A point of discussion on play and games in Jane McGonigal's SuperBetter

Before our reading of Hector Rodriguez's "The Playful and the Serious: An approximation to Huizinga's Homo Ludens," I would have thought that Jane McGonigal's SuperBetter game was entirely amazing, groundbreaking, and fascinating because it makes self-improvement something that is fun, engaging, and creates meaning in people's lives. But after our reading, I now hold a much more complex perspective. I believe that SuperBetter holds a problematic foundation: it is self-improvement wearing a game's clothing. And quite honestly, I didn't think SuperBetter was much fun.

Now, SuperBetter is best described by Jane McGonigal in her Ted talk here:

My wife and I subscribed to her website SuperBetter not too long before I read Rodriguez's text. Shelby and I tried out the basic few things that the site had to offer: connect to allies, naming "enemies," setting up goals and wins and clarifying our intentions. This is an important aspect of creating meaning, because when you create a place of play or create a magic circle where certain rules apply, winning and losing, doing bad and doing good become known within that system.

So in this sense, SuperBetter is an excellent way to name and know which actions take place in our daily lives that hurt us in our quest for weight loss, happiness, or whatever our specified goal was. But so far, the game is just a tool to develop naming and recognizing real problems ("real" meaning actual problems in our lives outside of the magic circle). So while the user is given the power to create the rules of their own game, which in itself is a form of play, the line between the magic circle and the real world are intentionally dissolved. The game actually becomes about real life and real life actually becomes a game. Now like I said before, so far I think this awesome and I like it. Being able to signify and bring significance to what previously had little or no significance, (for example, labelling one hour of exercise as +2 Physical and Mental Strength and eating a spoonful of Nutella as -2 Physical Strength but +1 Emotional Strength) creates a fascinating world of individualized meaning-making. Of course in the worst, most post-modern sense individualized meaning becomes the breakdown of global, national, and/or community-related forms of meaning. If we are the first, final, and only arbiters of our perspective's meaning-creation, then all other forms of meaning are less or obsolete. But McGonigal actually invites the users of SuperBetter to bring "allies" in to help hold each other's systems of meaning accountable and through dialogue develop deeper sense of whatever "good" and "bad" might look like.

But the problem in all of this arises when the question is finally asked, "is this actually fun?" And while it would be hard to give an objective answer to that question, I will say that certain elements of play are reduced significantly in the game of SuperBetter. First and foremost, the intention of SuperBetter is to get better, not to have fun. The mode or means that a user can improve may involve aspects of fun or play, but the game itself is a tool of functionalism.

So this is where SuperBetter becomes open to Hector Rodriguez's critique, "people do not typically play because they have rationally inferred that playing is good for them." As Rodriguez continues he explains of Huizinga, "Huizinga also contends that playing is in some sense an 'irrational' activity." Previous to these points Rodriguez was explaining that games are often opted in the service of modernistic institutions in order to further functional goals. He goes to say, "treated as a mechanism of social engineering, play is subordinated to such functional goals as the cohesiveness of the state, the socialization of the child, or the success of a commercial firm." We could continue this notion to include: or the improvement of physical, emotional, and mental strength of the individual (those three traits are the empiricized markers outlined within SuperBetter's system that define a good or bad action).

So to me the fun of SuperBetter lies in the play of creating good and bad parameters for actions and activities, defining enemies (or personifying challenges), inviting real people to play as allies, and setting both personal and relational goals with your allies. Essentially, the game design process is the funnest part of the game. But my issue with SuperBetter is in the actual intention of SuperBetter itself: to rationally, logically, methodically put into empirical terms what self-improvement looks like... as a game.

Rodriguez talks about people who play tennis, and those that play tennis to improve their health are often the ones who both don't have as much fun as and who aren't as much fun to play with as those who simply love the sport and competition of tennis and play for the sake of the game. Rodriguez of course points out that many who play tennis for the sport of it actually do improve and maintain a strong character of healthiness, but that is simply a product that can be observed with a functionalist lens, rather than the aim of playing tennis.

So my suggestion is that SuperBetter is on the right track, but the game's functionalism can only achieve its goal if a few playful things are prioritized as more important than functionalism. For example, if SuperBetter's name was something other than a name which clearly communicates self-improvement as the goal, it could appear to be more fun. Secondly, if there was a stronger sense of competition among players (in a way that was respectful and condoned healthy competition, of course) SuperBetter would probably yield a funner experience of the game and a stronger motivation to succeed. And lastly, if there was a way for some kind of engagement of enemies or obstacles or challenges to be introduced that wasn't entirely scripted beforehand by the player-game designer themselves. For example, if SuperBetter (as an entity) could actually attempt to thwart the user's self-improvement in some playful and subversive way, this could create a ludic and exciting experience of unforeseen outcomes. Or perhaps other players could input a sense of challenge, subversiveness, or even unseen help for another player, it would create a spontaneous, interactive sense of play.

I simply feel that SuperBetter is too sterile, too controlled, and lacking the ludic qualities that make a game truly engaging and immersive. I do believe that the aim of the game (to improve the health and lives of many people) is an exceptional and impressive one, but that aim must be open enough to let the playful experience hold priority over functionalism or SuperBetter will always remain at best a creative way simply to reimagine tracking personal progress.