SuperBetter, McGonigal’s new book, is the logical extension of her ideas in Reality is Broken. ‘Reality is Broken’ made a strong case for the social and psychological value of games. It was an important read for me in ways that I just can’t overstate or go into enough detail in a single article. But Jane McGonigal had done the research and Reality is Broken presented a wealth of scientific studies backing up her claims for all the ways in which both the playing of games and the gamification of real-world activities could be beneficial for self and society. There were other reasons for wanting to play games that I believed were more substantive and beneficial, but I hadn’t done the research to be able to prove that to myself – it was all just intuition and speculation. So escapism was part of it but only a small part. Games called to me again with the sweet promise of a brief respite from pain. After years of not playing games due to the everyday struggle of trying to hold onto a job while my health was steadily declining, I suddenly had some time.

Jane McGonigal’s first book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, helped begin to shift that for me, and this could not have occurred at a needier point in my life because by the time I had gotten around to reading it I was severely ill with a chronic disease, penniless, unable to work, and living at home with my mom, mostly confined to my room with almost zero social interaction. Nevertheless, the damage (of stigmatizing games) had been done and even when I later claimed full autonomy in my choice to play games as an adult, I couldn’t entirely rub away that sense of shame that had been imprinted onto my consciousness, that underlying fear that I was just wasting my time when I played. Later, when the first Nintendo console came out, I think they gave in because by that point my father’s alcoholism was getting worse, their marriage was falling apart and the idea of keeping me distracted from all the incessant yelling and screaming was a welcome prospect for them. In reality my parents refused to ever buy me an Atari because they were first-generation Korean immigrants and if you know anything about Korean parents’ so-called “education fever” (교육열) you can probably guess the reasons why. I can still remember the palpable sense of joy and excitement in those dreams dissipating upon the disappointment of waking up. Growing up in the 80s, I had a recurring dream in which my parents bought me an Atari 2600.

Super Better by Jane McGonigal