Late October saw the ninth annual Spotlight on Research return to the Edmonton Expo. Presented by the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation, it included cutting-edge research being done at the University of Alberta and NAIT, both partnered with the Glenrose. More than 500 researchers, clinicians, experts, doctors, students, health-care providers attended the function.
This year's focus was the positive impact video games can have on health. Representatives of the Glenrose outlined a variety of ways in which video games are being currently used in therapeutic and rehabilitative capacities, such as Guitar Hero and Angry Birds being used to develop fine motor skills in patients.
The highlight of the event was the keynote speaker, game designer Jane McGonical, one of Forbes’ 10 most powerful women to watch in 2014. Her talk, Games for Health, focused on moving away from the perception of video games as simply a pastime. Instead, she proposed that the underlying structures and psychology of video games can be used to solve real-world problems in order to change people's lives.
McGonical's first step is a change in terms. Instead of using the word gamer, she prefers “super-empowered hopeful individuals.” To support her argument, she said people who spend time feeling empowered to solve problems in both real and virtual worlds become more optimistic. For instance, she highlighted a recent study from Stanford University that found playing with an idealized avatar makes you more confident in real life.
McGonical's goal is to have people transfer ideas like courage, resilience and hope from video games into real-world issues.
In video games, she says, you're not put off by failure. Gamers spend 80 per cent of their time failing. But because you create an idea of heroism and who you'd like to be, you hang in there because of the feeling of success. You surprise yourself with what you are capable of doing. In a world with one billion gamers – and one in four being over the age of 50 – playing seven billion hours of games per week, her ideas could have tremendous, far-reaching implications.
Numbers aside, what made McGonical's presentation truly unique was when she shared her own experiences battling post-concussive depression. Through her experiences, she created Jane the Concussion Slayer, a challenge-based, real-life game that drew on her gaming strategies to help cope and battle symptoms of depression. She established and collected power ups in real life (petting the dog, taking a walk) and defeated bad guys (bright lights, loud noises). The game also allowed her to adopt a secret identity and recruit allies. While it wasn't a cure – she emphasized this point – it helped relieve the suffering.
Later renaming the game Super Better, she created YouTube videos and later a smartphone app so others could use the strategies to help in their own struggles, whether it be with diabetes, chronic pain, or weight loss.
Super Better involves completing simple, mission-like exercises in your life to build your physical, emotional, mental, and social resiliences, similar to padding stats in a typical role-playing game. People who regularly build these resiliences live longer because the positive emotions they evoke put them in contact with a stronger version of themselves.
Now people everywhere are realizing that by taking staples usually associated with video games and applying those same paradigms to a real-world struggle, confidence is built and suffering is relieved.
It may sound a bit farfetched and perhaps simplistic, but I can tell you I came away from McGonical’s talk feeling more confident not only as a gamer, but also as a person, knowing that anyone can take hold of a controller in this mission called life and level up towards better mental health.
For more information and to find links to McGonical's TED talks, see janemcgonical.com.
When he’s not teaching high school, St. Albert Catholic High School alumnus Derek Mitchell can be found attached to a video game console.
Super Better: first four quests
1) Walk three steps or make a fist and raise them above your head: +1 physical resilience. <br />• What it teaches: every minute you don't sit still, you're helping yourself. <br />2) Snap fingers 50 times or count backwards from 100 by seven: +1 mental resilience.<br />• What it teaches: you'll feel better by finishing small tasks that are a little bit hard. <br />3) Find a window and look out or do a quick Google for baby animals : +1 emotional resilience.<br />• What it teaches: you have the power to provoke positive emotion when you need it.<br />4) Shake someone's hand for six seconds or send a thank you by text or email: +1 social resilience. <br />• What it teaches: these tasks allow you to affect the release of oxytocin and make stronger connections with people.
