Tikkun Olam is all about contributing to the repair of the world. What if there was a way to perform Tikkun Olam in a way almost all of us had never thought of before? What if we could help contribute to the repair of the world through video games?
Jane McGonigal, author of Reality Is Broken and game designer believes that game design can help us make the world a better place. Of course, games already exist and help the world by making a lot of people happier when they play them. But what if we could take the elements that make games fun and apply them to our world to make daily life more fun?
We can. We can implement game-like mechanics into our own life using what Jane McGonigal calls happiness hacks. Doing this can increase our happiness in the real world just by doing game-like tasks during our daily schedules. She covers some examples of happiness hacks that she has helped design in the later half of her book.
Games do something else amazing. They convince people to do unnecessary tasks just because it is fun. Those unnecessary tasks, if designed by the right game designer, can actually have value. People could play a game where they design strategies for solving problems like world hunger and military crises. Actually, games like these have already taken place and helped create more informed decisions on situations like those and more. It’s all about getting more people to support games like those.
If you are interested in the ways that gaming can make the world a better place, read Jane McGonigal’s book Reality Is Broken.
– Andrew Moody
IMC Hawks Blog 
This is a great idea. I would love to see gaming in a new light. I always saw it as an activity simply wasting time but if we could use it to solve world problems I would be interested in participating.