Reality is Broken - Jane McGonigal
"gameplay is the direct emotional opposite of depression." p. 33
"When we realize that this reorientation toward intrinsic reward is what's really behind the 3 billion hours a week we spend gaming globally, the mass exodus to game worlds is neither surprising nor particularly alarming. Instead, it's overwhelming confirmation of what positive psychologists have found in their scientific research: self-motivated, self-rewarding activity really does make us happier. More importantly, it's evidence that gamers aren't escaping their real lives by playing games. They're actively making their real lives more rewarding." p. 53
Regarding fail sequences in Super Monkey Ball 2:
"This animation sequence played a crucial role in making failure enjoyable" p. 67When the 2008 Prince of Persia came out there were a fair number of complaints about how easy the game was. The complaints mostly boiled down to how easy it was because you never die. Every time there would have typically been a death sequence, Elika comes and rescues you. The sequence serves the exact same function as a death sequence (Elika takes you back to the last safe place, or the boss you're battling has time to regenerate his health), and shouldn't actually make the game easier. Reading this section about how the failure animations actually help the player enjoy their failures makes me wonder if the issue many gamers had with the lack of deaths in PoP wasn't really that the game was too easy, but that they didn't get that same feeling of interest in the failure animation.
Personally, I thought the idea of replacing a death scene with a rescue scene worked very well. When Elika gets knocked out, the player as the prince goes to help her. That exchange of assistance goes a long way to develop the relationship between the prince and Elika in a game without a ton of dialogue. I imagine there is, however, a certain type of gamer who isn't particularly interested in the relationship between the avatar and sidekick, and who might even find the experience of being saved by the sidekick humiliating or at least not as interesting as a gruesome death.
"Meaning is the feeling that we're a part of something bigger than ourselves. It's the belief that our actions matter beyond our own individual lives. When something is meaningful, it has significance and worth not just to ourselves, or even to our closest friends and family, but to a much larger group: to a community, and organization, or even the entire human species." p. 94
"An epic environment is a space that, by virtue of its extreme scale, provokes a profound sense of awe and wonder" p. 100
"In a series of ten challenges, gamers beat the world's most sophisticated protein-folding algorithms five times, and drew even three times." p. 215
Regarding Albert Einstein and Chess:
"Einstein ... once famously said, 'Games are the most elevated form of investigation'" p. 272
"To play chess as a more than casual player is to become a part of this problem-solving network. It means joining a massively collaborative effort to become intimately familiar with an otherwise unfathomably complex possibility space." p. 273
Regarding the Lydians:
"This was [the dice games] primary function: to provide real positive emotions, real positive experiences, and real social connections during a difficult time
This is still the primary function of games for us today. They serve to make our real lives better. And they serve this purpose beautifully, better than any other tool we have. No one is immune to boredom or anxiety, loneliness or depression. Games solve these problems, quickly, cheaply, and dramatically.
Life is hard, and games make it better." p. 299
"Moreover, when we play games, we consume less. This is perhaps the most overlooked lesson of the story that Herodotus told. For the ancient Lydians, games were actually a way to introduce and support a more sustainable way of life."
"We are starting to question material wealth as a source of authentic happiness." p. 300
