Jane McGonigal

Jane McGonigal (born October 21, 1977) is an American author, game designer, and researcher. McGonigal is known for her game ''Jane the Concussion Slayer'' and her role as Director of Game Research and Development at Institute for the Future.

McGonigal received her Ph.D. in Performance Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2006, where she was the first in the department to study computer and video games. She has worked on several notable alternate reality games, including ''I Love Bees'' (2004) and ''World Without Oil'' (2007), as well as designing ''SuperBetter'' (2012). After suffering a severe concussion in 2009, she created ''Jane the Concussion Slayer'' as a therapeutic game, which evolved into ''SuperBetter'', a platform designed to help people build resilience and achieve personal goals.

She is the author of three books: ''Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World'' (2011), which argues that games contribute to human happiness and can address social problems; ''SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver, and More Resilient'' (2015); and ''Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything'' (2022). McGonigal has been called "the current public face of gamification," though she has expressed reservations about the term. She has been recognized by MIT's ''Technology Review'' as one of the world's top innovators under 35 and named to ''O: The Oprah Magazine'' 2010 Power List. Provided by Wikipedia