I thought about McGonigal's book carefully. Some of the games created were fascinating, especially tombstone poker. I can understand her point about the different challenges one faces during a video game that makes people feel triumphant and powerful. But I am questioning, isn't this feeding into the instant gratification society we live in? I imagine that the challenges faced in every day life would be just as satisfying if people just waited for the results of their hard work. Instead of waiting ten minutes to get a raise in "sims", they have to wait years in real life. If they weren't so obsessed with getting everything right now, and were just a little more patient, I don't think video games would be some important to them. 

Also, she said in the beginning of the book that the more someone plays a video game, the more they are disillusioned with their real lives. She even goes on to say that the skeptics and critics will say that if people just spent less time playing video games, they could spend more time focused on getting their lives together. And I know that she meant that to sound crazy, but I believe exactly that. Work hard in real life to make it to where you want to go, and you wont need video games to feel fulfilled.

Her suggestion to not take away video games but rather to make games that will solve social crises and other major problems with the world is a decent suggestion, if you can tear the gamers away from Halo. I don't think that the positive games will replace the nonsensical ones that already exist. Further, I doubt seriously that people will take anything away from video games. Even if you did monitor your governors expenses on the internet as a game, what will you do with that information? The critical thinking you use with that particular game probably will not be merged over to evaluate where our tax money goes after they raise taxes. And speaking of that, wouldn't it be more useful to watch local news? Or read a newspaper?

Less people are non gamers than ever before, but I think its doing more harm than good. Shouldn't our minds rest sometimes? We are in a world where more people have insomnia than ever before. There are more documented cancers than ever before. I am just curious what the long term affects of not letting your mind rest are on your brain.