Too often in adult life, reality and wild abandon don’t mix – and that, says game designer Jane McGonigal, is a problem. Despite McGonigal’s evangelical assertions that video games can change the world, “people kept saying, ‘Yeah, but it’s just a waste of time. Shouldn’t we be doing something more productive than avenging some Angry Birds?’”More than half of Americans play video games, and McGonigal believes the rest of us should practice what joystick virtuosos know instinctively: that there’s a difference between having a good time and wasting time. Just ask World of Warcraft fans, who have collectively written a quarter of a million wiki articles on the art of WoW.Why are gamers so obsessed? Because playing gives people a sense of purpose, and winning them makes them feel heroic. “There’s this kind of transfer of our confidence, of our creativity, of our ambition” from game-playing “to our real lives” says McGonigal. And there are organizational benefits as well: s...