The aim of the author is that the games make us better, improve our mood, our happiness, our abilities, our links with communities (real or virtual), our creativity and our sense of accomplishment and achievement.
She is very convincing in most subjects (maybe I am a public foregone?).
There are some less convincing in his argument sides, including the self-help / personal development side and the side "harness the power of games to change the world", to use the motivation created by the games for real goals, while which makes the power of games is precisely that nothing the "harness", IMHO, not for personal reasons (as she suggests doing it in the first part), for collective reasons (as it suggests in the second part). In my vision there is no second thought in the act of playing and the games are not explicitly linked to a result other than the game, enhancing learning, work creativity or strategy are side-effects, not targets imho .. (but that's my point, not that of the auteuse).
The chapter on "alternate reality games" is interesting (games whose top is the real world and that fit into the life of every day, where players are therefore necessarily mixed in the crowd with non-players) . She briefly mentions Killer (in Europe) also called Assassins (the US), which is the ancestor and for me is the origin of ARG; but cites full I did not even know existed. Again, the intentional manipulation side of the game seems to me less convincing than the virtues "natural and unpremeditated" the game (she cites many examples of alternate reality games designed for lots of different purposes: to heal faster when you are recovering from a serious illness and can not get all its capabilities, to promote the establishment of social links between foreign and promote re-socialization of anonymous urban spaces, to increase his own happiness, or motivation screw vis a particular type of task).
For the (ex) RPG player I am, there is a pair of errors of taste in his book, she mentions the role plays about as videos and games MMORPG (online). And when talking about collaborative games rather than competitive cites four or five times new forms of sports games, and still no sign of our good old RPG, yet well now firmly established in the field of collaborative games, imaginative play and games "story oriented" since the beginning ...
In the second part, which roughly describes how to hire players to save the real world by and large, there are too many words like "harness" "tap into the collective energy" "reap the benefits" that vex me; this is based on "economy of the commitment" an economy of socialization positive feelings and emotional reward and in terms of happiness which sometimes has some hints capitalism and market economy, even if for California, it is rather impressive by his will (with a Christian connotation?) to change the world, to mend the social ties, to bring out the best of every human being, and to find an alternative to the all-capitalist world and all- market before it will lead us, like lemmings consumers toward a crowded world, devoid of essential resources and wall for a global conflagration disasters.
So it is rather in the last part that I struggle to continue to follow: with all the qualities she attributes to the game, she thinks it is necessary to turn the global and major problems in games; because as a game, you better learn a framework functioning and constraints, deeper and more motivating; because as a game, it releases creativity and leads to very unexpected and highly innovative solutions, which often prove to be the most productive solutions.
I am willing to follow up the implementation of "protein folding" playstation 3 console that has a graphics card with a large computing power, perfectly suited to the management structures in 3D. Two programs "folding proteins" have been adapted to it. The first program simply uses the computing power of the game console when not in use as voluntary users donate their computing time. The other program is an interactive game where the user folds the protein itself. The interactive game having arrived 3 times new findings and never achieved by the automatic program, and 5 times as good results ... The game and the voluntary donation of time machine with both reached peaks of participation public, indicating a motivating players to participate in the solution of real problems.
By cons, when the game is seen as a way to motivate the whole of humanity to the problem of global warming, hunger in the world, the end of oil, increased competition for drinking water , education and all the ills of the world, I tell myself I'm going to put myself in the games 'escapism' and take a subscription MMORPG public ...
Anyway, this is a very intelligent and very eloquent auteuse, who often impressive clarity of thought and an equally impressive clarity in the statement of his ideas.