Over time, even the tiniest meaningful actions add up, each one bringing you closer to a life that is truer to your dreams and free of regret.
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.
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
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.
The research proves what gamers already know: within the limits of our own endurance, we would rather work hard than be entertained. Perhaps that’s why gamers spend less time watching television than anyone else on the planet.
Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.
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.
My mom is a public school teacher and works with third grade students.
We are moving towards a new form of collective intelligence.
I’m always thinking about whatever game I’m working on. My brain works subconsciously on design pretty much every hour I’m awake.