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>>Jane McGonigal: Pain is inevitable, but suffering is really optional. You know, we
have the opportunity to rise to the heroic occasion when we have to confront these difficulties
and to become the best version of ourselves. So the good news is, after hearing from all
these people play this game, I decided we should make a real product, a real platform
that people can play on. So I have a new startup company called SuperBetter. I'll just give
you a sneak preview of what the game looks like. So you can see, there's an actually
real secret headquarters that you build where your friends and family play with you. We
even have a secret lab where we track different things that you're building, for example,
we track your curiosity, your hope, your optimism, your perseverance, and, of course, your resilience.
And the idea here is that people can take control of their health. We've signed up lots
of people for our closed beta. And they're playing it for depression, anxiety, stress
reduction, eating better, sleeping better, quitting smoking, chronic pain. This is a
way to bring gamer traits into our real lives. Now, I have to say, I'm not the only gamer
who's had this experience of bringing games to real life. I want you to Google this term,
game transfer phenomena, or GTP. It's a new scientific term for this desire to bring our
gamer powers to the real world. It turns out that more than half of gamers
who play at least ten hours a week have this experience of being out in the real world
and wanting to do something gameful, like, for instance, for me, I have played a lot
of Farmville in my day. Whenever I walk by big plants, I want to harvest them. It's weird,
it's like this trigger. [ Laughter ]
>>Jane McGonigal: So this is happening all over the world. And if you give gamers real
things to do, they can rise to the heroic occasion.
The other thing I want you to Google if you haven't heard about it yet is a game called
Foldit. Just last week, scientists at University of Washington announced that 250,000 gamers
with no training in biochemistry had solved in a matter of ten days a scientific problem
that had confounded scientists for 15 years. It has to do with a way to treat AIDS. And
the gamers took ten days playing a video game to solve this biochemical problem. They're
very optimistic that it might be used for a really powerful drug to prevent the developing
of AIDS. So Nobel Prize, I see it coming. Really, the big idea here is that we have
to change the conversation. We have to stop thinking of games as just escapist. We need
to start thinking about them as returnists, that we play these games and we come back
to the real world with powers and skills that we can use to change it and to change our
own lives. I think we should stop telling kids that they're
wasting time when they're playing games, that they've thrown their lives away playing World
of Warcraft for 20 hours a week. What we should be telling them is, thank you for developing
these skills. You are ready to do something extraordinary in your real life. You are ready
to rise to the real heroic occasion. I'm very excited about the idea that there
are a billion people now who have this super resilience and can change the world. When
they rise to the real heroic occasion, it's no -- we have no idea how much they can accomplish.
But over the next decade, we are going to find out. And I think it will be very exciting.
Thank you. [ Applause ]