SuperBetter: How a gameful life can make you stronger, happier, braver and more resilient. Jane McGonigal
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out experiences that put us on equal footing and so make deep synchronization more likely to occur.
The spectacular “mind meld” and biological mirroring effects of video games and other coordinated activities require players to be in the same physical space at the same time. You can’t sync over email or text message. But what if you want to strengthen relationships with friends and family you’re not able to see in person as often as you’d like? Although you won’t get the same mind-and-body connection, you can increase your real-life social support systems through online game play. In fact, research suggests that online games are an especially powerful relationship management tool—they make it easier for us to maintain more active social relationships, so we have support from others when we need it most.
Let’s see how online play works to help you find real-life allies—and what online games can teach you about how to get social support wherever you go.
Social network games are some of the most widely played and widely studied video games in recent years. More than half a billion people have played social network games like Farmville (a cooperative farm simulation), Candy Crush Saga (a pattern-matching game in which you share power-ups with your friends), and Words with Friends (a variation on the classic board game Scrabble). These games, most commonly played on Facebook or via mobile phones, allow you to play with anyone in your social network—and you don’t even have to be online at the same time. In competitive games like Words with Friends, players take their next turn whenever they have a spare moment. In cooperative games like Farmville or Candy Crush Saga, players can contribute toward a collective goal or send their friends helpful power-ups even when their friends are offline.
As these games have gained in popularity, researchers have been curious to find out whether playing a social network game with someone makes people more likely to socialize with them in real life. Study after study has found that it does. When you play a game like Farmville or Words with Friends with a friend or family member, you not only feel closer to them, you’re also more likely to see them in person or to have conversations with them about nongame, real-life events. And if you play cooperative games together, you’re more likely to ask each other for, or offer each other, help with a real-life problem.19
The more researchers dig into the way social network games work, the more they seem to agree that these relationship-enhancing benefits stem from three key functions: establishing common ground, increasing familiarity, and modeling reciprocity.
Establishing common ground simply means sharing a common experience that gives you something to talk about. One of the biggest challenges for many people in maintaining relationships with extended family and friends is a lack of common ground in the present. If we don’t have anything in common to talk about, we’re less likely to talk at all. But social scientists have found that even something as simple as a Facebook game dramatically improves our sense of having something in the present moment that actively connects us—and therefore something to talk about. Players report that game-related conversations often expand to topics outside the game, such as work and family life. But the game itself remains the foundation of frequent communication, helping us stay actively in touch with people in our social network we would otherwise grow distant from.20
Increasing familiarity simply means interacting more often. The higher the frequency, the stronger the social bond—as long as the interactions are primarily positive. Social network games seem to be a particularly efficient way to increase familiarity, because they allow two people to interact across time and distance. They remove any obstacles that might stand in the way of face-to-face interactions. And while face-to-face interactions would certainly offer a more powerful social experience (complete with synchronization!), research shows that any increased familiarity improves the odds of offering help or having face-to-face time in the future.
Finally, modeling reciprocity means showing other people that we care about them and that they can trust us to offer help. To model reciprocity, we simply have to return a favor or make a simple gesture of kindness. In everyday life, it can be hard to find simple and effective ways to show we care. But in social network games, it’s easy. Reciprocity typically takes the form of sending someone a power-up or an extra life—something that will make it easier for our friend to advance in the game. In Farmville, for example, you can water your friends’ crops or feed their chickens. In Candy Crush Saga, you can send your friends extra moves to help them complete a difficult level.
These little boosts of help are almost always free to send someone; there is no cost other than the time it takes to click “send,” and the games constantly remind us to do so. Despite the fact that it’s so easy to send this kind of help, players report feeling genuinely assisted and looked after by friends and family who regularly give them in-game boosts. Researchers believe that this kind of continual in-game show of support fosters trust and a feeling of responsibility toward each other. And data backs up this hypothesis: people who play online games together cooperatively or as a team report getting more real-life social support from each other. And the support is meaningful—it includes everything from getting advice on a problem and tangible support like monetary assistance, to emotional support like reassurance and listening.21
A SuperBetter Story: The Feuding Families
“Don’t go yet! I have to tell you my story!” These words came tumbling out of the mouth of a beautiful young blond woman who seemed quite intent on speaking with me.
I was at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I had just given a guest lecture on game design. Anna, twenty-eight, who was finishing up her bachelor’s degree in communications, had waited until all the other students left to try to catch a private word with me.
“This would sound ridiculous to most people, but I know you’ll understand,” she told me, taking a deep breath. “The Facebook game Farmville saved my marriage. Do you have a minute? Can I explain how?” Of course I wanted to hear more.
Anna told me that she and her husband, Aadil, had married several years ago against the wishes of both her parents and his. “Our families would not speak to each other, not before the wedding and not after. It’s because of our religion.” Anna’s parents were from Ukraine. They practiced a very strict Orthodox Christianity. Aadil was from India, his family, Muslim.
“I smoothed things over with my parents so at least they were talking to me, and Aadil did the same with his parents. But the two families have absolutely refused to have any contact with each other. This has been a huge source of pain for us. It’s especially hard because we live so far apart from both families.” Most of Anna’s extended family was still in Ukraine, and Aadil’s in India. They stayed in touch with everyone primarily through Facebook.
“We had given up on our families ever getting along,” Anna said. “And then one day the strangest thing happened. My mother started harvesting grapes with Aadil’s mother!”
Anna was talking about virtual grapes, of course. She had started playing the farming simulation game Farmville with her parents a few weeks earlier, “just as something fun to do with them every day, since they’re so far away and it’s hard to talk across the different time zones.” Anna was also playing the game with her husband. “Our schedules are so busy, and I’m always in evening classes when he comes home from work. But we played when we could, and it helped us spend a little more time together.”
“So you know how you can improve your farm faster if you get help from your neighbors?” Anna asked me. She was referring to the way Facebook games encourage you to invite your entire social network to play with you, so they can help you in the game. In Farmville, real-life friends and family become “neighbors” who can help feed your virtual chickens and water your virtual crops. “Well, I think my mom got really into the game because she was doing whatever it took to level up her farm faster. First she invited Aadil to be her neighbor and help her harvest some crops. That was amazing already. But then one day I was completely shocked, I noticed she had invited Aadil’s mom to join a co-op mission.”
In a co-op, or cooperative, mission in Farmville,