Brands could take advantage of all the valuable time consumers spend on videogames

A conference during the 60th Cannes Lions Festival entitled The Future Is a Massively Multiplayer Game was presented by games designer Jane McGonigal, who showed how to use the power of videogames to solve real-world problems and boost global optimismo.After creating games for the World Bank, Olympic Games, New York Public Library and more, McGonigal is exploring the application of videogame design principles to meet the challenges of the real world.Statistics showing how much time brands could use indicate, for example, that a player can spend some 300 minutes a day playing Angry Birds, an accumulated daily sum worldwide of almost 400,000 years. One out of every four players called in sick to stay home and play Call of Duty Black Ops 2 the day that videogame was launched.Speaking of problems and challenges, a Gallup survey shows that 89 percent of workers worldwide do not feel committed to their jobs. That percentage represents billions of hours of effective work time lost annually. What to do? Jane McGonigal has said that “the more games you play, the more motivated you are to tackle tough challenges in real life”.Mark Holden, global strategy and planning director at PHD, took the tip seriously. At Cannes he recounted what he did after being inspired by McGonigal’s book – he decided to have a game created for the media agency called Source. The result? Some 75 percent of his work force around the world showed unprecedented levels of commitment, collaboration and creativity.