big proponent for the ideas of games and gaming culture as something important and worthwhile to study. I took several gaming classes in undergrad, the most interesting one called Entertainment as Implicit Pedagogy. While the focus wasn’t necessarily on gaming and video games, I chose to take the perspectives I learned in that class and apply it to gaming.
I also took a course on the history of gaming, that was co-taught by Joost Raessens and Francis Steen. It was a fantastic class, and I was able to apply what I learned in other classes in my projects for it.
Let’s just say…I wrote two different papers on World of Warcraft, that you should be able to find in my Writing Samples section of my website.
Back to the point of this post…Reality is Broken, and Jane McGonigal posits that game designers can help repair it. I love this idea. While looking up reviews for this book, I saw that they had a website setup where you can meet other people who share your interests in game design. I, of course, immediately signed up.
I haven’t had the chance to play around with it much yet, but I can’t wait to see what I can get out of it. My profile is linked at the bottom.