Tweet Author and game designer Jane McGonigal has a "personal mission to see a game developer win a Nobel Peace Prize in the next twenty-five years." If a gamer wins the prize, my money would be on her. I believe McGongial will excite and change a lot of minds about gaming with her new book, Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.

She's not talking about building your hand and eye coordination with the latest first-person shooter. Reality talks about tapping into the psyche that defines a gamer — the person who keeps failing at the same game level, but continues to work at it until they succeed. Or people who work tirelessly at building the strengths of their game avatars, even though it doesn't translate into the same success in the breathing world. More likely with games, we're willing to stick with a problem until we solve it without the negativity associated with it (bad performance reviews, getting fired etc.). So McGonigal wants to know why aren't we tapping into that drive to find answers to real world issues? What are games offering that real life does not?

She digs far deeper than escapism. And she won't let you dismiss gamers as lazy slackers. These are people looking to channel their energy and thinking into something they find immediately gratifying. McGonigal uses simple examples like Freerice, an online word game where players win rice donations for impoverished areas. She shows where Playstation 3 users help scientists with cancer studies. And there's a Manhattan school that applies gaming theories to their learning curriculum. With her own game Evoke, she shows how people use the tools to solve social issues outside of the game.

Reality is Broken challenges you to rethink the way we relate to our audiences. You may develop stronger calls to action and get others to engage you or a brand more often. The book also examines the ways we relate to others at work and with personal relationships and how they can be strengthened by gaming principals.

Gaming. A subject that many could easily dismiss as a joke, McGonigal offers one of the more thought-provoking premises I've  read recently.

Grade: A