Oh hey, it's the lady sitting in the middle seat who has to get up to pee, but you're in the window seat and you're soil releeve. She does because that means you don't have to ask again the aisle to get up. Ali ward back with another episode of Ologies. Oh video games, video games? What's their deal? How do they affect our brains? Have we got an ology for y'all? Okay, first,
I do have some thanks. Thanks to everyone who's pledging some of your latte money or tossing me a quarter a week on Patreon for making it possible for me to get my physical butt in the same space as theologists, or in this case, to pay a recording studio to do our first ever remote interview. Very exciting. Thanks to everyone sporting ologies merch out in the wild, that's at ologiesmerch dot com, t shirts, hatspins, all of that. Thank you to everyone who rates and subscribes and reviews, and
you'll leave such nice notes. For example, Namon says, I love this podcast so much. I found it when searching for podcasts to help me sleep. Sadly, I found a podcast to binge and stay up even later. Thank you, Ally Word for the podcast that has everything from biology to beauty. I never did solve my sleeping problem, but I don't really mind anymore, So thank you for the podcast. Well thanks for the review. Try the Fancy Nancy. Just
lay in bed. You think of a category and then you think of something that starts with an A and a B and a C. If you didn't listen to the Sleep episode, that's in part two of the Sleep Episode, and it's named after my very fancy mom, fancy Nancy, who came up with it. Okay, anyway back to litology. Who's excited and we all are, so Litology, let's get right into it, pals. So it's a real word. It means the study of games, and it comes from the Latin lu dare, meaning to play yay. So it was
coined sometime around the nineteen fifties. So it didn't mean video games back then because time machines had not yet been invented. But nowadays it can encompass gameplay and sports and cards of course Beatbop video games. So this ologist has been being in my periphery for years. My sister told me about her Ted talk and she was discussing her game Super Better that can help folks who are healing from an illness or going through anxiety or depression. So I've been a fan of hers for years, and
I reached out to her. I like chewed my fingernails waiting for a response. She said she was down to record, but our schedules just couldn't get aligned. So finally I took the plunge. She ducked into a recording studio in Berkeley. We taped this remotely, you guys, and it wasn't awkward. She's so so good. She has a PhD from University of California at Berkeley in performance studies, and she's designed
games since two thousand and three. So she taught game design and game theory at UC Berkeley in the San Francisco Art Institute. She's been named as one of the twenty most Inspiring Women in the World by this lady named Oprah in a magazine called Oprah, and she's a speaker. She's author of the book Reality Is Broken, Why Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, and New York Times bestseller Super Better, a Revolutionary approach to
getting stronger, happier, braver, and more resilient. And she's the director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for the Future. She's legit, so I was so nervous before taping this because she's just a high badass. She couldn't
have been more affable and great. And we chatted about IRL games, board games, animosity, Fortnite, the line between play and addiction, League of Legends, gambeling, lottery, tickets, off brand Atari, what Tetris does to the brain, video games and violence. Should kids play games? We talked about aliens, soup and how games can change your life for the super better. So let's press start on a truly life changing conversation with loudologist doctor Jane McGonagall.
Hi Allie, Hi Jane, how are you. O'm great? I'm so excited to talk to you in person. Let me unsep my jacket so I don't it might make okay, So I'm going to take that off. It'll be better, all right.
So Hi, First off, doctor McGonagall, it's lovely to talk to you.
You could also call me professor McGonagall. For all the Harry Potter fans out there.
Oh my god, does that happen a lot?
Yes? When when that character started to exist, it made my life so much more fun.
The starfting ceremony will begin momentarily.
Do people spell it right now?
No, not at all, but they pronounce it correctly, which never happened growing up, So it has helped a lot.
And I do have questions starting right off growing up. You have a twin sister. Did you guys grow up playing a bunch of board games? How do twin sister past the time?
Well, okay, so first of all, we should talk about board games definitely during this interview, because some new research came out showing that normal board games are really bad
for your relationships, like they lower your oxytocin levels. So we do have memories growing up playing board games that we always fought at the end of them, and you know, I never do you remember like games like Sorry, where you would you know, mercilessly take out other people's pieces and move them to the beginning of the game Monopoly, where like one person gets power and then lords it
over everybody else for an increasingly unfun hour. Yeah, traditional board games are poorly designed for social interactions and are terrible for you. So yes, I do have memories growing up playing with them. Unfortunately, my sister never recovered from those early experiences and would never play like video games or anything else with me after that. But yeah, and now, I mean literally, just a couple of weeks ago, I saw this study showing that traditional board games lower oxytocin levels,
like you trust each other less. And it makes perfect sense because the games are As a game designer, I can point out all the ways that they are poorly designed to, you know, lead to negative social experiences rather than positive ones, the old school ones, the new ones are better.
Oh my god, that validates so much because I remember even when you would win at Monopoly, you feel bad because you were hosing everyone in your family. Yeah, like I'm an asshole, I'm like such a slum lord.
Right now, what do I do?
No?
And I don't know. I think people maybe know this now, But Monopoly was originally designed as a had a gogical tool to teach people the evils of capitalism, and it was supposed to make you feel bad. You were supposed to play it and say, wow, this is awful and terrible and let's be socialists, and so it was designed to make you feel bad, and so in that extent it works, But playing it for fun not a good idea.
Oh my word, I just went down a hole on this one. Quick aside. So Monopoly was actually the early nineteen hundreds brainchild of an anti capitalist activist, and she was a comedian and a writer. She was an unmarried woman, Elizabeth Maggie, and she made it as a cautionary tale and in her old timey words, let the children see clearly the gross injustice of our present land system, and when they grow up, the evil will be remedied. Such high hopes, Lizzie. But perhaps the irony was just too
lost on us. And that's why a land baron who shits in a golden toilet is presiding over the nation. Anyway, So the game had a very sexy original title. It was called The Landlord's Game, and Elizabeth Maggie worked her ass off on it, and then some JABRONI played it at a house party and she was ripped off. She made five hundred bucks, he made millions because capitalism. So
when did you start liking gameplay? At what point did you start playing video games or did you start to realize it maybe designing was something you'd want to do, you know.
I have some really positive early memories of my dad bringing Home an Odyssey, which was kind of like the knockoff cheap Atari because we were like a knockoff cheap family growing up, and so it had like knockoff pac Man called Casey Munchkin that was really a bad version, like it wasn't well designed either, and it was impossible to win. But yeah, he would bring home, he brought home these cartridges and he would play with us and
teach us how to get better. And I say really positive early memories of spending time with my dad kind of learning these new games and getting better. And he taught me chess, and our grandfather taught us poker and roulette at a very early age, like we were like five or six learning how to play poker. So there was a lot of gameplay in my family. And then we got a Commodore sixty four, which for computer geeks that was like one of the first at home computers
you could learn basic programming. And so in like fifth grade, I started making my own computer games, and the very first one I ever made was called You Be the Judge, and I think it was inspired by watching a lot of Divorce Court and People's Court on daytime TV. So
you got to be the judge. And also you were a cat because I had to use like as ki art and I couldn't draw like a person that well, so I made you a cat and you had a little gavel that was animated and you would hear people send some money and decide if they were guilty or not.
Oh my god, that's so I watched so much People's Court.
To you, I absolutely.
Was it.
Was it gratifying to you when you started, even as a kid, designing games. Was it gratifying to see something that you had imagined be a reality? At what point? What really got you hooked in that?
It was totally the experience of having somebody sit down and play with it. Actually made board games also, we would my sister and I would create life size board games in our basement because we had this weird, like sixties psychedelic tile and so we would use each tile as like a space and you would have to like go to prom and things like that, and then we would have people come over and play that, or I'd
have people playing my computer game. And it was watching how people would react and you know, did they laugh, were they surprised, did they try really hard to figure
something out? It was the ability to provoke I guess all of these really positive emotions and see people like try and be challenged was really interesting to me, and I think through my whole life that has been the single thing that's most interesting to me is that the greatest joy you have as a game designer is the first time people start to play with it and you're like, oh my god, I had no idea that's what people
would do. Are going to change these twelve rules and change this constraint and refigure, you know, what the goal is so that they do something different. But watching people react and how it brings out good things in them and maybe things you don't want to bring out of them, and you can change it. It's like kind of like being a chef and changing like the ingredients you're throwing in.
Oh, just a fistful of delight, maybe a sprinkle of reflective sadness. I mean, after all, she had a PhD in performance studies, so the doc knows what's up, and you also studied performance. So do you feel like there's something almost like watching people watch a performance or watching someone watch a play or a movie that you've designed or written. Yeah.
Absolutely, I mean in the same way that theater or choreography, you need a performer to make it real, right, the script or the choreography as it's designed. When somebody embodies it, it comes to life. And when different people perform a play or perform a dance or a song, they bring something different to it and express themselves through it. It's the same with a game, when when you design a game or code a game, it's it's not real until a player comes to it, and then they bring something
different to it. And with games you get an even wider range I think of interpretation and expressivity, and so they do very much have that kind of idea in common. That people bring these artworks to life and that they are the essence is actually funny. When I was really I was a theater geek also growing up so like double geek theater geek geek geek.
Jane says that when she was around eleven, she saw a one woman play starring Lily Tomlin called The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, which was written by Lily Tomlin's now wife, Jane Wagner, and in it, one character named Trudy is a homeless woman who encounters extraterrestrials. She's trying to teach them what art is.
As you would do, and so she's showing them Andy Warhol paintings of soup cans, and then they hold up soup cans and they're like, is this art? And she's like, no, this is the art. This is a painting. And there's this whole thing. And then at the end of the play, they go to the show. They go to the with the Homeless Lady, and they forget to watch the play.
They were watching the audience and all of their reactions and their laughter and their goose bumps, and the aliens are like, you know, the play is suit, but the audiences art. And I'm telling you that, like has. I think that has. That's the most influential thing I in my whole life I ever saw or heard. Because then I became obsessed with you know, how the people who interact with art or theater or games, they're the art.
So the people are the art. And Jane says when she was first starting her PhD work, she was kind of the weirdo because everyone else was studying the games themselves, but she was studying the players and how the games affected them. But I think it's good to be the weirdo because that usually means that you have an impact to make and you're the first person to be doing something. So if you ever whisper to yourself, shit, why am
I a weirdo? Congratulations because you're probably doing something right. And when did you start designing games as a job?
When did it become your career?
It's such a wacky road. I mean when I was in college, I worked with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and I helped run these like really big, large gale recreation events, like an Easter egg hunt for thirty five thousand kids and you know, Central Park. And I always think of that as some of my early game design work, because you know, they are games are not digital, but you come out and play. And when I went to grad school I started my PhD
program at Berkeley. I was meant to be studying scientists and specifically quantum physicists and how they collaborate and how they communicate their research with the public, so not at all games. I got a side gig my first semester as a PhD student. There was a new game company in San Francisco, that they wanted to essentially play games in reality. They were inspired by the Michael Douglas movie. The game and.
Sumer Recreation Services call that number why they make your life fun.
That's so which you know, he can't tell is it real? Is it the game? It's a bunch of actors pretending to be real people, and they give emissions and his whole life is transformed and he has these amazing revelations about you know, the meaning of everything. But also it's really confusing because the game is played in reality. And so this company was like, we're going to do that, but we're going to be nice and it's going to be fun and silly, and you're not going to be confused.
They're still running all these reality games and you run around the city and do missions like pay funal ring and they'll give your code and then you'll find a box and a pile of leaves and the code opens the box and there's a raft inside and you have to take the wrapped out on a lake and then you find like the snorkel equipment. You have to find something at the botty of the lake, and then like there's I mean, it's like you know, you get to
be really adventurous in reality. Anyway, they hired me and that was like, that was the beginning. That was how I earned my credentials to go to the Game Developers Conference. I'm like, I'm totally a game developer.
So working in theater turned to working in live events, turned to working in live events with mobile phones, and then when did that go digital? What happened? Well, nine to eleven did. Jane had just moved to San Francisco a few weeks before after leaving in New York for six years.
Something weird that happened while we were processing all of that was that an online community of gamers that we'd been a part of earlier that year, playing this online game called the AI Web Game. It was very collaborative. You're like forty thousand people on one team, all trying to solve the same puzzle. I mean kind of like early Reddit in a way, like everybody's trying to solve
the same problem using message boards. And that community came back to the message board even though the game had ended a couple months earlier, and they were like, can we solve nine eleven? I mean it wasn't even called that yet, but like, can we solve this. Can we figure out what happened? When it started to emerge that it was a distributed terrorist network, they're like, great, we're a distributed network of collective intelligence. We can understand how
they might think or operate. We can figure out what security holes they they snuck through. And they started to want to use their game skills to help. And that was really interesting to me because I was feeling powerless and everyone around me was feeling like just like frozen, and here's this online community people saying, wait, we are super collaborative, super collective intelligence. We you know, save the
world in this game. It would be stupid not to try to use those skills to help when the world really needs it, and that that desire that that was literally the day I'm like, I think maybe I should study video games and gamers and how they collaborate instead of how physicists do, because I wanted to find out like, is this delusional, is this crazy wishful thinking because we're also overwhelmed, or are there problems that gamers could solve
and are there questions they can investigate and ways that they could use their skills in real life? And eventually I started designing, you know, digital games, just to see if I could be the person to come up with that bridge, Like I'm going to make a game that has real problems in it so that gamers can test out this hypothesis that they have.
How did they do with their research into nine to eleven?
You know, it morphed pretty quickly into trying to be of service. So what wound up actually practically happening was getting people out to donate blood and volunteer, so it
became sort of more like community mobilization. But the same group of people then started investigating things like government corruption and cold cases, and they created a kind of spin off site called Collective Detective, and so they kind of continue to play with us and see what they could do over the next couple of years, and that was really when I started designing games. Those are the people who showed up first to play.
So side note, I went to go look up Collective Detective and the website has no pages, there's nothing to click, simply the text investigating the Mysteries of Austin Appointments by referral only. So I'm both spooked and intrigued. Do you have a favorite game that you have designed.
Mmmm, oh, of course. I mean when I think the one that's nearest and dearest to my heart would be Top Secret Dance Off. Don't know if you are familiar with this one.
So I have not played Top Secret Dance Off, as it gained huge popularity almost ten years ago, but it's not in the app store, unlike her other hit games Super.
Better, I have Super Better, of course, but yeah, a few more, yeah, more people play. It's super better than Top Secret Dance Off because I actually had to shut it down after about six months because it was taking over the players lives and I just like could not handle. Like the average time spent in the game was about six hours a day, which was it was too much.
But so the idea behind the game is, let's say you want to dance, but you're shy, Like this is a lot of my games are based on my own problems. You really want to dance. Dancing is great for you, it feels good, but you're super shy. Maybe if you could dance in disguise, then it would bring out like the top Secret Dancer in you. So the premise of the game was you start the game by creating your avatar,
which is not a digital avatar. It's a disguise that you put on in real life and you introduce yourself to the community by doing the first dance quest, which is to dance without moving your feet. So this introduces your avatar, which like people were wearing like masks and wigs, and I mean, it's just amazing. Just invented the most
beautiful characters. And then there's a series of dance quests that you unluck like dance subside down and dance on a crosswalk and it was and then you power up with things like plus one creativity and plus one coordination and plus one courage, and the points were given to you by other players. This is two thousand and nine. So people became like essentially like today's Instagram stars, but like for but for being characters and dance videos, and
you didn't know who these people were. But I have since had the opportunity to meet many of these people in real life and they're amazing. But it got really popular and weird places, like it was super popular in New Zealand for a while, and I went down there to give a talk and like all the morning shows had me on TV and they're like film crews following me around like it was a weirdly popular thing in
New Zealand. But what I loved about it is because you got all your points from other players, and you could only give people positive feedback, and if you gave them a point, you had to explain why. So it's just like you post a video and then you'd have one hundred comments from people giving you points in these really amazing strengths and also saying wonderful things about you've never seen so much just love and people expressing themselves.
And finally, anyway, eventually shut the game down because it just like got out of control and I was self funding it and it was you know, I'm not an entrepreneur, so I mean, I probably should have tried to get VC funding or something, but I just shut it down and said, it seems like.
A lot of your games have really amazing intentions. You changed the way people live or think. So after designing a bunch of games, including Cruel to Be Kind, I Love Bees, The Lost Ring, and of course Top Secret Dance Off, Jane was working in her home office and she stood up quickly. She hit her head on an open cabinet door and suffered a concussion, which must have
hurt like a bitch so bad. Now, recovery was really rocky, and she ended up developing her huge game Super Better to help others dealing with anxiety and depression and recuperation. So for more on this, you can see her ted talk, which was ranked in the top twenty most engaging TED Talks once lot higher than Bill Gates's dead Talk. I'm just saying, and so, how how far into game development
did this happen? And can you tell me a little bit about about Super Better and about kind of your recovery with that and how it made you look at games.
Yeah, so this happened in the summer of two thousand and nine. So this was actually after we've been doing Topsic a dance off for about six months, and I was in the middle of writing my first book on games. So I had sold the book and I had to write it, and I was like halfway through it, and so I was already like totally persuaded that games bring out the best in us and games can change the world.
That already finished my PhD. I was well into this and writing the book on it when I did get this concussion that you know, I was supposed to heal in a few days, and then it was supposed to be a few weeks, and then it was supposed to be a few months, and it actually, I mean, it took years to feel essentially one hundred percent again. But during that time, you know, I had to stop writing, which created a lot of anxiety because the book was due in a few months. I had to stop my
other work because I couldn't think clearly. I had to stop running. I couldn't exercise it all because I was having so much vertigo and nausea with like even just moving my head. I couldn't socialize. I'd like go out, and even just being around like fluorescent lights would make me feel like like I would, you know, essentially would fall over, And so I couldn't do anything. Doctors are like, you have to stop. You can't you know, have caffeine
because it's creating triggering symptoms. You can't play video games
is triggering symptoms. And on top of not being able to literally do anything, I also started to have serious depression, partly from not being able to do anything, partly withdrawing from things like running and work and socialization, but also I learned later that you know, one in three people with a concussion experienced serious depression, and it seems to be part of the brain's way of protecting you that it's very dangerous to get another concussion shortly after a concussion.
It's called second impact syndrome, and you can die. And part of what happens when your brain is trying to heal is it literally does not want you to like crawl out of the cave or get out of bed, and want you to protect yourself and just sit stay put until it's safe to go out in the world again. The part of the brain that anticipates good things happening. By the way, I didn't know any of this at the time, right I had to learn this because I'm like, why why did my brain break? Why do I want
to die? But I learned later that the part of the brain that anticipates good things happening, and when it's sort of fired up and you're getting dopamine hits and your brain saying, hey, go out there, get that thing you want. It's a good food that you're smelling, or it's like your partner, your pet and you want to hug or a lick, and it gives you energy and focus.
That part of the brain just says, no, thank you, I don't want to imagine anything good happening because I want you to stay in bed and let your brain heal.
How amazing is this?
Okay?
Also content learning. Jane went through some pretty tough times following her concussion, and we talk a little about suicidal ideation after brain injury, which was something I knew nothing about because people just don't talk about it.
And when that part of the brain doesn't fire, you get really depressed and even suicidal because you literally cannot imagine anything good happening. Your brain just says, nope, I'm not going to let you picture that. And I learned, you know, kind of after all this is happening to me.
That's part of why suicidal ideation is so common in traumatic brain injury, because it's a very natural response to It's a rational response to not believing that anything could ever happen that would be good, that nothing will ever
make you happy. And somehow through all of this, the fact that I did research into how games affect our psychology and our brain gave me like one kind of holy grail ahamoc, like maybe I can force my brain back into believing that good things can happen as a result of my own efforts and attention, which took me years of researching after the concussion to put all the pieces together. But it turns out that that is that's the fundamental neuroscience of gaming. Your brain says, hey, something
good could happen. You could go further in the game, get a higher score, you could get an advantage on your opponent if you take an action, if you make a decision, and that part of the brain that believes that something good could happen and gives you energy and focus and optimism, it goes nuts when we play games. That's like the signature finding of the Famior research on video gaming.
So the premise for the work that Jane did was trying to bring a gameful mindset to things like recovering from traumatic brain injury or depression or anxiety. And she went on to develop the thank You game for Oprah, and Jane has said that she's secretly curious about how games can develop the seven positive traits that Buddhists believe can help end suffering. So what are those traits? I had no idea Mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, relaxation, concentration, and equanimity.
So how do we go from game playing to a more chill, happy brain? And I ask this for the sake of my own brain selfishly, can you tell me kind of how games change the way we think or what happens in the brain. What happens is dopamine and serotonin, Like what's going on in that brainy soup?
Yeah, Okay, there's like so much I want people to know about this, And they're two big pieces, and so I want to tell both of them, because not everybody like benefits from playing video games. Like for some people it can become almost like pathological. It takes them out of reality, It takes them out of their social relations
within their goals. So I want to preface what I'm going to say by this doesn't naturally happen for all people like the good things, And there are ways that you can if you don't have a good relationship with gaming, that you can change it so that you're more likely to get the benefit. So I just want to preface all this by saying, it's not like games are some magic pill that you play them and good things happen
to you. It really depends on how you play and why you play, that good things can happen for a lot of people.
Just allow me to reiterate that disclaimer.
Games are not a magic pill, and not everybody benefits from video games, especially if you have a pathological relationship to them. However, they can really help in the following ways.
So that the signature thing that I would say as probably the person who has studied I mean, I don't think there's ever been a scientific paper written about video games that have not read thousands of them. I am on it. I would say this sort of signature finding
has to do with self efficacy. So self advocacy is the belief that you have the ability to take actions that can help you achieve your goals right, and so you have skill, you have resources, you have pathways forward, and different people have different kinds of self effogacy, Like I might have a lot of self efficacy as a cook in the kitchen, but maybe not in my fashion sense of what should I wear today? I'm just not feeling like I have a lot of talent in that area.
Different people have self efficacy in different areas. But if you have the experience of gaining self efficacy in new areas, it can develop a kind of mindset that does translate. So if you are often doing things that you're bad at and then stay with it and get better, and suddenly you have new skills, and you acquire new resources,
and you have achieved new goals and milestones. Your brain gets better at looking at a difficult skill or task and saying, let me try it, because I have a great and long history of getting better at things that I'm bad at. And that's what gaming does for most people. Games are designed to be hard the first time we
play them. They are ridiculously challenging. I mean, you think about a game like golf, where the goal is to get a small ball and a small hole, and it is such a bad method to achieve that goal, like to stand really far away from the hole and then you stick. It's stupid.
You've got to make the game a little bit easier.
Why would we do that to ourselves. We do it because we want that experience of being bad and then getting better and having to use creativity and use practice and determination and learning from others. And so all games are like that, whether it's Candy Crush or Pokemon Go, whatever it is, you get better over time, and the more different games you play, the more your brain gets used to being frustrated, hanging in there, feeling optimistic in
the face of setbacks. And that is the one generalizable positive impact of games that we see. No matter what kind of game you play, sport, challenging, cooperative board, you're playing bridge, you're playing a video game. If we can help you get comfortable with not being good at something, trying using your skills and ability to get better at it, and then you do in fact get better, that that can translate to the rest of your life. That's the That's a lot of my work has been helping people.
One make sure you're always playing different games, like the person who always plays mind Sweeper or Solitaire like they've been playing it for thirty years, not not having this benefit you got you got to you got to try Fortnite or something like. You got to expose yourselves to interfaces you don't understand and communities that are totally strange to you, so that you're you're always learning and improving.
Tell Grams, get on a headset, go play Call of Duty.
She's gonna love it.
She's gonna love it. So some people really benefit to a point.
But when you look at the research literature, the people who really benefit from this experience are people who feel like games are real in a way, like they don't see them as a scapist. They don't play games to ignore their problems or like shove down negative feelings or get away from people who are annoying them. Those people tend to not benefit because they see games as separate from reality, so they don't bring the same mindset to
real life. And those are the type of players who go on to be like you would call it addicted. It's not quite an addiction, but it's a kind of compulsive gameplay where they play more than it's good for them, and they feel like they just have to keep playing because everything else is so terrible. People who can answer the question like what does it take to be good at this game? What have you gotten better at since you started playing this game, and can talk about it in a way that's bigger than.
Just the game, such as, for example, I'm.
A good communicator under stress with my teammates, or I'm really good at thinking of different approaches to a problem. I don't just try one way, I try lots of ways. Whatever it is that you think it needs you need to be good at. If you can talk about that, you tend to start bringing those skills to real problems.
And so like if you're a parent, or you're a partner of a gamer, or you're a gamer, just answering those two questions can unlock essentially all the good stuff of games in reality, not just while you're playing.
So being a good communicator under stress and looking for ways to solve problems both skills are aces. It's weird how if in a video game shit starts hitting fans. You can think logically or strategically you can overcome it. But sometimes in life it's easy just to feel bogged down and you just want to lie face down on a carpet and be like not today, life, I am defeat. But you can ask yourself, Hey, if this we're a game, what would I do? First off, let's comb my avatar's hair.
I never thought about applying it that way.
That.
Yeah, it starts hard, gets frustrating, you get better at it.
Yeah, Like, ally, is there is there a game that you play?
I grew up with a lot of a pong and like combat and like two pixels on a screen was the whole game. It's funny because I feel like I don't play as many games as my peers, and I think instead I just use social media as a game for that same like reward and it's terrible.
Oh but I know you can't because it's like all the has all the sort of sort of motivational aspects of games, but it's not. It's no, we got to get you off social media and onto Tetris ninety nine. Maybe if you like old school games. It's like it's like, you know, one hundred people play Tetris against each other until there's only one survivor, which means everybody loses. So you don't. I mean, you can just just embrace it.
That's more what I need. And it's funny.
My my boyfriend plays League of Legend, and my nephew and my nieces play Minecraft, and what I find is that they play with their friends. They play online, so they hang out that way. And I don't know, it seems like, is there a difference in games where you're playing against a computer versus you are in a community and your friends are on a headset and you're all yelling at each other trying to like, you know, kill
it the same elf. Clearly, I don't know what I'm talking about regarding League of Legends, but I just looked it up and there are elder dragons, rift heralds, marksmen, jungle monsters. I don't know if any of those are elves anyway.
Huge difference. And it's not that one is better or worse. They're they're good for different things, right, So, like, if you're dealing with anxiety or depression, a single player game is actually really good it because you can pull out your phone and play it for a few minutes. Because one of the benefits of games is that it can
stop rumination. Right, So if you're anxious, you're anxious because you're imagining things that could go wrong, right, and it requires it requires your brain to be actively focused on visualizing things that scare you. So one of the best treatments for anxiety in the moment is to just stop the ruminations, to make a conscious decision not to spend time and energy on these thoughts. And so a game on your phone, it could be like a mini golf game, it could be you know, candy Crush, it could be
Words with friends. Anything that you can play by yourself is fine. Because it stops the thoughts. Same with depression. People depression ruminate on very negative thoughts about themselves or their circumstances, and if you can stop that flow of thought, it's an effective treatment. So single player games are great and they are really helpful for things like anxiety, depression, and pain, but social games are phenomenal for other things.
The quality of positive emotions they create, the trust that they build. It's interesting you mentioned League of Legends. There's been great research showing that people who play League of Legends regularly have a stronger social support network than just about any other gamer, meaning there are more people in their lives who will be there for them if they need advice, if they need help in reality like help
moving or assistance, physical assistance. People play legal licens very powerful social support system where the people they play with actually you know, will loan them money. There's something about the pattern building your heroes together and depending on each other to show up for your practicing or for your matches,
and so that's really interesting. You mentioned that the kind of long term relationships we build online are really powerful, and there's a term in game research and virtual reality research for one of the things that really heightens this, which is presence. A lot of these games have a really strong presence, which means you feel like you are actually with someone, that you feel like you were in the same physical space.
Which brings us to talk Fortnite.
If Fortnite has a phenomenal presence factor, people who go hang out a Fortnite now, so like two hundred million players out of nowhere, everybody's playing Fortnite, they feel like they are together. And when we physically spend time with
other people, it's a much stronger bonding. That happens because we take cues from body language and facial expression and the way that avatars are being designed, and you can express yourself through dances and different emotes where you can really, i mean your avatar expresses emotion just like you do in reality. It allows us to have a kind of bonding that I would say previously you would have needed
to be in the same room with someone. But we're seeing both in just talking to gamers, but also in the research literature that these games that have this very strong presence, it does translate to a real social support system.
So online friends in real life frinds. The gap is kind of closing both can offer social support and often hanging out online strengthens your real life bonds. And that's all so precious and so wonderful. But if you're wondering if there's a digital tipping point, I asked about that, like what happens if you're chasing dragons and then you're chasing the dragon the addictive nature of it, or what's
happening with dopamine and how that works? And are we getting these like little hits kind of like gambling or kind of like, yeah, other pleasurable things in our lives, how's that working?
Oh my gosh, Ali, there's so much to say here. Let me start. Let me start with the gambling question, because this I think people, If people can understand this, it will alleviate a lot of anxiety around video gaming versus casino gaming. The thing that happens in your brain where you feel like something good could happen as a result of your actions. It is identical in gambling and
video gaming. Right. The part of your brain that says try again, try again, you might win, go ahead, go for it, that keeps you at that slot machine, or you just need to play another hand in gambling or make another bet yes, that is identical to what's happening in video gaming. But what happens in video gaming is you actually get better at skills and you acquire more resources, and you gain more allies who can teach you and
help you and show you the way. And as opposed to luck based gambling where you're just pulling the slot lever or scratching off a lottery ticket, you can actually get better and improve your chances of winning in video gaming. So it is a completely different psychological experience, a different neurological experience, because it is not delusional to stay engaged. And that is a big difference between video gaming and casino gaming is that the games and casinos are designed
for you to lose. They want you to fail so they can take your money. And it is delusional when your brain says stay engaged, stay engaged bad. That is that is illsocial design and shameful right in my opinion.
PS side notes, stay tuned for an episode on the lottery with a Latologist. You don't believe all do word? Please see Lotterycollectors dot com, or you can subscribe to the monthly newsletter The Latologist. I've got an itch to cover it. They can only be scratched by a dirty penny and a dream. But that's a different episode.
In video gaming, the games are designed for you to win and to get better, and the developers are on your side and they want you to experience success and they want you to develop real skills and build real relationships that can help you succeed. And that's the big difference. So, even though some of the neuroscience is the same, the fact that you actually can improve in games and experience real meaningful development and growth and relationship building, it's a
different application of that kind of neurological experience. And so, you know, as we see games kind of spread into different areas of our lives, I always say, you know, is this a good use of game design? Is it manipulating people to do things that maybe aren't in their best interest, or is this actually a good use of game design. It really depends on is there an opportunity for them to really improve and experience success in something
that's meaningful to them. Maybe, like fitness trackers are gamifying the steps you take, and that that actually is good for you, and you can take more steps and that will have a virtuous feedback cycle where you feel healthier and now you're stepping more and you're sharing with friends, and it's upward spiral.
Take a sip of your beverage or blink twice. If your brain is like my brain trying to remember where your fitbit is and why you haven't charged it in months.
That's really good. If you're using it just to get people to like buy more stuff or click on ads, and how do you get better at clicking on ads? I mean, it's not a good That is not a good system, and it doesn't lead to real growth and real relationship buildings. So that's that's my philosophy on how you know. Even though it's the same a lot of the same stuff happening in the brain, it really matters if there's an opportunity for growth and success.
And that actually brings me. I have a ton of Patreon.
Questions I ask you, Yeah, so many questions, and so this is kind of like a lightning round, oky Dook. So before the lightning round of questions from folks on patreon dot com slash ologies, I tell you about a few things I like. But before that, each week, a portion of the ad revenue goes to a charity or a cause that theologists chooses, and this week Jane picked
ablegamers dot org, which works to make gaming accessible to all. So, in their words, we give people with disabilities custom gaming setups, including modified controllers and special assistive technology like devices that like you play with your eyes so you can have fun with friends and family. And they're using the power of video games to bring people together improve the quality of life with recreation and rehabilitation. So that's ablegamers dot
org doing awesome stuff. So thank you, Jane. A donation was made to them. Now a few words from sponsors who make the podcast possible. They're also all linked in the show notes. Okay, back to your Patreon questions, which are good ones, but that dovetails just wonderfully into one Patreon question. I got a ton from Mark Williams, and from David Baffa and from Sasha kd. They all asked about gamification. And I know that I don't think that you love the words, but is the gamification of behavior
a useful technique? Sasha k wants to know how do you feel about gamification of everything?
Yeah, you are awesome Ali for knowing that I do not use a word gamification to describe my own work because just historically it's been used not in ways that authentically empower or bring the best out of the people who are being gamified. So so my philosophy is, if you are connecting with somebody's deeply held values, what do they want more in their life? They want to be a better parent, They want to learn something new every day.
They want to be braver and get out in the world more, be more physically active, you know, whatever it is that they authentically want to do that they choose for themselves. If you can put a quest system or a leveling up system, or a kind of cooperation opportunity where they are multipliers, if if you and your friends are doing it together, you can add some game design elements that help people do more of what they want.
And if they do it, they're going to experience an upper spiral of skill and ability so they can maintain it outside of the game. That's an ideal situation for gamification. You know, I will always say with my own game Super Better, that's not a game I want you to play your whole life. I want you to play it for a few weeks and then get that upward lift and kind of go back to reality and maybe come back next year if you need another upward lift. We
shouldn't be gamifying our whole lives in perpetuity, right. We should use it as a way to give us that authentic experience of getting better at something that matters to us. And then once we're better and we're doing it, that authentic value and reward system will replace the need for a more artificial game one.
So if your aunt or your coworker announces every time they hit their water goal for the day, don't hate the player, hate the gamification. And then a bunch of people Colin Matthew, Carla Kennedy, Helen Amy Connor all asked about dreams. Why do I dream about Tetris? After playing Tetris for a long time? Two people, in particular, Colin and Amy both said, I love Tetris, but if I play it too long, I start thinking about it all the time, and when I close my eyes, I literally
see little Tetramino swalling. Why does this happen? And is it a Soviet mind control conspiracy? Just kidding on the last person.
It is not. First of all, I can say, having hung out with the original designer of Tetris. I will tell you he's super nice and kudley and it's not a secret Soviet mind control mission.
So quick aside. The creator of Tetris was inspired by the math game Pentomenos, which looks just like analogue Tetris. Also, he is not an agent of Soviet mind control. His name is just Alexi Leonodovic Petchibanoff and he's from Moscow.
So this is the greatest question because the other public service announcement I always like to do about video games actually has to do with Tetris and how it takes over your mind, because there have been three randomized control trials and studies and clinical trials now including one in the field with people who experienced traumatic events that show that the way that Tetris takes over your brain so that you are flashing back to it can prevent flashbacks
associated with post traumatic stress disorder. And there's actually an increasing usage of Tetris within twenty four hours of a traumatic event. If you were in a car accident, maybe you witness a violent activity, or you were a victim of violent activity, that if you play Tetris within twenty four hours and before you go to sleep, that your brain is more likely to flash back on tetris and the event, which reduces the rate of traumatic flashbacks in
the future. And it happens because Tetris is so visually compelling and requires so much visual attention that your brain essentially diverts resources from everything else.
And.
It works so hard on this problem that when you walk away from it, your brain is continuing to work on it. It's like it's when you give so much attention to a problem, your brain thinks it's a priority, essentially. And so because tetris is so visually challenging, your brain essentially thinks like, oh, that's a priority. I'm going to keep thinking about it when I walk away, when I go to sleep. And so in a way, tetris is
kind of like this miracle. Even if you're not traumatized, If you had a really bad day and you don't want to sit there thinking about it, or like stay up all night thinking about it, you can use tetris to block your brain from flashing back on an experience that you don't want to remember. You use the power
of tetris to flash back on tetris. I mean, I can't tell you since I started sharing this research I've heard from people who've been through really horrible, terrifying things who were able to get the game on their phone and play it and felt like they benefited and had fewer nightmares and flashbacks than they thought. So to your patrons who have observed this, they are correct, and it can be used in really powerful ways.
Oh that's so amazing, just like BRB downloading teches.
Yeah, can you have it?
I downloaded Tetris immediately after this interview. Also, this is going to be a hole aside about video game music and its origins and history and composition. But in researching it, I found out that the study of video game music is known as lotto musicology. For real, for real, there are experts all over the world who do this. So yes, you best believe this is on the list. All in favor, say bebop booo boo boop.
Okay, good, Okay.
I got a ton of questions also about wait, hold on, I have so many, so many.
Different pages of questions, it's crazy. Okay.
I got a ton of questions about VR like Justin so, Dion Dabbelow, Kirana Bergstrom, and Janelle York all wanted to know what video game.
Advances should we look forward to, Like, how do you.
See the industry developing, and how does VR a an AR change game design like virtual reality and augmented.
Yeah, oh, so many things. Okay, I'm going to focus on a few things. One thing, one advance that we are going to see in gaming in general as a result of virtual reality, I believe is that gaming will become a socially safer and more pleasant space for people who have historically experienced more harassment. So for women, people who are identified as queer. There can be a lot of harassment in social gaming, and that's just a fact.
I spent a lot of time talking to VR developers, and I know that all of the major VR developers are very much focused on not repeating the mistakes of the past of both social media and video gaming. They do not want VR to be a space where anybody can come up to you and tell you what they think, anybody can come up to you and have an interaction with you.
What are you looking at? Butt hit?
They want to invent new kinds of technologies for consent, for who can see you, who can touch you, who can talk to you. I'm very optimistic that VR is going to thoughtfully not replicate the kind of toxic environments that we've seen in social media and video gaming in the past. That's one thing. Yeah. Another thing that I'm excited about in VR is VR esports. So there are
esports is obviously becoming really popular and accepted. I mean, there are college scholarships, there's college leagues, there's more people watching online World Championships for the biggest League of Legends finals, then watched Major League Baseball World Series and watch the NHL.
Okay quick aside, just to fact check this, let's look at the most watched World Series in recent years. Twenty sixteen Chicago Cubs are in the World Series for the first time since nineteen oh seven. This is a big deal. Game seven, Who's gonna win? The viewership is about triple what it usually is for a World Series, with forty million people watching the Chicago Cubs take the victory forty million. Oh but last year the number of people watching the
League of Legends Finals was one hundred million. Well that's an exaggeration. It was ninety nine point six million. So yeah, that's a lot.
Sorry Cubs, it's very popular. But I'm interested in esports and VR because the esports and VR are often very physical.
If you look at images or videos of them online, you see people leaping and crawling, and there's a real blend of physical sport, but also all the things that require you to be good in video games and esports, the kind of fast reflexes and visual attention and resource management that are the kind of strategic decision making that we see in traditional video games in esports, so I'm excited for VR esports also as a way to have
both real, physical and beautiful gameplay alongside traditional esports skills.
Someone developed VR Frogger, but make it like Mission Impossible, but ushering toads across freeways. Come on?
Do for the toads.
A bunch of people also had questions about parenting. And I know that you have twin four year olds, so I'm sure this is going to be a thing for you. But let's see Matt Soalgato, Carla Hickenlooper, Roda Acaria, Carla Kennedy and a few other people asked about addiction to like when should people when should kids start playing video games? And how much is too much?
Okay, so you cannot go wrong if you are playing the game with them, that's That's the first and most important rule. There's no too soon if you are playing with them and talking to them about it, and for as long as you can continue this, the better. So even if it's a single player game, you know, somebody they're building something in Minecraft. You are sitting right there, You're like, what are you doing? How did you know to do that? How did you figure that out? Like, ah,
looks really hard. What's going on? Talk to your kids, let them express their problem solving process, what's motivating them about the game. Why is this fun? You want to just draw out as much as you can, because it allows kids to really reflect on how they learn, what they're getting better at, how they are capable of solving
difficult problems, and staying engage with hard challenges. Games are just the most incredible environment for you to validate your kids' skills and abilities as a learner, as a creative person, as a problem solver. So it's never too early if you're playing with them and at whatever age they are, the more that you can reflect back to them.
What if they get annoyed with you?
They get annoyed with you if it's like a I mean, you know if they're playing Fortnite, they don't want you asking them necessarily while they're trying to like frantically build an escape route. But afterwards, talk to them. I'm talking about dinner. And so that's the first and most important thing. I Some parents are to tell me like, oh, games seem like kind of antisocial. Well, they're probably talking to
their friends on a headset. Or if you think it's antisocial, just sit and play with them, and you've successfully solved that problem. And the other thing about in terms of timing, I did help you a meta analysis of all the studies that have looked at kids and adults how much is too much? And I will say that there have never been studies showing ill effects when people are playing
less than twenty hours a week. You do see impacts on school performing, on social relationships with people who don't play games, on physical health and well being over twenty hours per week. So that's just another kind of safe zone. And you can say, you know, in our family, we don't play more than twenty hours a week. We just don't do that, because that's what all the research says. It starts to kind of interfere with other goals that you have or your physical wellbeings, so we just don't
do it. And in cases of serious pathological gameplay, when people are staying up all night, they're not doing the schoolwork, I'm not looking for a job. I always say, get it to twenty hours or less. Do not take the game away, because if you understand the powerful effects of games on things like anxiety and depression and social support, you know, taking games entirely away from someone, that's like pulling them off an antidepressant or an anti anxiety drug without tapering.
I looked up quitting gaming Cold Turkey, and I did find a site called game quitters dot com which suggested taking a ninety day detox to re evaluate the role of gaming in your life. It also suggested that during that time, choose new activities, schedule out your day, and stay out of the house as much as possible. So maybe it's a good idea to just record how much time you're spending on gaming if it's a problem, and then, as Jane says, you can just tape her off from there.
There's really no need to take it away entirely. It's about getting it to a safe number of hours. So as an intervention, if you need to intervene get it down to twenty hours a week, and that is a much more effective strategy than trying to get somebody to stop playing.
Oh that's so interesting.
I love that you've read every paper ever all this information. And so a bunch of people asked about violence and video games, Emily Brabish and Elizabeth Janelle Yorke, Lauren Murray McKay, Sarah Jane, James, Amber Cooper, and then they all kind of ask do violent video games cause more violence? Is there any link between these ultra real estate violent games?
And then Don Doherty affleck said, my husband is a lawyer, so my question is why does coming home from work and killing things in games like Dark Souls help him relax after a stressful day.
Oh that's funny.
Good.
Dark Souls is a very specific example that's like almost like a masochistic game, Like it's very very hard, okay.
Ps I looked into this Japanese game of fortresses and knights and dragons and bonfires and moodally lit castle interiors to find a few things. One you can play as a person who has no skin, which looks essentially like a human made out of salami, killing things with a sword. Also, it's widely considered one of the best and most difficult video games ever made. Like there's not even a pause button. There's no pause button. They're like, are you in this? Or are you in this?
And so it's funny. I mean, there's like some like high powered lawyer who like works really hard and then comes home and plays like literally the hardest game is. It's definitely revealed something about that person's like personality. They really they really do like a challenge. So violence, Okay, Look, statistically, we know that ninety six percent of men under twenty
one play violent video games. And I'd prefer to use the term like games with violent content, because obviously the most violent game is like football, real football, where you are hitting people and causing brain injuries. That is an actually violent game. Video games are not actually violent. So let's say games with violent content or aggressive themes. Everybody
plays them. And if you look at the data, violent crime has gone down and down and down exactly as engagement with violent themed games has gone up and up. I mean, it's like it's ridiculous. If there were any any correlation, let alone causation, you would not see this trend. This is like anybody who saidies this, well, that's the first thing they will say is over the past thirty years, violence crime goes down, particularly in this demographic, the male demographic.
It probably has to do with getting lead out of our paint. I mean, that's you should do a good aside on that.
Okay. First off, the fact that Chaine listens to ologies and knows ido asides warms my heart to the point of bursting. And also, yes, lead paint. So according to an article on mother Jones that delves into the lead violence hypothesis, they say lead poisoning degrades the development of childhood brains in ways that increase aggression, reduce impulse control, and impair the executive functions that allow people to understand
just the consequences of their actions. Because of this, infants who are exposed to high levels of lead are more likely to commit violent crimes later in life. So why is this? Brain scientists have done scans and found that because lead is really chemically similar to calcium, it displaces the calcium needed for brain development. So looking at the data is staggering. You can see how the bands of leaded gasoline and lead paint correspond to these huge drops
in violent crimes. Ps I have a victimology episode coming up in Hell Yeah, we will be talking about.
That violent crime is going down, violent themed gameplay is going up. It's just not there's no data to suggest that there is any kind of correlation, let alone causation. However, that said two things. There are certain types of gameplay that can turn you into a jerk. Not a violent person, but somebody who has less empathy for people they perceive is weaker than them, and who are kind of moodier and may yell at you or be grumpy to you, and you're just like, ugh, why are you so obnoxious?
Or such a jerk? That kind of gameplay is when you play in these very aggressive themed games against strangers who you don't know and will never see in person. We tend to dehumanize those opponents. We don't know who they are, we're playing anonymously online, we're trying to beat them. We build up in our mind that there's like horrible people and we hate them and we feel antagonistic towards them, and those emotions that we build up, the frustration, the anger,
the hatred. It's not like you just walk away from the game and they evaporate so they can linger. Some people hypothesize that there's a kind of testosterone poisoning from this type of gameplay. I mean, poisoning is a little strong of a word, but your testosterone gets jacked up, and so, yeah, you're kind of a jerk. So you shouldn't spend all your time trying to beat people you have never met and we'll never meet online. You know.
Esports is different because these are much more collegial environments. You can play against the same people again and again and again. You can see them in person at tournaments. That's fine.
And another thought about violence and video games.
I don't like to play games where I have to kill people.
I hate it.
When I play Fortnite, I just hide and it's like literally a game of hide and seek for me, and I build stuff and I like, I've you know, I can get the top five finish without killing anyone, and to me, that's awesome. I don't like it. I don't enjoy it. There's a reason why a lot of people don't enjoy it. Like a lot of people don't want to simulate violence because we don't enjoy it. And that's a natural feeling, and it's why a lot of people
are turned off by video game culture. It's not abnormal to not enjoy violence, like that's a that's also a normal thing. If you're turned off by it, that's okay. And you don't have to play violent video games, or if you play them, you don't have to necessarily engage in the violent aspects of them. That is normal and that's fine. And I personally feel the same way.
And this actually goes straight into Crystal Mendoza wanted to know what is the deal with Fortnite? Why is it so addicting? Is the is it the killing part or is it that kind of feeling that you're hanging out with friends, like that social aspect.
There's a lot of things that is kind of special about Fortnite. I mean, one of the things is just how easy it is to try again. So if you're in Battle Royal mode.
Battle Royal Mode, by the bye is when a bunch of players play against each other, it's like a birthday party.
But you die, you play, maybe you're dead in five minutes, you can just play again. You can drop back in parachute back down. You don't have to wait for anybody this sense of like just abundant opportunity and how fast the games are and how quickly you can try again. It really powers up that part of the brain that thinks that something good might happen, and it's just like like, oh, something good didn't happen. I'm out, but wait, I'm just
gonna play again. Something good could happen now. That rapidity, that sort of iterative nature of the game is really really wonderful. And they've done such a good job with the expressivity of the avatars and how playful the different skins are, and you just when you encounter people and you see what they're you know what they're avatar is dressed as, and you see the emotes that they do when something good happens, you just kind of feel like
you're seeing people. It's really interesting. People feel like there's an authentic personality that they're able to express or an authentic emotion, and it increases a sense of presence and it increases a sense of social being and so so yeah, the social side of it is really compelling to and I just think it's nice, like to play a game where ninety nine people are going to lose, and only one person wins. It kind of takes the pressure off.
There can be one hundred people in the room and ninety nine don't believe in you.
I think it's easier for people to jump in and it's you know, when you're playing chess, one person wins, one person loses, you were the loser in the battle. Real everyone's a loser. So it's a kind of a low pressure environment where good things can happen.
What do you think about video games? In movies and TV? Is there anything that you've watched that you love or hate? And Stuart Caswell wanted to know from a game designer's part of view, what are your thoughts on Ready Player one? But yeah, are there any anything in pop culture that gets it wrong that you're excited about?
Oh gosh, okay. Well, first of all, every Law and Order episode on every franchise of Law and Order and as CSI and Criminal Minds has been terrible, always never gets anything right. Well, it's obviously little like let's acknowledge that even though I like, I love them all and I watch this for you every week. But Ready Player one is interesting because I had a strong, viscual reaction to the book that I still kind of feel, which is I just don't believe it.
Okay, I was maybe the last person on planet Earth to know the plot of Ready Player one. I just looked it up. It takes place in twenty forty five. The world is a desolate hell escape and then to escape that, everyone just wears VR headsets. But there's a real life game that happens. That's all I'll say. Also, would everyone get a ton of forehead sets from wearing a headset all the time in the future or would it even matter because you just see each other's avatars anyway? Is this our future?
I don't think that that VR is going to be the alternative to reality in that kind of really holistic way that Ready Player one imagines. I think augmented reality is a much more likely future, and that VR will be more often used for kind of short term immersions. I love VR. For example, it's being used in hospice care for people who still have like bucket list items
but they're dying. VR for kind of reliving past experiences when we get this really immersive three sixty footage and you can kind of immerse yourself in things that you've experienced in the past. Like I think I just don't buy the vision of Ready Player one. I just don't.
I don't see that that's what people want. Kind of going back to research, my PhD research methodology was largely ethnography, of really trying to understand what drives people and sit with the communities and sit with individuals and look for patterns that help explain how a society might evolve when you see a lot of the same thing bubbling up as a motivation and desire in different communities. And so I just don't buy Ready Player one as a vision.
I think it's going to be augmented. If you look at what happened with Pokemon Go and how they were able to get almost a billion users in just a few months, no product has ever scaled as quickly, like including the wheel, like more humans used Pokemon Go a vaster than anything that's ever been invented. And I think that gives us a better glimpse into what the future
of gaming will be. Like people like Pokemon Go because you could still see the world, and you could still have face to face contact with other people, and you could be physically active which feels good, and get fresh air and all of that. So that's my feeling about Ready Player one. I don't think we're headed towards that future, and I'd love to see like Ready Player two should be about the augmented reality version of that world, and it might be a better one.
I asked Jane if she watched Russian Doll on Netflix, in which Natasha Leone is a game designer. Jane says she didn't watch it because it might feel like work to her and Di stress her out. I mean, not unlike Fortnite. It's kind of a birthday party. Oh wait, I am not a last two questions if we have a second, is that cool? The thing that you hate the most about video games or your work? The shittiest thing about what you do most annoying can be anything.
Oh god, the most annoying thing is I mean, it's just that I hate the shame around gaming that is perpetuated by the media and to some extent by anxious parents. It makes me crazy, and I think we need to stop shaming people for loving games, because we've loved games since we were human beings. Some of the oldest artifacts in the world are game boards and game dice. We need to stop creating unnecessary shame around this because it hurts people and it affects ourself image and really damaging
long term ways. So that is the most annoying thing about games is the shaming, and the media has a big role to play in it, and we need to stop it.
Video games they seem to have captured America's imagination and it's pocket change as well. That's legit.
What is your favorite thing about video games or about what you do?
I mean, my favorite thing is I love with discovering a new game with my husband. Still. We've been together since two thousand, so almost twenty years now, and one of the first things we did together was play an adventure game called grim Fandango one players Lucas Art's browseres game you like explore world together and we spent a
few weeks playing it together. And I still like. I love when a new game comes out, whether it's Gone Home Game or Fortnite, we can sit and experience it together and have the sort of memorable moments in our history, like when we found Portal, when we found Braid, when we found World of Warcraft. I really love developing a skill with him together and having that novelty and that exploration and curiosity. There's so many positive emotions that we feel when we play, and when you can feel them
with someone you love, it's really powerful. And so I'm always excited when we have time and opportunity to discover a new game together.
Open up a beer and you say good over here and play.
A video game.
I'm now I'm going to have to learn legal legends, stamp download Texas.
Yes, good victory.
Thank you so much for doing this. I'm so glad I finally got to talk to you. I feel like I've just towed the line of creepy of like, Hi, it's me again.
Hi, oh no, And I wish you know what if I had known that you would interview people like on a bench at LAX. Also, we could have done this a long time ago, because that is something that I find myself sitting.
So Yes, Jane McGonagall the woman the world needs. So befriend someone, and even if you have to do it over Skype in a remote sound booth four hundred miles away, asks smart people stupid questions, because they have the keys that can unlock the Easter eggs that can give you life, more lives. So find out more about Jane mcgonagal at janemcgonagal dot com. She's also avante game on Twitter and I'll link all this in the show notes, including the
Nonprofitablegamers dot Org and a sponsor links. And Jane's book once Again is called super Better, a Revolutionary Approach to getting stronger, happier, braver, and more resilient, powered by the Science of Games. And also doctor Kelly McGonagall, Jane's sister, is a psychologist who studies how to make stress your friend. You better believe I'm going to try to make her
come on the show. Mcgonagal's you all good folks, So to find ologies, you can follow ologies on Twitter and Instagram at all jeez and I'm Ali Ward with one L on both and for t shirts with the ologies logo and mugs and toads and pins and hats. All that is at ologismerch dot com. You can tag your Instagram photos Ologies merch so then I can repost them on Mondays if you want. Thank you Shannon Feltis and
Bonnie Dutch for managing that. Thank you Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lippo for admitting the Facebook group full of great folks. Thank you to interns Harry Kim and Caleb Patten, to assistant editor Jared Sleeper of mind Jam Media, and of course to the incomparable Stephen Ray Morris of The per Cast and c Jurassic Right, and also to Nick Thorburn, who wrote and performed with the theme music. If you stick around to the end, you know I tell you
a secret. This week you get too. Number one. After my disgusting botfly video confession last week, Stegosaur ch on Instagram dm me asking if I'd ever seen videos of mango worms and then roomed my life because I watched so many. It's so gross. They make bot flies just seem like child's play. Just don't do it. Don't do it.
Don't do it.
Don't do it. Don't do it. Also, my other secret is that I mentioned dating someone, and for years and years I've been super low pro about who I'm dating because it's just a vulnerable thing. And also what if it ends, and then you have to explain that to people. I just I just quiet about it. Anyway, Go get them, kiddos. You all mean so much to me. For bye. Pacodermatology mombiology or doo zoology lithology technology, meteorology, metatology, methology, zeriology, ethology,