I have one problem with her thesis. She talks about how people that play games are always striving for an "epic win" and how we need to tap into that drive to solve world problems. If you essentially transplant that motivation to solving real world problems, then we would have a better way of finding solutions, kind of like cloud-sourcing the UN's job.
It's a wonderful notion, but here's where I disagree. People are motivated to play games to experience an "epic win" more so than finding some sort of real life "epic win" because it is easier to experience this in a game than in a real life scenario. Her goal is to create games based around these problems. The "epic win" of these problems comes only after taking in the complexity and working through the problem itself, which is probably more complex and difficult than leading a raiding guild (which is probably the most complex and prickly task I've ever attempted in gaming).
Think of it in closer terms with gaming. You can only achieve an "epic win" from the one of the following scenarios from the game Infamous, which do you choose:
-beating the game on hard mode
-getting the Rockhound achievement
The point I'm trying to make here is that the only reward from these problems is actually solving them and people who play games won't be motivated to play the game unless you give them some sort of "epic win." If you don't, then they're just going to not play your game. I'm not totally against this, but I just don't see how you could motivate people on a World of Warcraft kind of scale that she was getting at.
Also someone please come up with a better word than "gamer" since I'm brain fried and sick of using the phrase "people that play games."
