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THE POWER OF GAMING with Dr. Jane McGonigal

Tuesday, January 31, 2012
8:00pm Pacific Time
Venue: Herbst Theatre

This event appeared in the series
Conversations on Science & the Future

Jane McGonigal directs game R&D at the Institute for the Future, the nonprofit forecasting firm where she developed Superstruct, a massive multiplayer game in which players organize society to solve for issues that will confront the world in 2019. MIT Technology Review named her one of the top 35 innovators changing the world through technology for her role in pioneering the field of alternate reality gaming. Harvard Business Review called her theory of “alternate reality business” one of the “Top 20 Breakthrough Ideas of 2008.” McGonigal’s previous projects include The Lost Ring, World Without Oil, Cruel 2 B Kind, and I Love Bees. In her most recent book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How They Can Change the World, McGonigal discusses her belief that video games can be a positive platform for exploration and problem solving.

RYAN WYATT is the Director of the Morrison Planetarium and Science Visualization at the California Academy of Sciences where he co-wrote and directed the award winning show Fragile Planet and wrote and directed Life: A Cosmic Story. He is currently working on Earthquake which premieres this spring.