Courtesy University Bookstore

Jane McGonigal, Ph.D., is the author of the New York Times bestseller Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. She specializes in “alternate reality games” – or games designed to solve real problems, and improve our real lives. Her TED talks on Gaming Can Make a Better World and The Game That Can Add 10 Years to Your Life have received more than 3 million and 1.25 million views, respectively.

She is the inventor and co-founder of SuperBetter, a gameful system that since its 2012 launch has empowered more than 120,000 players to tackle real-life health challenges, such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, chronic pain, and stress reduction.

She believes all game designers share a humanitarian mission, whether they know it or not: to increase global well-being and happiness. She empowers gamers to use their superpowers for real-world good, by creating online games to tackle some of the planet’s most urgent challenges – from ending poverty, to reducing our oil dependency, to treating depression and anxiety without pharmaceuticals.

She has served as the Director of Game Research and Development for the Institute for the Future, where she designed the award-winning massively multiplayer forecasting game Superstruct. She has created games for the World Bank Institute (EVOKE), the American Heart Association (CryptoZoo), the New York Public Library (Find the Future) and the International Olympic Committee (The Lost Ring).