Environmental activists criticized President Barack Obama last week after he announced plans to begin offshore drilling.
But according to one expert, life without oil is actually attainable; the president just has to play more video games to realize it.
According to a recent study by Jane McGonigal, director of games research and development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., video gamers are an untapped source of valuable problem-solving skills and have the potential to introduce real, innovative change in environmental studies.
The institute developed “World Without Oil” in 2007, a strategy-driven game that centers around a fictional shortage in the world’s oil supply. Recently, the institute followed up with some of the game’s first 1,700 players. They found that a majority of the gamers have kept up habits they learned from the game.
“It gives enough information for you to believe it’s real and to live your real life as if we’ve run out of oil,” McGonigal said in a recent speech. “You have to figure out how you would live your real life as if this were true.”
McGonigal credits the success to the mindset gamers develop. A gamer will still work on a challenge even after failure, confront obstacles and achieve greatness in various tasks, McGonigal said.
By age 21, millions of kids living in countries with a strong gamer culture will have played 10,000 hours of games, nearly the same amount of time they spend in school between fifth grade and high school, McGonigal said.
She argues that if the 3 billion hours played every week by more than 500 million gamers were put to games like “World Without Oil,” major global issues could be addressed. What it boils down to is making the connection between an “epic win” in the virtual world and success in the real world.
U. Minnesota sophomore Nick Dellwo said he has already made that connection.
“I can see how I’ve made decisions — and friends — from what I learned from video games,” said Dellwo, whose college admissions essay was titled, “What I learned from video games.”
“Being a gamer has made me more confident in my abilities. They’ve made me more social and competitive.”
U. Minnesota Junior Amanda Benarroch said being an avid gamer helps when attacking a jproblem.
“ ‘Braid’ is an amazing game that requires a complete paradigm shift in what you think you can do,” said Benarroch. “The way I approach a problem in the real world is the way I approach them in video games. It took me a long time to get through the water temple in ‘Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.’ Patience was important, and I brought that when playing the game.”