SAN FRANCISCO—Credit unions are being urged to make better use of electronic games to drive success within their organizations.
If that suggestion elicits skepticism, it initially did as well from an audience at the California/Nevada leagues annual meeting here this week when it was proposed that gamers and gaming could be the key to growing operations and meeting member needs.
But the skepticism faded as Dr. Jane McGonigal, director of the Institute for the Future and a consultant to McDonalds, Nike, the Olympic Games and other organizations, explained her premise.
"We usually think of games as way to pass some time, have some fun, maybe waste some time," said McGonigal. "But games can be a platform to inspire people around the world to resolve some real-world problems. There are one billion gamers worldwide. These are people who spend at least an hour playing video games."
McGonigal believes that gaming platforms and gaming itself translate well into solving challenges for several reasons, including engagement and the positive feelings gaming elicits while people, including CU employees, are challenging a problem.
McGonigal, who said she is the first person to have earned a Ph.D studying how video games interact with people's lives, said research has shown video gaming provokes 10 positive emotions: joy, relief, love, surprise, pride, curiosity, excitement, awe and wonder, contentment and creativity.
"Three out of four gaming hours are spent playing team-based or cooperative gaming. That leads to stronger bonds, more trust and sympathy," said McGonigal. "But number one is interesting, isn't it? What gamers really want to feel is the ability to be creative, to invent new strategies and see what happens. It's really what drives the heart of gamers."
Why is it that the one-billion gamers keep coming back to these positive emotions? "These emotions don't just feel good, they also help us to become more resilient," said McGonigal. "These emotions make us more likely to seek social support in real life. It sets off an upward spiral. The more positive emotions we feel, the more likely we are to stick with our goal, even through tough times. We are normally taught that if we are successful, then we get to feel happy. But it turns out that being happy is what helps you to be successful. You can take the positive emotions from video games and use them toward this upward spiral. Gamers spend 80% of their time failing. But the positive feelings come from failing and failing and failing until they succeed."
McGonigal quoted the psychologist Brian Summer Smith who observed, "The opposite of play isn't work — it's depression."
"And that's what we've always been taught," said McGonigal, "that one should not touch the other. Play gives us easy access to positive emotion and a sense of optimism about our own abilities. New research is showing us that this is literally true. We can see what is happening in the brain, the neurological state of game play, is the opposite of clinical depression. This is why we are seeing clinical trials using video games being used to treat moderate depression more than pharmaceuticals."
The neurological pattern of being super-motivated, of not giving up in the face of a challenge, are reinforced in gaming and then apply elsewhere in a person's life when they feel more empowered.
