Games Can Help Us Heal, Recover

As you play, be sure to do follow these three rules:

1. Near the end of the every day, hold a secret meeting with one of your allies. Add up your great escapes, your power-ups, and your superhero points.

2. Talk to your other allies as often as possible, and tell them what you’ve been doing to get superbetter. Ask them for ideas about new things to add to your to-do list.

3. Be sure you have at least one ally who is giving you daily achievements. Share these achievements with your friends online, using Twitter or Facebook status updates, to keep them posted on your progress.

*

So that’s how you play SuperBetter. But does it actually improve the reality of getting better?

The first few days I was playing, I was in a better mood than I had been at any time since I hit my head. I felt like I was really doing something to get better, not just lying around and waiting for my brain to hurry up and heal itself.

My symptoms didn’t improve instantly – but I was so much more motivated to get something positive out of my day, no matter what. I would score at least one great escape, grab at least one power-up, rack up some points, and unlock an achievement every day, no matter how bad I felt otherwise. Doing these things didn’t require being cured; they just required making an effort to participate more fully in my own recovery process.

There’s not a whole lot you can prove with a scientific sample of one. I can only say that for me, the fog of misery lifted first, and then soon after, the fog of symptoms started to lift as well. Within a two weeks of playing Jane the Concussion Slayer, my symptoms were improved by 80%, and I was up to working as many as four hours a day. And within a month of starting to play, I felt almost completely recovered. In fact, as I’m sitting here writing this now, it has only been five weeks since I invented the game, and I am myself again.

I can’t say for sure I got faster any better than I would have without playing the game – although I suspect it helped a great deal. But I can say for sure that I suffered a great deal less during the recovery as a direct result of the game. I was miserable one day, and then the next day I wasn’t; and I was never that miserable again as long as I was playing the game. Before I started playing, I felt like no one understood what I was going through. But when my allies joined the game, I felt like they really got it, and I never felt quite so lost in the fog again.

About Jane McGonigal
Jane McGonigal is a world-renowned game designer, and the Director of Games Research & Development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California. She has created and deployed games and missions in more than 30 countries on six continents.

Be Sociable, Share!

•