Jane McGonigal is director of games research at the Institute for the Future. She is the inventor of SuperBetter, which has helped over a million players recover from symptoms of depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and traumatic brain injury. Specializing in alternate reality games that tackle real-world problems, McGonigal has created games for the American Heart Association and World Bank Institute and developed game workshops for large companies. She teaches the How to Think Like a Futurist class for the Continuing Studies program at Stanford University. McGonigal is the author of Reality is Broken and SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully. Her TED talks on how games can make a better world have more than 15 million views.
Previously
![How to Be Mindfully Present to the Future](https://aspenideasfestival.imgix.net/461cc9a0-c586-4928-8f7c-c4920a6ec30c/AdobeStock_126620144.jpeg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=min&fm=jpg&h=225&q=80&rect=0%2C516%2C4960%2C2785&w=400)
What do you get when a futurist game developer and a Buddhist entrepreneur cross paths? A truly enlightening conversation on mindfulness and a re-examination of our relationsh...
![Aspen Lecture: The Future of Imagination](https://aspenideasfestival.imgix.net/25a32d07-60d9-47e8-9a7f-09ee40595fb3/27455816253_ab8bb7390e_o.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=min&fm=jpg&h=225&q=80&rect=0%2C145%2C3888%2C2182&w=400)
Thinking about the far-off future isn’t just an exercise in intellectual curiosity. It’s a practical skill that, as new research reveals, has a direct neurological link to gre...