2:15 p.m. On Fridays, the school always has a guest speaker, or “secret ally.” Today, the secret ally is a musician named Jason, who uses computer programs to make music. After giving a live demonstration with his laptop, he announces that he’ll be back in a few weeks to help the students as a coach on their upcoming “boss level.” For the boss level, students will form teams and compose their own music. Every team will have a different part to play—and rumor has it that several mathematical specialists will be needed to work on the computer code. Rai really wants to qualify for one of those spots, so she plans to spend extra time over the next two weeks working harder on her math assignments.
As the Quest website explains, boss levels are “two-week ‘intensive’ [units] where students apply knowledge and skills to date to propose solutions to complex problems.” “Boss level” is a term taken directly from video games. In a boss level, you face a boss monster (or some equivalent thereof)—a monster so intimidating it requires you to draw on everything you’ve learned and mastered in the game so far. It’s the equivalent of a midterm or final exam. Boss levels are notoriously hard but immensely satisfying to beat. Quest schedules boss levels at various points in the school year, in order to fire students up about putting their lessons into action. Students get to tackle an epic challenge—and there’s no shame in failing. It’s a boss level, and so, just like any good game, it’s meant to whet your appetite to try harder and practice more.
Like collaborative quests, the boss levels are tackled in teams, and each student must qualify to play a particular role—“mathematical specialist,” for example. Just as in a big World of Warcraft raid, each participant is expected to play to his or her strengths. This is one of Quest’s key strategies for giving students better hopes of success. Beyond the basic core curriculum, students spend most of their time getting better at subjects and activities—ones they have a natural talent for or already know how to do well. This strategy means every student is set up to truly excel at something, and to focus attention on the areas in which he or she is most likely to one day become extraordinary.
6:00 p.m. Rai is at home, interacting with a virtual character named Betty. Rai’s goal is to teach Betty how to divide mixed numbers. Betty is what Quest calls a “teachable agent”: “an assessment tool where kids teach a digital character how to solve a particular problem.” In other words, Betty is a software program designed to know less than Rai. And it’s Rai’s job to “teach” the program, by demonstrating solutions and working patiently with Betty until she gets it.
At Quest, these teachable agents replace quizzes, easing the anxiety associated with having to perform under pressure. With a teachable agent, you’re not being tested to see if you’ve really learned something. Instead, you’re mentoring someone because you really have learned something, and this is your chance to show it. There’s a powerful element of naches—vicarious pride—involved here: the more a student learns, the more he or she can pass it on. This is a core dynamic of how learning works in good video games, and at Quest it’s perfectly translated into a scalable assessment system.
Secret missions, boss levels, expertise exchanges, special agents, points, and levels instead of letter grades—there’s no doubt that Quest to Learn is a different kind of learning environment, about as radically different a mission as any charter school has set out in recent memory. It’s an unprecedented infusion of gamefulness into the public school system. And the result is a learning environment where students get to share secret knowledge, turn their intellectual strengths into superpowers, tackle epic challenges, and fail without fear.
Quest to Learn started with a sixth-grade class in the fall of 2009, and it plans to add a new sixth-grade class each year as the previous year graduates upward. The first senior class will graduate from Quest to Learn in 2016, and potentially from college by 2020. I’m willing to bet that that graduating class will be full of creative problem solvers, strong collaborators, and innovative thinkers ready to wholeheartedly tackle formidable challenges in the real world.
SuperBetter—Or How to Turn Recovery into a Multiplayer Experience
Either I’m going to kill myself or I’m going to turn this into a game. After the four most miserable weeks of my life, those seemed like the only two options I had left.
It was the summer of 2009, and I was about halfway through writing this book when I got a concussion. It was a stupid, fluke accident. I had been standing up, and I slammed my head straight into a cabinet door I didn’t realize was still open. I was dizzy, saw stars, and felt sick to my stomach. When my husband asked me who the president was, I drew a blank.
Some concussions get better in a few hours, or a few days. Others turn into a much longer postconcussion syndrome. That’s what happened to me. I got a headache and a case of vertigo that didn’t go away. Any time I turned my head, it felt like I was doing somersaults. And I was in a constant mental fog. I kept forgetting things—people’s names, or where I’d put things. If I tried to read or write, after a few minutes my vision blurred out completely. I couldn’t think clearly enough to keep up my end of interesting conversations. Even just being around other people, or out in public spaces, seemed to make it worse. At the time, I scribbled these notes: “Everything is hard. The iron fist pushes against my thoughts. My whole brain feels vacuum pressurized. If I can’t think, who am I?”
After five days of these symptoms and after a round of neurological tests that all proved normal, my doctor told me I would be fine—but it would probably take an entire month before I really felt like myself again. In the meantime, no reading, no writing, no working, and no running, unless I was completely symptom-free. I had to avoid anything that made my head hurt or made the fog worse. (Sadly, I quickly discovered that computer and video games were out of the question; it was way too much mental stimulation.)
This was difficult news to hear. A month seemed like an impossibly long time not to work and to feel this bad. But at least it gave me a target to shoot for. I set the date on my calendar: August 15, I would be better. I believed it. I had to believe it.
That month came and went, and I’d barely improved at all.
That’s when I found out that if you don’t recover in a month, the next likely window of recovery is three months.
And if you miss that target, the next target is a year.
Two more months living with a vacuum-pressurized brain? Possibly an entire year? I felt more hopeless than I could have ever imagined. Rationally, I knew things could be worse—I wasn’t dying, after all. But I felt like a shadow of my real self, and I wanted so desperately to resume my normal life.
My doctor had told me that it was normal to feel anxious or depressed after a concussion. But she also said that anxiety and depression exacerbate concussion symptoms and make it much harder for the brain to heal itself. The more depressed or anxious you get, the more concussed you feel and the longer recovery takes. Of course, the worse the symptoms are and the longer they last, the more likely you are to be anxious or depressed. In other words, it’s a vicious cycle. And the only way to get better faster is to break the cycle.
I knew I was trapped in that cycle. The only thing I could think of that could possibly make me optimistic enough to break it was a game.
It was a strange idea, but I literally had nothing else to do (except watch television and go on very slow walks). I’d never made a health care game before. But it seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out my alternate reality theories in a new context. I might not be able to read or write very much, but hopefully I could still be creative.
I knew right away it needed to be a multiplayer game. I’d been having a lot of trouble explaining to my closest friends and family how truly anxious I was and how depressed I felt, how hard the recovery process was. I also felt awkward, and embarrassed, asking for help. I needed a way to help myself tell my closest friends and family, “I am having the hardest time of my life, and I really need you to help me.” But I
also didn’t want to be a burden. I wanted to invite people to help me.
As with any alternate reality project, I needed to research the reality of the situation before I could reinvent it. So, for a few days, I spent the limited amount of time I was able to focus—about an hour a day at that point—learning about postconcussion syndrome online. From various medical journals and reports, I pieced together what experts agree are the three most important strategies for getting better and coping more effectively—not only from concussions, but any injury or chronic illness.
First: stay optimistic, set goals, and focus on any positive progress you make. Second: get support from friends and family. And third: learn to read your symptoms like a temperature gauge. How you feel tells you when to do more, do less, or take breaks, so you can gradually work your way up to more demanding activity.7
Of course, it immediately occurred to me that these three strategies sound exactly like what you do when you’re playing a good multiplayer game. You have clear goals; you track your progress; you tackle increasingly difficult challenges, but only when you’re ready for them; and you connect with people you like. The only thing missing from these recovery strategies, really, was the meaning—the exciting story, the heroic purpose, the sense of being part of something bigger.
So that’s where SuperBetter comes in.
SuperBetter is a superhero-themed game that turns getting better into multiplayer adventure. It’s designed to help anyone recovering from an injury or coping with a chronic condition get better sooner—with more fun, and with less pain and misery, along the way.
The game starts with five missions. You’re encouraged to do at least one mission a day, so that you’ve successfully completed them all in less than a week. Of course, you can move through them even faster if you feel up to it. Here are excerpts from the instructions for each mission, along with an explanation of how I designed it and how I played it.
Mission #1: Create your SuperBetter secret identity. You’re the hero of this adventure. And you can be anyone you want, from any story you love. So pick your favorite story—anything from James Bond to Gossip Girl, Twilight to Harry Potter, Batman to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You’re about to borrow their superpowers and play the leading role yourself.
I chose Buffy the Vampire Slayer as my story line. That made me Jane the Concussion Slayer, and that made my symptoms the vampires, demons, and other forces of darkness I was destined by fate to battle against. The point of this mission is to start seeing yourself as powerful, not powerless. And it underscores the fact that you are heroic for choosing to persevere in the face of your injury or illness.
Mission #2: Recruit your allies. Every superhero has an inner circle of friends who help save the day. Pick the people you want to count on most, and invite them to play this game with you. Ask each one to play a specific part: Batman needs a Robin and an Alfred, while James Bond needs an M, a Q, and a Moneypenny. If you’re Bella, you’ll want at least an Edward, a Jacob, and an Alice. Give each ally a specific mission, related to his or her character. Use your imagination—and feel free to ask for anything you need! When you’re saving the world, you can’t be shy about asking for help. Be sure to ask at least one ally to give you daily or weekly achievements—these are surprise accomplishments they bestow upon you based on your latest superheroic activities.
As Jane the Concussion Slayer, I recruited my twin sister as my “Watcher” (Buffy’s mentor in the TV series). Her mission was to call me every single day and ask for a report on my concussion-slaying activities. She should also give me advice and suggest challenges for me to try. Before playing SuperBetter, I hadn’t known how to explain to her that I really needed daily contact, and not just to hear from her on the weekends.
I recruited my husband as my “Willow” (Buffy’s smarty-pants best friend who’s also a computer geek). His mission was to do all of the score-and record-keeping for me, read me interesting articles, and in general help me with anything I wanted to do on the computer without getting a headache. Finally, I recruited my friends Natalie and Rommel, and their miniature dachshund, Maurice, as my “Xander” (he’s the comic-relief character). Their mission was to come over once a week and just generally cheer me up.
Why recruit allies? Social psychologists have long observed that one of the hardest things about a chronic injury or illness is asking our friends and family for support. But reaching out and really asking for what we need makes a huge difference. It prevents social isolation, and it gives people who want to help, but don’t know how, something specific and actionable to do.
And why have achievements? Every fiero moment helps increase optimism and a sense of mastery, which has been proven to speed recovery from everything from knee injuries to cancer. But achievements feel more meaningful when someone else gives them to you—that’s why it’s important to have a friend or family member bestow them upon you. Kiyash gave me my achievements based on the titles of episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (For example, I unlocked the “Out of Mind, Out of Sight” achievement for ignoring my e-mail for an entire day, and “The Harvest” achievement for eating vegetables for dinner instead of cookies and ice cream, which was one of my favorite postconcussion ways to drown my sorrows. At the time, both of those felt like epic struggles.)
Mission #3: Find the bad guys. To win this battle, you need to know what you’re up against. Pay attention all day to anything that makes you feel worse, and put it on your bad-guys list. Some days, you’ll be able to battle the bad guys longer—some days not so long. But every time you do battle, you’ll want to make a great escape. That means getting away from the bad guy before he knocks you flat. You can always add more bad guys to your list as you discover them—and if you vanquish one forever, you can take it off and claim the permanent victory.
My list of bad guys at the start of the game focused on activities I kept trying to sneak in even though I knew they made me feel worse: reading and responding to e-mail, running or doing any kind of vigorous exercise, playing Peggle, drinking coffee.
The better you can identify triggers of your symptoms, the more pain and suffering you’ll avoid. And making a great escape turns a potential moment of failure—This is harder than it should be, or I can’t do what I want to do—into a moment of triumph: I succeeded in recognizing a trigger and vanquished it before it did too much damage. One of the highlights in my recovery was when I enlisted the entire crew at the Peet’s Coffee down the block to help me modulate the amount of caffeine in my morning iced coffee, which I was really reluctant to give up. It was their idea to start me off with 90 percent decaf with just a splash of caffeine so that I could work my way up to half and half, and eventually full caffeine when my brain was finally ready to be stimulated again.
Mission #4: Identify your power-ups. Good thing you’ve got superpowers. Maybe they’re not your typical superpowers—but you definitely have fun things you can do for yourself at a moment’s notice to feel better. Make a list, and be ready to call on them whenever the bad guys are getting the better of you. In fact, try to collect as many power-ups as you can every day!
For my concussion recovery, I focused on things I could do with my senses that weren’t affected by my head injury. Touch was fine, so I could sit and cuddle with my Shetland sheepdog. Hearing was fine, so I could sit by the window and listen to a podcast. And the biggest superpower I discovered had to do with my sense of smell: I really started to enjoy smelling different perfumes. I would go to a perfume counter, spray samples of a dozen perfumes on cards, then take them home and smell them throughout the rest of the evening, to see how they changed and to learn the different notes. It was one of the most engaging activities I could do without hurting my brain at all. And eventually, once my vertigo was improved, I was able to add to my power-up list long walks up San Francisco hills with my husband.
The power-ups are meant to help you feel capable of having a good day, no matter what. Having specific positive actions to take increases
the odds of doing something that will break the cycle of feeling negative stress or depression.
Mission #5: Create your superhero to-do list. Not every mission is possible, but it doesn’t hurt to dream big. Make a list of goals for yourself, ranging from things you’re 100 percent positive you can do right now to things you might not have been able to do even in your wildest dreams before you got sick or hurt. Everything on your list should be something that would make you feel awesome and show off your strengths. Every day, try to make progress toward crossing one of these superhero to-dos off your list. Be sure to get your allies’ help and advice.
This final idea was inspired by a question I’d found on the website of a New Zealand occupational therapist. “If I can’t take your pain away, what else would you like to improve in your life?”8 It’s one of the abiding features of a good game: the outcome is uncertain. You play in order to discover how well you can do—not because you’re guaranteed to win. SuperBetter has to acknowledge the possibility of failure to achieve complete recovery. But it can also make it less scary to fail—because there is an abundance of other goals to pursue and other rewarding activities to undertake along the way. That’s why it seemed essential to make part of the game a project to discover as many positive activities that it was still possible to do. It increased my real hopes of enjoying life more, no matter what else happened with the recovery or treatment.
One of my easiest superhero to-dos was baking cookies for people who live in my neighborhood. I liked it so much, I did it three times. A more challenging to-do was finding an opportunity to wear my favorite pair of purple leather stiletto boots, which meant getting up the energy to go out and see people. (I crossed this one off my list by going to see a movie with a big group of friends. I was a bit overdressed, but I felt great anyway.) The biggest superhero to-do on my list was, of course, to finish this book.
Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World Page 15