I’m nearly through a book entitled Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Will Change The World.
The author, Jane McGonigal, has been designing video games for nearly a quarter century. She is an expert…nearly a MASTER…in how to imbed elements of positive psychology into her virtual worlds that cause electronic “FLOW”–a blissful state of full engagement brought on by clear goals, challenge just beyond our capabilities, immediate feedback, and the opportunity for “FIERO”–victory over the game and our own limitations and comfort zones.
Jane says the reason so many of us play games and become addicted to them is that there are comparably so few opportunities out here in the “real world” to FLOW.
I think I might believe Jane…
I want to make a video game to give you “gamers” your ultimate challenge; one so awe inspiring, huge, challenging, and engaging that you will never master it and always pursue it. A challenge so meaningful that, if you discover the location and free the captive hero you will end up changing the world–virtual and “real”–with every level you achieve. You will enter and move through a world so foreign and yet so familiar, battling the most formidable foes you will ever encounter. Fear will be ever present, and evil will threaten on every side.
The goal of the quest? To find and release the captive hero, a crucially important member of a courageous band fighting for the freedom of the entire universe. The only hero perfectly designed to fill the one essential role that needs to be played, for all it’s worth, to help rescue us from eternal darkness, despair, and death.
The hero’s name is YOU.
The BUILT TO LEAD Bandmates are your guides for the game. We show the way. We provide some tips. But only a few. The rest is up to you.
It’s the hero’s journey.
Every journey, and every hero, is unique. There are no cheat codes.
Are you up to the challenge?
Will you face your fears?
Game on.
BUILT TO LEAD 
Great book. Great extrapolation, Sully. Great challenge. Guess you’re a builder…
First thing I thought of as I started reading the middle paragraph: I want to make a video game to give you “gamers” your ultimate challenge; one so awe inspiring, huge, challenging, and engaging that you will never master it and always pursue it. A challenge so meaningful that………..that paragraph, the first thing I thought of is we already have it. It is our LIFE and God created it with the most challenging manual called the Bible. This game is for keeps but none of us will master it nor come up with a bigger challenge and feeling of joy when you get some of it right?! MM
As Chester would say…”Yeah BABY!”
You got it, Mikey. Real and virtual. Evil on every side. A game understood only by those who have awoken.