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Imagine you’re playing your favorite video game. You’re collecting coins, building your village, or fighting monsters - and suddenly a colorful message appears with a countdown timer:

“Only now! Double rewards if you buy these treasures!”

That sounds exciting, doesn’t it? But sometimes there’s a trick behind it. These tricks are called “Dark Patterns”. They are little traps in game design that are meant to make you do something you might not have wanted to do. For example, spending real money, playing longer, or sharing personal information.

I recently stumbled across a 2010 TED Talk by Jane McGonigal, in which she presents and defends the thesis: video games can help us solve real-world problems.

Bold? Maybe!

She argues that if we (collectively, all players) spend 21 billion hours a week gaming, we can solve the world’s most pressing problems—rather than the current 3 billion hours.