Interviewing Jane McGonigal on Gamification for Good

Jane McGonigal thinks the way we can improve the world is to play more games.

Coinciding with the release of her book “Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World” is McGonigal’s keynote tomorrow at the Gamification Summit in San Francisco, and I’ll be interviewing her onstage afterward.

While there’s been much industry discussion of gamification, it’s often about adding lightweight gaming elements to all sorts of things to entice people to participate. McGonigal, it seems, is talking about something different: Using the motivation, focus and creativity of massively multiplayer online gamers to solve real-world problems.

I’m interested to hear her apply her ideas to social games, the stripped-down mindless diversions like Zynga’s CityVille that are growing so fast and addictive to so many.

What would you ask McGonigal? Email me, comment or tweet your questions, and I’ll be sure to incorporate them.

Here’s McGonigal speaking at TED last year, calling for 21 billion hours of online gaming a week by the year 2020.