The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish - #101 Jane McGonigal: The Psychology of Gaming

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

Jane McGonigal is a PhD Game Designer who advocates for the use of video games to help people learn skills that transfer to the real world, heal physical problems like concussions and improve attitudes and self-esteem in children. Shane and Jane discuss how video games help with decision making, post-traumatic growth as well as how much is too much, what to watch out for and so much more. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/   Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/   Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Any game that you love, I don't care if it's League of Legends, it's Fortnite, it's Candy Crush, whatever you feel drawn to, we know that there is a transferable benefit. The confidence that you can build and I can learn anything, I can teach myself, I can get better, I can develop new skills, even if I'm terrible at this the first time I tried it, any game that's designed to be challenging is going to give you that benefit. Welcome to the Knowledge Project. This is Shane Parrish. This podcast on our website, FS.Blog, help sharpen your mind by mastering the best of what other people have already figured out. If you're hearing this, you're not currently a supporting member. If you'd like early access to the podcast, add free episodes, transcripts, and other subscriber-only content, you can join. at FS. blog slash podcast. Check out the show notes for a link. My guest today is Jane McGonagall. Jane is a PhD game designer who advocates for the use of video games to help people learn

skills that transfer to the real world, heal physical problems like concussions, and improve attitudes and self-esteem in our kids. We're going to talk about video games, how they help you make better decisions, how they help your kids, how much is too much, what to watch out for, and so much more. It's time to listen and learn. what's happening jane oh i'm super excited to be talking to you thanks for inviting me on the podcast your background is fascinating you've got a phd basically in video games and then you got a head injury and you made a game to help yourself recover can you tell me more about that yeah you know i've been studying the psychology of games and specifically how games change the way we respond to

stress and challenge, not just in the games, but in everyday lives. I've been studying that for 10 years. I was the first person to get a PhD in it. And then I was writing my first book about all of that research when I got a traumatic brain injury that, you know, it started as what seemed like just a normal concussion and it just didn't heal. And it was days and that it was weeks and it was months. And, you know, a year later, I'm still suffering difficulty with my memory and hard to get out of bed and, you know, dizzy all the time, these horrible migraines, depression, anxiety. And I guess I was lucky that at some point in that recovery, it occurred to me that I could use everything that I had learned about the psychology and neurochemistry of gaming and why we

feel so motivated when we play, why we feel like we can take on any challenge, why it's easier to ask other people for help, right? And I mean, nobody has a problem asking for, you know, tips on a game or resources in a game, could I bring that to my own recovery? And that was the genesis of a game Superbetter that I played for my own healing and that has now helped more than a million people recover from symptoms of traumatic injury, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and other sort of challenges that we may struggle with and need just a kind of a fresh mindset on to stay engaged and feeling optimistic. You also did a lot of work on concussions, right? I remember I'm listening to some of the background material for this.

And the first, is it three hours or three days are critical, and then 30 and then a year? Yeah. So I'm lucky. I was able to get a clinical trial grant from the National Institutes for Health to actually test super better for traumatic brain injury recovery because there isn't a lot of standard treatment for concussions. It's really just rest and try not to get a second hit, which can be more dangerous. So basically, like, whole up in a dark room.

And it is important to give your brain rest during those, you know, first three days or first week. I went through a process with my own recovery where I learn that if you don't feel better in a week, they anticipate most people feel better in a month. And if you don't feel better in a month, and most people feel better in three months. And if you haven't felt better by 90 days, then it will be a year. And at that point, you may be stuck with it forever. So you kind of, a lot of people have this really difficult. psychological experience of hitting all these milestones, and they're still not better, which was also my

experience. And when we tested super better in our clinical trial with Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Ohio State University Medical Research Center, we were specifically dealing with people who had this long concussion or post-concussion syndrome who didn't recover on time. And then not only do you still have all the symptoms of concussion, now you're incredibly anxious, incredibly depressed, you're losing hope your people who are taking care of you might be getting fatigued from you know having to support you or getting frustrated also so you're feeling kind of socially isolated or less supported so so yes it's kind of the longer goes on the more important it is to get some kind of tool that will help you stay optimistic and not fall into the cycle because i mean i could tell you the one the one big

breakthrough that we now know is that concussions make you incredibly depressed because your brain is trying to stop you from getting injured again. And so it kind of shuts down all the pathways that tell your brain it's worth getting out of bed. And so it can feel suicidal, feel like there's no point in going on because your brain literally can't imagine anything good happening again. So, you know, it's good for your brain to try to protect you, but it's absolutely terrible for the person going through it. And we have to kind of, we can't, we have to overcompensate for our brain's protective mechanism and start looking for ways to believe that the future can be good because our brain is kind of overdoing it with the protection.

I want to get into more about super better and what specifically about it helps you with recovery. But what else did you learn about concussions in general? I mean, there's a lot of inflammation involved. So it looks like, you know, little things you can do that tend to decrease inflammation systemically are helpful for recovery. So there are dietary things like you can do like increasing turmeric in your diet. eating things like, you know, walnuts or fatty fishes that can help early on in the first year of recovery and, you know, meditation, kind of things that systematically lower inflammation

throughout the body because a lot of the, I want to say almost physical symptoms of concussion, the incredible headaches and the brain fatigue and fog comes from the inflammation. But there's really not a lot known about how to speed it up. It's like it just basically you you kind of wait and see and there's nothing there's our you know super better has been shown in the in the literature to improve depression, anxiety and recovery faster. But we don't we don't exactly know why. We have some hypotheses that I could chat with you about. It's so under understood for something that affects so many people. What are your hypotheses and like why that is working so well? Well, I think there's a kind of downward spiral with concussion where, yes, you have these symptoms that are very real, and particularly the headaches and the nausea and the memory issues

or concentration issues. But when you start to add depression, anxiety, and social isolation or loneliness on top of that, then it creates an intensification of the inflammation that's triggering the physical symptoms. It makes it harder for you to do the things that we know can help you get better. I mean, if you just lie in bed all day, it's actually not good for recovery. You do have to get out of bed. You have to kind of work up to a threshold that's like 10% below it triggers your symptoms and keep pushing that. But if you're too depressed or you're too anxious, then you never make any forward progress. Plus, you've got all the extra inflammation, all the extra cortisol, the adrenaline. So, you know, I think what the researchers that I worked with at Penn

and OSU and I believe is probably helping with a concussion recovery is it's take, it's, it's It's basically getting people out of the way. You know, if you can not make anything worse, you know, don't add any extra problems so that the depression and anxiety don't intensify it. And then you'll have a little more energy to do the things that will help you get better, faster, a little more willpower, not to push yourself because you have faith in the recovery process. So you're not going to do things that actually set you back two weeks or 30 days because

you push too hard. So it's basically reducing the, reducing things that make it worse so that you can have just a little extra bit of energy so that you stay engaged with the normal healing process. That's crazy. And then so it also gives you something to think about and do that it's not too far in the future, right? Like it, because part of what I understand about concussions is we lose our ability to think about the future. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's really interesting. So one thing that happens is when you try to imagine,

the future, it loses that vividness, the detail. You describe it in a more sort of general or vague way. So there's actual a functional loss in your ability to imagine the future. And then when you do imagine the future, even if you're thinking about things that normally would get you excited, your brain is basically refusing to fire up the pathways that allow dopamine to get you excited and motivated and paying attention. Even when you imagine the future, it just looks all kind of bleak and gloomy. What SuperVetter does is, you know, the first thing it does is it basically tries to trick your brain into believing that something good could happen as a result of your own actions. And it starts incredibly small. I mean, the first four things you do in Superbetter

are, you know, stand up and take three steps and no matter how you're feeling because that gets the blood flowing and it automatically disrupts the inflammation process. So like, great, you did one good thing that will actually help your brain. And all you had to do is take three steps. In fact, I'm going to just do it right now because I've been sitting at my computer all day and I have a migraine right now. So I'm going to just do a little bit to feel better. Or you send a text message to somebody to thank them. You know, for any supports they've given you or inspiration or encouragement or just tell them something that you appreciate about them. And just that just to remember that even with whatever you're going through, you can still make somebody's day. And

that gives you power and agency. Yeah, your life sucks right now. But you know what? You have a mom or you have an old teacher or you have, you know, there's somebody out there who would really smile to hear some kind words from you. So we're just superrutter is all about showing you the power you have, the smallest things you can do to feel happy, to feel successful, to feel important to others, to feel hope. And every time you do that, you force your brain to fire up those dopamine pathways. Like, sorry, brain, you wanted to stay depressed and believe nothing good could happen, but I just showed you. I just proved to you that something good could happen as a result of your own actions. And so we're essentially like reverse engineering. We're trying to get in there

and say, yes, I'm not going to go, you know, mountain biking, but I am going to stay engaged with my day. And there's, it is a pretty complex system. There's a lot to do in Superbatter, but that's really at the heart of it. It's just every day, wake up, do a few things that remind you of your power and actually measurably, objectively improve how you feel physically, emotionally, you know, mentally, socially. And that will give you some hope for your future. I love how you renamed yourself, Jane, the concussion slayer. Yeah, because I was so mad. And, you know, I mean, I didn't, I didn't ask for it. I was dealing with it. And I was just, you know, thought of Buffy the vampire slayer who did not choose to be

the slayer. They just, she was born into that. And she just had to. accept it and battle those demons and, you know, I was, I mean, I, it sounds almost ridiculous because I was also suicidal. So it's like, how does something so ridiculous or so absurd actually help? But I think what a lot of times that we, what we've seen with are super better users is that people who are the most frustrated who have, have had tried so many different things and they're still dealing with whatever it is. You know, anxiety keeps coming. back, the depression keeps coming back, the pain keeps coming back, that just trying something new and having that open-mindedness and curiosity and a sense of playfulness about it is really

helpful. And it's interesting when I first released Superbetter, which has been almost 10 years now, I think there was some pushback or skepticism. Like, how is a game going to help people with something serious? And isn't this dismissive of real people's problems? And I was getting letters from people with terminal diagnosis, stage four and beyond cancer, ALS, who were using it because what else were they going to do? I mean, they had sort of run out of conventional, you know, treatments or, you know, therapy, and they just, they needed to create meaning for themselves and create purpose for themselves. So, yeah, it's like, super better may not be for you if you're really happy and totally, like,

killing it. But if there's something that you're like, just can't fix in your life or your brain, or you're your body, then it may be something that's helpful. Let's zoom out for a second away from concussions and super better. And what is that about video games? Like, people have an aversion to video games, but there's so many useful tools and insights and lessons that we can draw from them. I mean, people who don't play video games have an aversion to games.

But, you know, I mean, there are 2.3 billion people on the planet now who regularly play video games. So, like, one and three people have actively chosen to make games a part of their lives, which is really exciting. is not one of those people. Oh, you don't even know. I would, I, I, I bet she might be. I mean, she might be doing something on her phone, like a little, you know, cat collecting

game or something. I talk to so many people who swear they've never played a video game and they are, they are like on level 1,200 of Candy Crush Doggats. This happens all the time. So, you know, what is it about games? Look, I mean, my God, we could have like a 12-hour podcast series at least on this. But the most important thing is this is my life researching, you know, the potential benefits of games played, you know, by the right person at the right time for the right reason. And the number one thing we know, any game that you love, I don't care if it's League of Legends, it's Fortnite, it's Candy Crush, whatever you feel drawn to, we know that there is a transferable benefit, which is you get better at learning new things, at dealing with systems that are frustrating and having to.

adapt. You know, you're learning new rules. You're learning new interfaces. It's designed to frustrate you and you have to adapt and get better. And you build confidence in your ability to get better. And every game does this. And it's something that we shouldn't trivialize. We shouldn't pretend that that games are, you know, just escapists or just a pastime that they actually build, you know, this kind of growth mindset. They build this resilient way of dealing with challenges. And They, especially for young people, for kids who grow up learning game after game, I have five-year-old twin daughters who just got their first tablet this year. And they've already taught themselves to play over a hundred different games on this tablet. And every day they come

and show me like, Mom, look at this game. I learn. Want to watch me play this game? And just the confidence that you can build and I can learn anything. I can teach myself. I can get better. I can develop new skills, even if I'm terrible at this the first time I tried it. That's something your whole life until you're like 100 years old and desperately trying to keep that neuroplasticity going and how do I keep my, you know, brain healthy and active and where's the gray matter going to grow? You can grow it by learning something new that's hard for you. So from, you know, five years old to 100 years old, any game that's designed to be challenging is going to give you that benefit. So how should parents think about that with kids? Because there's a lot of questions around

screen time and whether I should let my kids play certain video games or not. How do you think about that? Okay. So the number one thing is you have to be in conversation with your kids around what they're playing. And there are three really powerful questions that I ask my kids and anybody I'm trying to get to know better and like understand the relationship to games and understand their personal strength. So you ask them about whatever their favorite game is right now. What does it take to be good at this game? What skills does it require? What kind of personality or temperament does it require? You ask them, what have you gotten better at since you started playing this game? And you ask, what's the hardest thing you've accomplished in this game and ask them to tell you

about how they did it? You know, what did you have to do in order to meet that challenge? Because it turns out that people who can talk about what they've gotten better at, what real skills, whether it's, you know, being able to manage my breathing under pressure, my heart rate under pressure, if they're a competitive e-sports player, or if it's creativity, maybe it's, I don't give up when things are hard, it's communication, stressful situations with my teammates, it's, I can get, I know where to look whenever I don't know what to do. I'm a really good information finder. Whatever it is, people who can talk about that, they tend to bring those skills to their work, to their learning, to their relationships, to their hobbies.

And all do you have to do to get somebody to transfer the benefits of games to real life is just have that conversation. And you can do it with yourself too. Like just have a little game journal. Every time you play a new game, you're like, what am I getting better at by playing this game? What's the hardest thing that I have achieved by when I've been playing this game? And what did it take to do it? And so if you're having those conversations with your kids, I don't care what they're playing. I don't care if they're playing Fortnite, you know, for 20 hours a week.

and that stresses you out. By the way, 21 hours a week is like the tipping point where we do start to see it can get in the way of physical health or mental health. So, you know, okay, less than 21 hours a week. But other than that, it can be anything that killing zombies, you know, like it's stuff that you don't understand

why they enjoy it. You can still ask those questions and you can still have that conversation and you can reflect back to anybody. Like, when I watch my husband play a game, you know, I can tell them what I think, what strengths I think he's showing. And I can show him that I see all of those great things and those great qualities in him.

Games are just a great way to tell each other, you know, what we're good at and what we want to be appreciated for and what we value in each other. And so we should just have more of those conversations. Are there better times a day for kids to play? Yeah. So, okay, there's a really counterintuitive study that parents always like, oh, when I tell them about it because it showed the opposite of what most parents. assume is true, which is if you want kids to retain what they study better, you should have them play video games first and then do their homework and then study before they go to sleep. Because if you study first and then as your reward, you get to play games, when you go to

sleep, your brain is going to focus on the most salient problem it was recently trying to solve. I'm sure, I don't know if you've ever had this experience. You go to sleep and your brain starts like just it's working on whatever you were just really fixated on so you want that brain to be fixated on you know the calculus or well you know the whatever the foreign words you're studying are not on the level that you were trying to solve in a game so actually reversing the order is is a really good tip the key is just to setting a hard time limit so that you know they play for 90 minutes and they switch to work or whatever it is.

But yeah, you don't want to have the game right before bed unless you've recently been traumatized, which is this is like, can we do a PSA, a little public service announcement? If you're having flashbacks of a traumatic event or you're ruminating on something that it's making you crazy, like you can't get this bad experience out of your mind, you're replaying this conversation over and over again

because you feel like you said the wrong thing and you just feel fixated on it. playing a game right before bed will essentially hijack the attention center and especially the visual centers if it's a game that's very visual. I mean, Tetris is like the golden game in clinical trials when they study this effect. It's like Tetris is the best option because it literally hijacks your brain like you close your eyes and you see the falling, you know, Tetris blocks. But any game that can really focus your attention will make it less likely for you to be then lying in bed, trying to fall asleep with all these negative thoughts or having

nightmares and flashbacks that you can't control. So yeah, you should play the game right before bed if you're dealing with that problem. But otherwise, you know, do something else like you're learning or whatever your growth stuff is. Read, do that before bed instead. It'll stay in your brain better. Is there a difference between the benefits we get from single player games versus multiplayer games? Yeah. You know, I say right game, right time, right person. You know, if you're trying to control your attention, you might have an easier time with a single player game. If you're trying to manage anxiety or you want to, you know, slow your heart rate down or you need some, you need a positive emotion because you're having a hard day. You know,

just pull out your phone or your switch or whatever and do a little solo gaming that gets you in the right frame of mind. And then, you know, social gaming, I mean, we know that people who spend a lot of time playing the same game with the same people, report getting more social support in their everyday lives. So even if it's a game like Pokemon Go where you might not see the other player, you might not be speaking to them, maybe we're doing remote raids together, we're just sending each other virtual gifts every day, you're more likely to text somebody that you've had an interaction within the game or pick up the phone and ask them for help with a problem or just feel like you have a rich network of support if you need it.

It's sort of that safety net that you feel like you have in your life that makes us, I don't know, less anxious or feel less alone. If you play the same game with the same people, league legends, whatever it is. And so, yeah, you know, I try to have a balance in my life. You know, if I'm super anxious, I'm not going to, and I'm trying to like focus my mind, I'm not going to do Pokemon Go because that's not quite, you know, stimulating enough. I might need to do something a little more challenging. but you start to learn and curate a set of games in your life that plays the right role for you.

And I think the more that you can articulate this game gives me this benefit. And I play this game because, you know, it helps me in this way. We don't see people like that developing, you know, pathologies around gaming. They're not the people who are feeling overwhelmed. They're playing 40 hours a week, 60 hours a week. It's taken over their lives. You know, the people who run into the problems tend to be escapist gamers who just feel like games are the only thing that, you know, keeps them saying they want to avoid reality. But they're not thinking about the benefits that it can give them to make them, you know, stronger in real life or more capable of meeting those challenges.

It strikes me that in some of the multiplayer games like leading a guild or leading a party and coordinating these things, coordinating resources, coordinating attacks across. the internet has become an incredibly valuable skill set almost over nine. Yes, right. Well, right now with so much virtual work happening and even in the future of work, we know that workers are going to have to be comfortable collaborating with AI programs and managing their own swarm of bot programs. They're going to have to be able to work in virtual reality to control robots or drones or, you know, there's, there are all of these skills around virtual environments, virtual

collaboration, remote collaboration that gamers are definitely at the leading edge of developing the skills for. And, you know, I always say, like, if you're worried about the future of work and not sure what to do to get ready for it, you could, you could do a lot worse than to play some challenging video games, you know, we've every reason to think that the future of work will be, you know, more like Fortnite than the kind of office jobs that we have. today. What are the best games for kids to play, do you think, in different age groups, say, like under 10, 10 to 15? And I know that it's dependent on, you know, kid and timing, but there's probably

some games that give you better lessons, possibly, than others. Yeah, I mean, you know, I, first of all, there's a cultural currency to playing the games that your peers are playing. And one of the big benefits that we know kids get is that kind of social confidence when they are in the culture as their peers. So, I mean, it changes from time to time. You know, Minecraft is still very popular and gives you a wide range of, you know, do you want a little bit of adrenaline? Do you, do you want the creepers to be able to destroy what you create? Or do you want to be in a nice, peaceful, creative mode? That's an environment where you can choose, you know, how you want to play and there's a big community around it. You know, I, Pokemon Go is great because it gets people

active and out exploring their real world environments. And I certainly know my kids started getting way more active steps and we started playing it together and that's important. I think whatever is kind of in the peer group is, it's a good thing. It's a good thing to do because particularly for young kids, we're seeing that being a part of that culture is, it's really important. And, you know, Wall Street Journal had an interesting article about how gamers, kids in the U.S., who have been gamers their whole lives, seem to have adapted psychologically better to the pandemic to being forced to do at-home learning and not be able to go out to, like, playgrounds and their, you know, their sports as usual, and that they adapted better

because they already had all these sort of rich online communities and ways to stay connected. So, I mean, for me, if you're a parent, you know, if there's a game that all your kids' friends are playing, even if it looks a little bit like, oh, I don't know, is there some realistic violence or not? The benefits they get from playing the same game as their peer group should outweigh whatever you might feel uncomfortable about seeing on screen. That said, you can also have conversations with your kids about, you know, why you prefer they don't play.

I mean, I think just because I know the benefits of games, I'm not like a crazy person. Like, I'm not, I totally can see that there's. gore in games or there's behaviors in gaming communities that are disgusting and all this sorts of bad stuff. And if you see that, I mean, shut it down. And I personally, you know, when I play Fortnite, I don't even, I love Fortnite, but I'm like total stealth mode and I just hope I hope to outlast everybody. I don't kill people because I just like, I'm not into that. It doesn't make me happy. I feel bad. Um, ending someone else's game and I don't even like that kind of comical violence. And you can talk to your kids about that and be like, I don't

play games where I kill people because I don't know. I just don't feel good about it. And that's have that conversation too and help them reflect on it, I think is, is a valuable thing to do too. Is there truth to the violence in video games leads to violence and adulthood? No, isn't that such idiots? Like the fact that we're still talking about that decades after it's been like systematically disproven. I mean, like the most conclusive evidence that it's not true is that the number of people who play, you know, I put violent in quotation, because the really violent games are like American football. You talk about concussions, right?

We actually have violent games that we play, and most of them are physical sports where we actually do violence to ourselves and our own bodies and to each other. You know, video games, the number of people and the hours that we've spent playing them has skyrocketed, and yet violent crime has gone down almost on the same curve. And so it's just, it's like completely ludicrous.

And nobody actually believes it increases violence. So the one thing we know is that if you are ideating on a violent activity, let's say you're like a really disturbed individual and you start to have fantasies of acting out, your fantasies are likely to be informed by whatever media you're consuming, whether it's graphic novels or movies or video games. And so you may act out what you've seen in a game. If you weren't a gamer, you might act out what you've seen in a movie. if I had someone in my life who I was worried had, you know, violent fantasies or was having a severe, like, psychotic break, I wouldn't be excited about them being obsessed with a game where they're, like, creating an arsenal of realistic weapons. I would definitely be concerned about that.

But if somebody is not having a psychotic break, it's not generally something that we need to, there's literally no evidence that it does anything like that. Are there any warning signs that parents should watch out for in? their kids that borderline addiction or behaviors that what are those yeah i mean the first thing you do if you have any concerns is start counting up the time that's spent playing right so if it's over 21 hours a week um i do recommend that you start trying to control it or shape it unless they are an extremely accomplished esports player because you know people can make you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars in tournaments it's a job you can play 40 hours a week

week if it's your full-time job fine but you know short of that keep a keep a log for a week or two see how many hours it is because in in all of the studies that have been done of kids of adults of all the negative impacts of games no study has found negative impacts at less than 21 hours a week so just you know want to be safe great keep it three hours a day that's plenty of gaming for somebody's well-being the other warning sign is if gameplay seems to increase in intensity while real life problems are also increasing. So what you don't want to see is like a direct relationship between like more problems, more games.

What I talk about is attention. And, you know, if somebody seems to be going down a dark tunnel of addiction where it's not, it's not that they're neurologically addicted to the game, it's just that everything else seems so hopeless, the game feels like the only place where they can. can make any progress or have any meaningful connection, you need to work with them to put their attention on other things as well so that there is a hope of improving school or work or their body or their friendships, relationships, whatever they need to repair. You have to say, you know, it's good to get, it's good to find relief in the game. And now we have to bring our

attention to some of these other things. And then we can go back to the game. You know, it's like a, it's a dance. Spend a couple hours with gaming, spend a couple hours bringing your attention to getting your body or getting your relationships, your studies in order. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's a red flag. You don't want to see more gaming with more problems. That's, that's the downward spiral we were talking about. So for all the tweens and teens that they're listening to this and getting your parents to listen to this as evidence that they should let you play more video games, you should get your grades up as you play more. Well, I mean, it grades, whatever. I mean, like, I, by the way, I'm like, I've been radicalized around schooling and the amount of anxiety and stress that kids are under, especially in the American school system, it's so absurd.

The idea that for the first 18 years of your life, you should be just constantly worried that you're not going to perform, you know, to some artificial standard, that your behavior is not going to be acceptable, that, you know, I mean, the whole, my kids, I've disenrolled my kids, you know, from our school. district this year and we're hoping to just, I don't know, unschool. I don't know what we're going to do, but what has happened to, you know, I still have nightmares about high school. I was, you know, I was one of those like 4.0, you know, high achieving students and I still have nightmares that I forgot to study that I haven't been going to class, you know, and then I've to remind myself in my dream like, Jane, you have a PhD. It doesn't matter whether you graduate from high school or not. Like, you're okay. But we are traumatized. And we, if we want to talk about, about like, how do we create more resilient young people? We need to stop traumatizing them

with this completely arbitrary system of consequences for just for who, I mean, who cares? It's just, it's so ridiculous. American schools need to be, I mean, we just need to get kids out of these prisons of the mind. And, you know, that's a, that's another story. But we've done long-term damage to kids' mental well-being and their, you know, brain's ability to, I don't know, generate, self-motivate, you know, outside of these external pressures. Talk to me a little bit more about developing resilience and maybe self-esteem and self-efficacy with kids. Yeah.

I mean, what we, I think what we really want to see in kids is that they get curious about something and they learn how to follow that curiosity. whether they want to learn how to cook stuff. So, you know, what is it going to take for them to be able to make the meals they want to make? And you have to learn skills, you have to learn techniques, you have to learn math to make the recipes work out. Just whatever you want to do. Because in real life, the only thing that's going to make you successful is having some kind of inner drive that is related to your interests and your passions and your authentic skills. And so giving kids a chance to give time and attention to what they are authentically curious about

and what they feel like they might be good at or want to get better at. I mean, what I'm hoping to do with my kids is just allow them to build on their strengths, you know, for years. I don't know when we'll put our kids in a normal school, but for now, you know, the things that get them up out of bed that they're excited to do, they get better at it so much faster than when you try to teach them something that you think they should know what my kids can teach themselves you know about drawing watching YouTube tutorials and I mean if they care about it they can learn you know a year's worth of stuff in a week it feels like so yeah I think what the really resilient kid is going to be the one who knows how to follow a passion and teach themselves and build their own like sense of motivation about

what they want to wake up and do. Are the things that we can do as parents in your mind to help the kids teach themselves? I mean, I'm just starting this process myself. I mean, well, let me say that anybody who's interested in this, if you just start Googling unschooling, there are experts on this who can speak to the difference between learning on your own, what you want to learn, and being, like, forced to perform under pressure or what somebody else thinks you need to know. And so just starting down that rabbit hole of unschooling is,

you know, I had never heard of that term until this past year. And there's a great book. It's called Why Are Your Kids Still in School? It really woke me up. And I thought, yeah, especially in the pandemic, like this is a good time to ask that question. Why are we letting someone else design our kids everyday lives? I mean, the amount of time they spend in school,

I'm a game designer. I'm really good at designing experiences and, you know, environments where you get to learn and grow and improve skills. And so I think we need to rethink seating all of the power of what our kids do every day to a bureaucratic and unimaginative anxiety-producing institution. I agree. It's very check the box to you, right? It's like you might be doing algebra in grade two, but, you know, if you don't share your lunch,

then. Well, I mean, it's truly, I mean, honestly, like, if just, If my kids can learn how to be helpful family members this year instead of what they would only be learning in kindergarten, what do I really want them to be able to do when they grow up? Just to be like good, helpful people who can wake up with an idea of what will give them energy and excitement to do in their day. And be able to like take charge, right? And if I want to learn something, I know how to learn it.

I know what to do. And I feel like I have the confidence and self-esteem that I can take that challenge on. Yeah, exactly. Do video games help us make predictions about the future, or are there things that we can do to prime us for learning? Ah, what can I? So there is one aspect of video gaming that kind of makes you a better futurist. So sort of my career kind of like forked like an alternate timeline where I started developing and being trained as a professional futurist. when I started my research in gaming and I was doing all this research until like, well, what if we were using games to change the real world and not just virtual worlds? I was discovered by

the Institute for the Future, which is a world's oldest future forecasting organization. It's been around for 60 years now. And they said, well, it sounds like you're actually inventing the future. Futures for us because the best way to predict the future is to actually be the one who's inventing it and deciding what it will be. So in my professional future, practice, what I've discovered is that people who spend a lot of time playing games are actually very effective at anticipating second, third, fourth order consequences of future events. So, you know, like when you're playing a game, you might be imagining like, okay, if I do this, then what is the other player going to do? Or if I use this resource, you know, what will happen

next? Well, how will I solve a problem if I don't have that resource anymore and I have to try another way. And so you start to like think one step ahead, two steps ahead, three steps ahead, and you develop essentially all of these, essentially alternative timelines in your mind of all the different ways the game could play out. And that, you know, certain games facilitate this more than others. Like if you're a chess player, you can imagine a hundred different futures and hold them all in your mind at the same time, right? And we do see that with real time strategy games as well. And so that's actually really helpful for things like in technology. I've been doing a lot of work on the sort of ethical or responsible development of new technologies at scale.

You know, what happens when something you created has a billion users? There's going to be a lot of unanticipated consequences, uses that you did not intend, but suddenly pop up. And so I do a lot of work with technology companies using gaming methodologies to help them essentially game out what different people might do with the tech or, you know, how that ecosystem is going to operate in these more sort of surprising and complex ways, the more that they scale. So that, that, and that if you, if you're a gamer, you're pretty good at that. And oftentimes we'll bring gamers in to work with companies to game out scenarios, because they do have that

creativity and imagination, you know, if X and Y, if Y, then Z, if Z's in, and you just keep going and are the ways that we can strengthen the neurological pathways to allow us to imagine things that we haven't encountered before? Yeah, that's a particular obsession of mine. So as a, as a futurist, you know, one thing I do is I create forecasts about the future. And then I'm often, and they're based on research and forecast as in like multiple possible futures or forecast as in like this future will continue and here's how it might adapt. We describe worlds that you might wake up in one day. So like one of the worlds that I'm very interested in exploring and have created some games around. is, you know, when we're all, when neurological sensing devices are connected to social

networks, you know, what that world might be like. We know that many people are working on this technology. You know, Elon Musk is working on it. Facebook is working on it. There's all kinds of deeply funded stealth startups working on it. I think it's fair to say in like 10 years, we're all going to be broadcasting subconscious or like pre-conscious thoughts and feelings. in ways that we can't do it today. And so I'll describe a world. You know, imagine there's a social network called Feel That has a billion people on it. And you can subscribe to people's feelings or emotional states.

So, you know, I start asking, I'll get 10,000 high school students and say, okay, can you imagine, you know, this network exists? Would you be on it? You know, if you are, who would you like feel your feelings? Who would you block? Who would you like to feel? You know, who would you be scared to feel? We try to game out, you know, how do you think? a network like this would be used in politics, you know, how would it be used in marketing?

How could it be used in learning? How could it be used for good? How could it be used for evil? Actually, working with high school students on that was really good because kids today are so used to new technologies, just kind of miraculous technologies coming into existence that they can hold that in their mind. But a lot of times, you know, if I'm talking, it says you do a government agency. Like if I were talking to a security organization about what they might need to anticipate in a neurosensing social network world, they might have all kinds of blocks. Like, they just can't imagine it

because they've never experienced it. And it doesn't feel real to them. It doesn't seem plausible. And we've, you know, I can't tell you how many times I've presented a forecast where like, okay, I want you to imagine you're in this world. And they'd say, I can't imagine that. Like, I literally just can't even picture that.

And what I realize is, in addition to being able to accurately describe worlds we might wake up in because you can look at this. signals and look at the driving forces and say, like, yeah, pretty good chances this is going to happen someday. So, like, we should start thinking about what we're going to do in that world, who we can help, what the ethical dilemmas are, who's going to be hurt by it, you know, how can I take advantage of it? But a lot of people, they can't do any of that work because their brain says, never experienced

that before, therefore my pattern recognizing machine says not going to happen, right? because our brains get stuck in looking for continuation of patterns. And so when you predict a disruption, the brain can't picture it. And one thing you can do to actually help people take these possibilities more seriously is get them to imagine themselves in that world and try to go into it as if it were a virtual reality world, like just in their own minds, picture it, look around. You know, the first time you unbox the neurosensing device, what does it feel like? You know, what color is it?

What room are you in? Who's with you when you put it on? Who's the first person that you subscribe to feel? You ask them to create a kind of vivid story. And then the next time they're asked to think about this technology, their brain says, oh, yeah, that does seem reasonable or that could happen because your brain has an easier time picturing it, because now it can remember what you already imagined, and that feels like evidence. So if you want people to take seriously things that sound unthinkable or unimaginable,

just getting them to just tell a story, even if you think it could never happen, just, you know, start imagining it. Tell that story. The next time they think about it, they feel like it could be more real. And then the next time, and then the next time, and the brain starts to actually finally get it. And I'll tell you, I've been doing pandemic forecasts for, you know, two of my biggest games, one in 2008 and one in 2010 forecast big respiratory pandemics that start in China for the year 2019 and 2020. And I have heard from players all year long who played those games a decade ago.

Okay, you know what? I put my mask on in January. I didn't need the government to tell me. I didn't listen to any propaganda. Like, I understood because you had me wear a mask. I had people running around Stanford in 2008 wearing masks, you know, because we had this, like, we were simulating for six weeks of pandemic. And, you know, how would we have class and how would we throw birthday parties?

we saw we pre-solved all of that stuff and felt the anxiety and felt the annoyance and the frustrations and the physical for you know you can you can help people prepare for and imagine these futures just by like by essentially gaming them living them simulating them so that when they roll around you're not frozen you're not stuck in the old ways of thinking or doing your brain's ready to go because it's already accepted that this is possible and so you can act faster and adapt faster. I like that because then you've already experienced it. You've already gone through the friction of sort of accepting it and dealing with the what-ifs.

And now when it happens, you can just sort of like switch on that part that you've already used. Yeah. Do you want to hear one of the next things that I'm really trying to get people to wrap their minds around? Yeah, totally. Yeah. So government mandated internet shutdowns. It seems so implausible that like we just wake up and the government would have said, you know what? No internet for three weeks.

Didn't they try this on Ready Player 1? Right. There's a great organization, AccessNow.org, that's tracking government mandated internet shutdowns all over the world. There were hundreds of instances, and it's not just in authoritarian countries. The number one place where the government shuts down the internet is a democracy. It's India. And the number one reason given for internet shutdowns is safe public. safety to prevent the spread of misinformation.

Really, they're often linked to protests or the spread of truth in in authoritarian countries. But, you know, our president has the power, according to the War Powers Act, he can shut down internet, can shut down TV and radio, can shut down mobile service. What? That's crazy. But so it is crazy. And the thing is also it's already happening. So William Gibson, the science fiction writer, he has this great quote.

The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. And we often think this is someone else's problem. Like, okay, yeah, in the Philippines, they're always shutting down the internet or India. This is someone else's problem. But it could be our problem too. And I think people should start prethinking what are they going to do if they wake up and the internet's out and mobile phones don't work because let's say there's too much disinformation. about the election results.

So it's not for public safety. We're shutting it down. Or the next pandemic. Let's say five years from now, there's another pandemic and people are spreading misinformation. So they shut the internet down to stop the spread of misinformation. There are lots of plausible reasons. And we're so used to thinking of the internet as this kind of stable, neutral resource that we just take for granted. And I actually created a game to help people.

really start making plans for what do you do? If the internet's just randomly shut off, you know, every few days or every few weeks, could be just for a few hours, could be for a few days each time. But we have to like adapt. You don't know any given day if it's going to be there or not. I want to talk about something you mentioned there, which is the misinformation. How do we get better at filtering what's real and not? I guess in a way thinking for ourselves about the information being presented.

Yeah. I mean, we probably shouldn't think for ourselves is part of the problem. I mean, we do, we need to have trust. There needs to be trust in some expert or external system. I mean, if you're always just sort of trusting what you think, your brain is going to get you in trouble because we have all kinds of mental biases or hiccups. The brain doesn't want to, the brain will always reject information that doesn't align

with its current way of thinking unless you can really shake it up. you know what at least what i try to do in future of thinking is because i know people will reject things that don't don't gel with their own experience of reality we know that one thing that can interrupt that and kind of force a rethinking is a really strong emotion um so when i try to when i create this future forecast i try to get people to sit with you know a strong feeling of anger or anxiety or envy i try to i try to get people to sit with you know a strong feeling of anger or anxiety or envy i try to Try to, you know, you wake up one day and this is happening. How do you feel?

What do you do? And try to get an emotional component going because the region of the brain that sort of is constantly monitoring the environment for change that says, you know, maybe your strategies aren't working or you need to be open to information that is counter to your current beliefs. That does get, that does get jolted up by really strong emotions. So that's also how propaganda works too. So, you know, any good technique that can be used for good can be used for not so good. And so maybe, I mean, in a way of what we're just saying is we need to, like, use propaganda methods, but for, you know.

For good. For good. That's a, that's a slippery road to go down. But we need to play on people's emotions more because that's how, that's how conspiracy theories work. It's how propaganda works. It's all based on emotion. So we can't just talk, you can't just reason your way out of that. you just have to, you have to trigger the emotions around, you know, facts.

Speaking of reasoning, what can we learn about just making better decisions from video games? Hmm. What can you learn about making better decisions? In the real world. In the real world. Well, yes, in the real world. I mean, I actually think that this is kind of meta, but every time you play a game, you're choosing how to spend your time and attention.

And that's a decision we're constantly. making that is often operating at a subconscious level and we don't necessarily take ownership of it. And if you can start to ask yourself, why am I playing this game and why did I want to play it now and start to articulate why you're making the choice to play, I think that that actually can help you develop a clear, like more clarity in all the things you do. You know, if I'm choosing between X and Y, you know, why might I choose one or the other? If you can. can articulate the why. And I think video games have been done a, just a terrible disservice in, you know, the past couple of decades. People talk about them as just escapist fun. And, you know,

people play games for really deep reasons and compelling reasons. And they play a powerful role in people's lives. And just to act like they're this, you know, it's just some fun that I have, has really robbed people of the language and the self-knowledge to talk about why they play. So I, I mean, there's a lot of other kind of decision making that goes on within a game but even just deciding what to play when if you can understand that and talk about it then you can start to understand all the choices that you're making in your life and what brings you benefit and why it seems like people people do jump on video games in some ways because it seems like everything is being gamified these days from every job is that a good thing or bad thing how do you think about that

Yeah, I mean, I think I'm really angry at the organizations that have tried to use game mechanics to essentially exploit what games do well in service of goals that they have, but that are not in the interest of, you know, a player or a user or an employee, right? Like, I mean, when we talk about gamification, usually what we're talking about are people who are, you know, being being motivated to do. something they don't want to do, whether it's like work, work harder, buy more stuff, pay longer attention or engage more in something that they probably should stop and go do something else. And it's a really, it's a, it's a way of trying to to control people's engagement against their own interests. And that's certainly not something that I support. And anytime I hear gamification, you use them that way, it makes me, you know, really angry. Because we should be making things that support people and doing more of what they

authentically want to do. And that brings them benefit. You know, in my own work, in my own career, I had the opportunity once to make a game for the New York Public Library. And they were celebrating their 100th anniversary. And they were dealing with the problem of, like, young people don't go to the physical library anymore. And there's like this generational, just dropping off a cliff of use of the library.

And so they thought, well, how can we motivate? young people to do what we want them to do. And they were like, let's gamify it. We'll give them points for checking out books. We'll give them, you know, achievement badges for visiting different collections. Well, that's what the library wanted them to do. But, you know, the young people obviously didn't want to do it because they'd be doing it if they wanted to do it. And so the idea of gamifying that behavior really was just frustrating to me. So what I proposed instead was, what if I make a game that if you play the game, what you've actually done is written a book that can be printed on hand and put on a shelf at the library, you'll be a published author with your name in your

public library catalog, and then maybe you'll feel cool about hanging out in the library because that's where your book is. And it will feel like home and a place of creativity. And I came to that idea by seeing a statistic that 92% of young people in the U.S. say they want to write a book someday because they feel like they have a story that's worth being told or a voice that's worth being heard. And so, you know, for me, we should be making games that give people an opportunity to do something that they'd love to do, but it seems like outside of their reach. So if I can make it easier for you to finish writing a book in a night or a weekend, you know, kind of like nanorimeo on steroids, you know, it's like a month-long writing game where everybody tries to write a novel

in a month. So we did that like in a night, nano-rimo in a night. And now you're an author. Like, yes, like put that on your college application or like check that off on your life goals accomplished or now you can write a second book because you know you can do it. And this next book can be, you know, one that's really, you know, even better. For me, that's what people should be thinking about when making games is what do people really need help accomplishing that is meaningful and awesome? And we should not make games to try to manipulate people into doing things that they don't want to do. That seems fair, right? Yeah, it definitely seems fair.

I think that's a great place to end this conversation. Jane, I want to thank you so much for your time today. It's been a fascinating conversation. Oh, and thank you for having an open mind about, you know, games and about the benefit they can bring and how, you know, how we can play more and still have awesome lives. Hey, one more thing before we say goodbye. The Knowledge Project is produced by the team at

Phenham Street. I want to make this the best podcast you listen to, and I'd love to get your feedback. If you have comments, ideas for future shows, or topics, or just feedback in general, you can email me at shane at fs.blog, or follow me on Twitter at Shane A. Parish. You can learn more about the show and find past episodes at fs.blog slash podcast. If you want a transcript of this episode, go to fs.blog slash tribe and join our learning community. If you found this episode valuable, share it online with the hashtag the Knowledge Project or leave a review. Until the next episode. Thank you.