Paola Antonelli is senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But despite her nearly 20-year tenure at the museum, Antonelli remains resolutely disinterested in relying on the known or the obviously popular. She is always keen to challenge preconceptions of design’s role in everyday life,Paola Antonelli: Why I brought Pac-Man to MoMA even as she pushes her colleagues at the museum to consider and question design’s relationship to art.

As she explains in today’s TED Talk, her decision to acquire 14 video games for MoMA’s permanent collection caused howls of outrage to echo through the museum’s hallowed halls, as aggrieved critics tore out their hair at the disrespect implicitly being shown to artistic heroes such as Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh. But design is quite separate from art, Antonelli argues, and they should not be mistaken for one another. Too often, people seem to assume that designers secretly want to be artists. “No!” she says forcefully. “Designers aspire to be really great designers.” Right on!

MoMA initially bought 14 video games for its design collection … and more are on the wishlist. For design buffs and fans of contemporary culture, this is an important moment, one that broadens the perception of design and its influence in society, and prompts deeper consideration for a discipline that is often poorly understood or overlooked.

Here, Antonelli describes the selection process for those 14 trailblazing games, sharing insight into her curatorial thinking.

1. Pac-Man. “It goes without saying, but let’s say it: an absolute milestone, not only because it was inspired by pizza and the ghosts are so cute one almost roots for them, but also because it stands as the archetypical maze game.” Toru Iwatani (Japanese, born 1955). Publisher: NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc. 1980-1981. Video game. Gift of NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc. © 2012 NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc.

2. Tetris. ”Or, ‘Engineers Just Wanna Have Fun.’ It is a pillar in history (not only of video games): elegant, simple, timeless, irresistible — and Alexey Pajitnov recreated for us the original game he designed for the USSR’s Academy of Sciences.” Alexei Pajitonov (Russian, born 1955). 1984. Video game. Gift of The Tetris Company, LLC. © 2012 The Tetris Company, LLC.

3. Another World. “A technological and aesthetic breakthrough for the time–its sound effects and editing inspired a new wave in game design — it is still a fiercely elegant cinematic platformer game.” Éric Chahi (French, born 1967). 1991. Video game. Gift of the designer. © 2012 Éric Chahi.

4. Myst. “As if being the best-selling PC game of the 1990s were not enough (and it would not be enough for MoMA’s collection), Myst was a milestone in ‘architectural’ design, its hefty code allowing for seamless changes of scenery and spatial atmosphere.” Rand Miller (American, born 1959) and Robyn Miller (American, born 1966). Publisher: Cyan Worlds (USA, est. 1987). 1993. Video game. Gift of Cyan Worlds, Inc. © 2012 Cyan Worlds, Inc.

5. SimCity 2000. “In game designer Will Wright’s mind, we can all be master planners, movie directors, architects, little or BIG gods — and bear the great responsibilities that come with great power.” Will Wright (American, born 1960). Publisher: Electronic Arts. 1989. Video game. Gift of Electronic Arts. © 2012 Electronic Arts.

6. The Sims. “So, so, so deep! I can hardly think of a more interesting and ambitious construct (except perhaps Spore, but it did not work out as well) than a game about building a family, and then a community. It blows my mind.” Will Wright (American, born 1960). Publisher: Electronic Arts. 2000. Video game. Gift of Electronic Arts. © 2012 Electronic Arts.

7. Vib-Ribbon. “This is a lovely game that responds to the music the player chooses (the ‘preassigned’ demo plays to a haunting tune that reminds me of Jay-Z’s ‘Hard Knock Life’). But more than anything, its minimal graphics remind me of a cartoon I grew up with in Italy, Osvaldo Cavandoli’s La Linea.” Masaya Matsuura (Japanese, born 1961). Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. 1997-1999. video game. Gift of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. © 1999 Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

8. Katamari Damacy. “In interaction design, Katamari Damacy represents the power of pure, unadulterated, good delight — of course supported by strong code and spatial and narrative sense. I have not met a soul who does not smile when the name of the game is mentioned.” Keita Takahashi (Japanese, born 1975). Publisher: NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc. 2003. Video game. Gift of NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc. © 2012 NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc.

9. EVE Online. “Superbly designed, in continuous evolution and as compelling as a great sci-fi saga, EVE is a great example of collective strategy. It also sports a great and generous community that helped us work on the display in the galleries.” CCP Games (Iceland, est. 1997). 2003. Video game. Gift of CCP hf. © 2012 CCP hf.

10. Dwarf Fortress. “The ASCII graphics! Devastatingly elegant. That’s what won us over. Not to mention the super-high IQ barrier of entry. We are watching from a window. When the Adams brothers showed up at the EVE Online fanfest in Rejkyavik, people went crazy. It’s a gamers’ game.” Tarn Adams (American, born 1978) and Zach Adams (American, born 1975). 2006. Video game. Gift of the designers. © 2012 Tarn Adams.

11. Portal. “The spatial progression of the story — an MC Escher-like maze — is groundbreaking. And the protagonist, Chell, is a woman.” Valve (USA, est. 1996). 2005-2007. Video game. Gift of Valve. © 2012 Valve.

12. flOw. “Creator Jenova Chen is a master in the game of surprising experiences — like being a sea creature, or the wind — but we were also interested in the Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment AI system, which enables a game to automatically adjust to a player’s abilities.” Jenova (Xinghan) Chen (Chinese, born 1981) and Nick Clark (American, born 1984). Publisher: thatgamecompany. 2007. Video game. Gift of Jenova Chen, Nick Clark, and Austin Wintory of thatgamecompany. © 2012 thatgamecompany.

13. Passage. “You have five minutes, you live, you grow old, you die, and there is no extra life. Along the way, you make choices. For instance, if you choose to have a partner, life will be more complicated but longer. Quite existentialist.” Jason Rohrer (American, born 1977). 2007. Video game. Gift of the designer. Image courtesy Brandon Boyer.

14. Canabalt. “A classic side-scroll runner in black and white, Canabalt has sophisticated indie cred and takes very little memory, but it exploits all the tricks of the contemporary trade in ways that transpire in its ‘buglessness’.” Adam Saltsman (American, born 1982). Music by Daniel Baranowsky (American, born 1984). Video game. 2009. Gift of the designer.

Libraries are generally where you go to check out books; not where you go if you want to write one. This is an old assumption that Librii — a concept for a community-based, digitally-enhanced series of libraries in the developing world — would like to flip on its head. TED speaker Jane McGonigal has given this ambituous project a big thumbs up.

Librii is the brainchild of architect David Dewane, and aims to bring to Africa the kind of open information exchange and collaboration space that is easily found in highly-wired regions of the world. In Africa, only 3% of the population has access to broadband internet — but Librii isn’t just a place where people can go to connect to the internet and access online books and resources. Built by local workers and staffed by librarians, Librii will also focus on knowledge creation, compiling the ideas, insights and designs of the local community. It will even generate revenue for the community.

Librii was incubated with seed funding from the World Bank Institute and recently ran a successful Kickstarter campaign, raising more than $52,000 for its inaugural location in Accra, Ghana. So what does this have to do with video game designer Jane McGonigal?

Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better worldApparently, McGonigal’s 2010 TED Talk – “Gaming can make a better world” — planted the distant seed of this idea.

Dewane tells Metropolis Magazine that, after watching McGonigal’s talk, he began playing her online game EVOKE, which empowered players to solve social problems around the globe by developing real world ideas for projects that could have a big impact. About 15,000 project proposals were submitted through the game — and Dewane’s proposal for Librii was selected as one of 25 top possibilities.

McGonigal is very excited to see the idea materialize in reality.

“Librii fills me with almost a giddy anticipation for the future,” she tells Metropolis. “I can’t wait to see the creativity that flows out of Accra when young people are able to share their art and ideas with the rest of the world. Because I’ve backed the Kickstarter project, I’m a subscriber to the first connected library. I’ll get a digital copy of whatever gets created first—a book of advice or a collection of children’s stories. The library will encourage and inspire all kinds of creation.”

McGonigal is highly inspired to see her idea for a video game spin into a powerful idea that could affect the future of libraries. “It’s the power of TED,” she says.

TED Fellow Kellee Santiago has won numerous awards for the video game, “Journey.” Here, we talk to her about her craft.

In recent months, That Game Company’s downloadable PS3 game Journey has swept up an armload of awards — the Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year and BAFTA Video Game Award for Best Game Design, to name just two — not to mention a Grammy nomination for Best Original Soundtrack. Company co-founder and TED Fellow Kellee Santiago tells us why she believes this remarkable game is touching so many people’s lives, what it might mean for the future of gaming. Bonus: we ask what’s next on her own horizon.

This is a lot of awards  at once, isn’t it? How does it feel?

It’s been totally amazing. We did have a good feeling about Journey: the responses we got last year just from our players was totally overwhelming — people really felt they were able to have personal catharsis through it.

By December, which marks the beginning of game awards season, we’d already been getting so much good attention already — people doing costume plays of the characters, making videos, playing the music on YouTube. So we suspected Journey might get nominated as a stand-out game of the year, just as Flow and Flower, our previous titles, had. But amazingly, it also started showing up in best game of the year categories, as well as best story and best soundtrack and graphics, which put Journey in the same category as what’s known as triple-A games — the video equivalent of blockbuster movies — the high-budget disc titles like Halo 4 and Mass Effect 3, Borderlands 2 and Dishonored. Seeing Journey in along with them was amazing. Then we started winning, which was really unbelievable.

I think it really speaks to a shift happening in the games industry around the idea of who can make a quality game, and what defines a quality game experience. The emphasis wasn’t on hours of gameplay or weapon-changing abilities, but on personal, deep experiences.

Tell us about the game experience.

In the game, the player is a robed figure. You wake up in the desert, and you see this giant mountain in front of you. The goal of the game is to go on this journey to the mountaintop — very much inspired by Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey structure.

On each level you’re exploring what appears to be a ruined civilization. You’re in this long robe, and when you encounter pieces of cloth, they can give you energy. And that energy you can use to fly, not infinitely, just for short periods. And you can build upon your ability to fly. But the idea is that cloth is really the only living thing in this desert environment. And as you move through the world, you encounter more complex life forms of cloth, and you start to learn more and understand more about this civilization and what happened there.

It takes about 90 minutes, maybe two hours, to play. We wanted to allow people to play through in one sitting.

How does the multiplayer aspect work?

As you’re going on this journey through different environments to the mountaintop, you can encounter another robed figure like yourself, and that is another real person. We don’t have an AI system, as some people think. It is always just a one-on-one connection, to give you this feeling like you’re in this vast world. So when you happen upon another person, it’s very significant.

One of the goals was to make an online console title that actually made you feel connected to another person, as opposed to the traditional online console gaming experience in which you start up a competitive, usually fighting or shooting game, and get yelled at by people from across the world.

In Journey, there’s actually no language, no voice chat system, and no in-game messaging. You’re also totally anonymous — you don’t have a user ID or a name, nothing that could take you out of the world that we were creating, which also leaves it totally open to players of any age and also from anywhere in the world. Because we don’t rely on language, we can actually have a global server, so you could be playing with someone who doesn’t even speak the same language as you. Yet you share the experience.

Then do you have to play the game together?

You don’t have to. People have different play styles: I could be really into exploration, and they just want to go around and collect everything — then we’d naturally separate and be disconnected and left open to connect with someone else. This offers an organic way of players finding players who are similar to them.

How do the players communicate?

The only way of communicating is through a shout or call system. When you press a button on the controller, you’ll make either a tiny shout or a large call. It can act as a way of saying “Hey, I’m over here!” if you’re in the level but can’t see each other very well. But when two people initially find each other, they “speak” in lots of short chirps. It’s amazing how much actually people can communicate this way. It gets enough across, I guess.

Is there no way they can ever find each other in the real world?

We’ve struggled with this, because from a game design stance, it can be very powerful to allow people to invite friends to play. But we felt the anonymity was really important, because the game is about humanity in general, not the specifics of this particular person. But if you play through the entire game, it’ll take you back to where you started again. At that moment, it will show you the other journeyers you encountered along the way, so people have connected to one another through the Playstation network messaging system afterwards.

There’s also a Tumblr blog actually called Journey Stories, where people post their experiences of playing and try and find each other if they’ve had a particularly moving experience with someone.

But it’s funny to think about how originally it was really just a theory when 13 of us were developing the game. We really felt that simply moving through these environments with another person would be something really compelling to share online. I guess it turned out that we weren’t alone.

Is it meant to be played again and again?

Yes. There are collectibles that you can go and get through multiple playthroughs. But mainly people play again because the environments are beautiful and it’s a really interesting place to be — and you can always encounter another person. That really does change your experience every time.

So even though you know what you’re going to encounter at the end, it’s still worth exploring and making contact with somebody else.

Yeah. A metaphor we used a lot during development was hiking — especially that feeling like we can pass each other on a busy street in an urban environment, we don’t even recognize each other. But when you’re out hiking somewhere, when you see another person, you feel a connection to them. And everyone’s pretty nice usually when you go out hiking. I’ve hiked in Griffith Park on some of the same trails many, many times now because I live right here, but it’s still a beautiful place to explore. I’ll still go back to it.

You’re no longer with That Game Company. What happened, and what are you up to now?

We pretty much disbanded after Journey was shipped, about a year ago. It had been six years, and myself and co-founder Jenova Chen and the other people that had been there for a while, we had just really grown and changed. Your art imitates your life, and it was true for every single one of our games, and Journey was no exception. Jenova said in the acceptance speech that he gave at GDC that, if you played through Journey, you’d understand our own struggles as well. It reflects everything we were going through.

So when it was over, it was time for us to hit the start-a-new-journey button, like we have in the game. I didn’t know what was next. In games, I love the practice of game development and game design, but I’m also passionate about empowering different voices in game development to be successful so that we can have a wider variety of experiences in games. I’m interested in how our business model can impact that. Because the games industry is relatively young, there’s still much room to change that and switch it up. I’ve been doing that also with an angel investment fund called Indie Fund, which I co-founded in the beginning of 2010.

My period of exploration vacillated between both. But I thought that in order to really impact the finances and the business model of the games industry, I would ultimately have to go work for one of the large studios or large console manufacturers and work my way up to being in a position of power. I got connected with Julie Uhrman, who’s the CEO and founder of Ouya, which I joined as Head of Developer Relations a month ago. Ouya made a lot of waves last year. They ran a very successful Kickstarter campaign: making $8.5 million dollars for a new console, which is crazy. It could have only worked on Kickstarter: investors were just laughing them out of the room. No one wanted to get into hardware manufacturing.

With Ouya, I really feel there is an opportunity to have all of the accessibility for development that mobile devices and PCs do, but in the living room — still have developers be able to develop a variety of gaming experiences, but with all the ease and openness of a platform that’s been provided through App Store and Google Play. That really excites me.

Any regrets?

That we lost the Grammy to Trent Reznor. But that’s OK.

By Andy Robertson

New art forms are polarizing. We love or hate Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde animals or Tracey Emin’s unmade bed but roundly understand that avant garde art has value, the artist trying to challenge us and make us think something.

Video games draw similar fire. Detractors hem and haw that they’re all about shooting guns and wasting time, and worry about the harm they may be doing that we haven’t identified yet. Supporters congregate into defensive groups, highlighting not only their entertainment and relaxation value, but touting that they have educational and self-improvement benefits too.

Having spoken about the meaning of video games at TEDxExeter, I read the recent TED Blog posts “10 online games with a social purpose” and “7 talks on the benefits of gaming” with great interest. However, even with all the talks available, the posts still focused on justifying games by their secondary benefits. Games are redeemed by their ability to “be more effective than pharmaceuticals” or “help people heal from injuries” and “achieve greater wellness in the face of disease.”

Don’t get me wrong — this is a significant and fascinating piece of the puzzle. But it isn’t the whole picture. The irony in this equation is that if we judged novels, films or music solely in terms of potential harm or self-improvement, we’d miss their value in just the same way as we are missing a key part of what makes video games culturally significant.

A better way, I’m suggesting, is to not rule out the possibility that games may have intrinsic value beyond the harm or improvement sphere. This leads to the risky step of suggesting games can be about something more than entertainment. Like books and films, games engage our minds and emotions about particular topics. But unlike books that tell us a tale or films that show us a story, games invite us to overhear and interact with their narratives.

Although video games like to think they are leading the pack, board games have actually been doing this for years already. Brenda Brathwaite’s TEDx talk, “Games for a Change” is a great explanation of how her board games challenge the player to think, reconsider and reflect in a way we usually associate with books and films. Only here, as Brathwaite explains, the player is culpable in the story in a totally new way.

“Games for a Change changes how we see topics, changes our perceptions of people involved in those topics and it changes ourselves,” she says in this talk. “We change as people through games because we’re involved.”

This is new thinking, and hard to grasp at first because of our preconceptions about what games can be. In fact Brathwaite’s meaning-focused talk was renamed to be more educational sounding — “Gaming for Understanding” — when it was re-published recently on TED.com. Of course there’s no conspiracy here, but this curation reflects our tendency to file positive stories about games away in the educational or self-improvement pigeon hole.

Another interesting TED talk on this topic, that shows this idea has been brewing for a while, is David Perry’s “Are Games Better than Life?” from 2006. Although a little overshadowed by advances in realistic visuals, at its heart, this is Perry’s case for understanding games as more than entertainment. As he sums it up at the end, “Games on the surface seem like simple entertainment, but to those that look a little deeper, the new paradigm of video games could open entirely new frontiers to creative minds that like to think big.”

(In his talk, Perry brings onstage Michael Highland, who’s gone on to do some really interesting thinking about gaming as a spiritual state, which he shared at TEDxPenn. While this is “games as religion,” rather than “games supporting religion,” it’s fascinating nonetheless.)

My TEDx talk, “Sustainable perspectives on video games,” is about critiquing video games on a similar level to books and films, while at the same time allowing them to be themselves. In it, I make the case that we need to start talking and thinking differently about video games if we are to capitalize on their unique version of storytelling. This talk led me in surprising directions, as people were both perplexed and intrigued at how a video game could offer a meaningful cultural experience. One such direction — an invitation from Exeter Cathedral to incorporate a video game as an integral element of their Sunday worship. I have to admit I was both taken back at the invitation and surprised by how well the game we chose, Flower on the Playstation 3 (pictured at the top of this post), fit into the spiritual setting. Even the Cathedral clergy agreed.

It’s perspectives like these that will enable us to escape our polarized harm-or-improvement mindset when it comes to video games. Instead we can be honest about the existence of problematic game experiences and consider whether there is more than entertainment here.

Ever wanted to fly like a bird? The 3D video game AERO not only gives you a chance to see what it’s like to flap your wings and take off — it also teaches the principles of physics at the same time. In the game, which was developed with the help of TED-Ed speaker Bill Nye (watch his talk “Sending a sundial to Mars”), the player is an albatross exploring the caves and islands of a beautiful oceanic world. While you play, you get lessons on aerodynamic principles like lift, drag, thrust, and terminal velocity. The game even has a molecular view, so the player can fully understand how flight works.

GameDesk developed a prototype of the game in partnership with Iridescent Learning, the National Academy of Sciences and the Office of Naval Research. Bill Nye stepped in to help with the science, and the makers of the game took six months to make sure that the albatross simulations were spot on. GameDesk also took the game on the road to schools, to make sure it fully resonated with kids.

AERO has taken to Kickstarter to raise money to integrate more challenges and features into the game.

If they raise $100,000 they can have the game out on the iPad next year. If they raise $1 million, they plan to introduce the game on Android and X-Box Kinect as well, and to bring it to schools across the country on iPad minis. As of this morning, the project had 492 backers offering up $7K.

This weekend, hundreds of video games enthusiasts lined up in the cold, waiting 12 hours-plus to be the first to get their hands on Nintendo’s new console, the Wii U. And when the game Call of Duty: Black Ops was released in 2010, gamers around the world played it for more than 600 million hours in just the first 45 days. That is the equivalent of 68 years.

While some people worry about the popularity of video games, in today’s talk, brain scientist Daphne Bavelier suggests that gaming may be far more beneficial than we think (in moderation) — even if the game is all about shooting up the enemy.

“Most of you have thought, ‘Come on, can’t you do something more productive than shooting zombies?’ I’d like you to put this knee-jerk reaction in the context of how you’d feel if you found your girl playing Soduku,” Bavelier says. “In reasonable doses, action-packed shooter games have quite powerful positive effects on many different aspects of our behavior.”

In the lab, Bavelier and her team measure the impact of gameplay on the brain. While your mom might have told you that staring at screens will wreck your eyes, Bavelier’s lab actually found that playing 5 to 15 hours a week of video games correlates with better vision — and the ability to see more detail in the context of clutter.

It’s another common trope that gaming causes attention problems. However, Bavelier shows data that people who play video games are better able to keep track of objects around them — while the average person can track three objects effectively, video gamers can track six to seven objects. They’re also better able to multitask in general.

Initial studies suggest that these benefits may be trainable. In one study, Bavelier’s lab gave participants a test, and then asked them to play 10 hours of video games over a period of two weeks. When they came back for a post-test, their performance improved — and the improvement was still measurable five months later. Bavelier’s lab hopes to use these findings to create games that can improve eyesight or help keep the brains of senior citizens sharp.

To hear more about Bavelier’s studies, watch her talk. And after the jump, six other talks that suggest video games may simply have a bad reputation.

Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world
Video game designer Jane McGonigal is deeply inspired by video games like World of Warcraft — because they call on players to become heroes and save worlds.  In this blockbuster talk from TED2010, she shares why she thinks it’s possible to harness the power of gaming to solve real-world problems like hunger, poverty, climate change and war.

Gabe Zichermann: How games make kids smarter
Gabe Zichermann wishes that we could channel the era of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?—when students, parents and teachers agreed that video games were great. In this talk from TEDxKids@Brussels, Zichermann suggests that video games make kids better at problem-solving and multitasking, and should be championed rather than villainized.

Ali Carr-Chellman: Gaming to re-engage boys in learning
Many boys are having a hard time in school—they’re disproportionally suspended, marked as learning disabled, and diagnosed with ADHD. In this talk from TEDxPSU, Ali Carr-Chellman ponders whether this could be a simple culture clash. She shares a fascinating idea — that creating educational video games full of rich narratives could help boy culture connect with school culture.

Tom Chatfield: 7 ways games reward the brain
Video games are transfixing, says Tom Chatfield at TEDGlobal 2010. Why? Because they offer emotional rewards and satisfy our ambitions. In this talk, he wonders if other tasks — for example, going green or losing weight — could be made fun by emulating the brilliance of game design.

Jane McGonigal: The game that can give you 10 extra years of life
After a severe concussion, Jane McGonigal found herself on mandatory bedrest and feeling deeply depressed. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2012, she shares how she found her way out of a downward spiral — by creating a video game, SuperBetter, that helps people heal. (Check out the TED Blog post: 10 online games … with a social purpose.)

David Perry: Are games better than life?
Speaking in 2006, game designer David Perry says we’re at an interesting moment in video game history—where graphics and audio have gotten extremely lifelike. Which means that the next generation (meaning: now) could have games that actually surpass real life. While Perry is excited for what’s to come, he points out that video game makers have a big responsibility given their influence and reach, and hopes that his industry will rise to the challenge. What do you think: Has it?

Game designer Jane McGonigal firmly believes that video games are not just about mashing buttons and getting to the next level. In fact, during her talk at TEDGlobal 2012, McGonigal gave several surprising statistics: that online gaming can be more effective than pharmaceuticals in treating clinical depression and that just 30 minutes a day is correlated with significant increases in happiness.

McGonigal says online games can even help people heal from injuries and achieve greater wellness in the face of disease. She used an interesting test subject to illustrate this point: herself.

In her talk, McGonigal shared that, following a severe concussion, she found herself bed ridden for three months with a voice in her head telling her that the pain would never end. As she explains, “I thought, ‘I am either going to kill myself, or I’m going to turn this into a game.’”

McGonigal chose the latter route, developing the online game SuperBetter, a series of challenges designed to boost physical, mental, emotional and social resilience. “Within three days of playing the game, that fog of depression and anxiety vanished,” said McGonigal. When she decided to make the game public, she began getting thank yous from across the globe, including from people with cancer and chronic pain.

In her classic TEDTalk “Gaming can make a better world” McGonigal pointed out that online games like World of Warcraft inspire people to think like heroes. But are there other games out there like SuperBetter, which are created for a specific social good? Below, many more examples.

World Without Oil
Also a McGonigal creation, players in this game are dropped into a world where oil resources have been tapped and where they must get creative to survive the massive global shortage. The best part of the game? It teaches easy ways to use less oil in the real world—habits that players report keeping up when they aren’t playing.

FoldIt
An online protein folding game, FoldIt allows its quarter million players to help with scientific research by stabilizing strings of amino acids. Think of it like biological Tetris — FoldIt makes a competition out of biological pattern recognition, leading to innovative solutions to problems that have frustrated scientific communities for years.

WAY
Communicating across languages and cultures isn’t easy. But in this online game, two anonymous players — culled from different locations around the globe — must learn how to speak to each other as they navigate obstacles. Developed by CoCo & Co, this game took top honors at this year’s Games for Change Awards.

Budget Hero
Think you could balance the national budget? Then you’ll want to play this game from American Public Media, which lets players see what happens to the national deficit when they increase funding to programs or opt to make difficult cuts. “Every member of Congress should be required to play this game,” said one of its creators.

Pain Squad
Children and teenagers with cancer are often asked to keep pain diaries — paperwork that is not only boring but focuses their attention on their discomfort. The iOS app Pain Squad makes the whole process fun and interactive — while also helping doctors provide better treatments for young patients.

Spent
When your bank account is in the black, it’s easy to think that anyone could pull themselves out of poverty by their boot straps. But in this online game, players are charged with looking for work while surviving on $1000 a month — highlighting that poverty and unemployment are systematic and not just the result of character flaws.

Evoke
Created by the World Bank Institute in conjunction with McGonigal, this game is a 10-week crash course in social innovation, giving players challenges from “food security” to “urban resilience,” and encouraging them to become a think tank on local challenges.

Unmanned
Most video shoot-em-up video games make war seem action-packed and glamorous. Unmanned aims to paint a far more realistic portrait, casting players as a soldier dealing with boredom and traumatic dreams, in addition to military duties.

Plot.Form
This slick game seeks to make charitable giving fun and interactive, rather than passive and forgettable. Currently fundraising to build homes for teenagers on the street in Moshi, Tanzania, Plot.form allows users to donate—and pick out building materials, colors and more for parts of the homes.