Jane McGonigal

Jane McGonigal

Game Designer and Author

Jane McGonigal, Ph.D., is a world-renowned designer of alternate reality games — or games designed to improve real lives and solve real problems.

She is a two-time New York Times best-selling author: Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World and SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully.

Her TED talks on how games can make a better world and the game that can give you ten extra years of life are among the all-time most popular TED talks and have more than 15 million views.

She is best known as the inventor and co-founder of SuperBetter, a game that has helped more than a million players tackle real-life health challenges such as depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and traumatic brain injury.

learned helplessness
Helplessness isn't learned — it's an instinctual response that can be overcome.
2mins
People naturally mimic each other's body language, so when you notice it happening to you, it may be a sign that you are personally or professionally compatible with the other person.
2mins
Most people are familiar with the technique of taking deep inhalations to relax themselves, but one breathing technique is more effective at returning your body to a naturally calm and connected state.
3mins
Make personal connections more meaningful with people you already know and care about, and deepen your relationship with others who you're just getting to know.
1mins
Here's a simple mind hack: If you've got a craving, let Tetris satiate it.
2mins
Every time that you make a prediction you get a little bomb of dopamine in the reward pathways of your brain. That dopamine helps you pay closer attention, to process information more effectively, and to be more engaged with what’s going.
1mins
In this lesson excerpt from Big Think+, video game designer Jane McGonigal walks you through the ways in which gaming can lead to positive outcomes in the workplace. By the end of it, you may just want to integrate gaming into your break space design or your next corporate retreat!
2mins
Why are video gamers so obsessed? Because playing gives people a sense of purpose, and winning them makes them feel heroic. "There’s this kind of transfer of our confidence, of our creativity, of our ambition" from game-playing "to our real lives" says game designer Jane McGonigal. And there are organizational benefits as well: studies have shown that we’re more likely to cooperate with someone in our real lives after we’ve played a social game with them that involves a cooperative mission. In this lesson from Big Think+, McGonigal walks you through the ways in which gaming can lead to positive outcomes in the workplace. By the end of it, you may just want to integrate gaming into your break space design or your next corporate retreat!
4mins
Jane McGonigal argues that games are not a waste of time. In fact, she argues, “we need to look at what games are doing for gamers, the skills that we’re […]
1mins
There’s definitely a misperception that women and girls don’t play games. In fact, 40 percent of gamers are women, and 94 percent of girls under the age of 18 play […]
If we all became gamers, there would be more “epic wins” in the real world, says video game designer Jane McGonigal during her 2010 TED talk.