当21岁的简·麦格尼格尔（Jane McGonigal）百无聊赖的时候，她就会去纽约市立图书馆重振精神。她会阅读有关计算机科技和物理的书籍，并将其中的知识运用于自己在加州的游戏设计研究课程。

她有深厚的图书馆情节，“它是一个让你走进去后感觉大为不同的地方。在这里你可以尽情畅想，或者无限放飞梦想。”

作为现在世界最有名的游戏设计师之一，麦格尼格尔正推出名为“寻找未来”（Find the Future）这款基于现实图书馆寻物体验的智能手机游戏。

"Find the Future" encourages people to explore history and the New York library

游戏邦获悉该游戏网站已在日前上线，但正式向大众开放服务的时间是5月20日。不过从昨日开始，用户就可以参与挑战，以争取成为该游戏的前500名玩家。从中脱颖而出的前500名玩家，将在5月20日连夜在约纽市立图书馆等候游戏开始。

Android或iOS手机用户可以下载这款应用，然后走到纽约的Stephen A. Schwarzman大楼开始玩游戏。当他们穿过这栋标志性建筑的大堂时，必须拍下与图书馆相关的100个标志性物体的部分照片。

走到每一个物体时，玩家都会遇到一个挑战。当他们找到作家查尔斯·狄更斯的猫爪开信刀时，系统就会要求他们为自己所爱的人写一封公开信；当他们找到《独立宣言》草案的复制版本时，就得写下自己的宣言。

麦格尼格尔认为，“当你看到这些事物时，不会仅仅将其视为一段抽象的历史，而是一个男子汉正在捍卫自己的信仰。”

玩家可以通过手机或者在线提交自己的答案，其他人则可浏览他们所发布的内容。至于那些无法到达图书馆的用户，则可在今后开启其他挑战任务。

如果玩家完成了足够多的挑战，那么他们就可以把自己和他人发布的内容汇编成册，然后将其印刷成一本完整的书籍，这500名玩家汇编起来的书也将被该图书馆收藏。

麦格尼格尔称希望这种挑战可以将历史带入现实，激发人们创造自己的历史。“图书馆收藏了这些罕见而珍贵、鼓舞人心，让人不得不面对的事物，虽然你上网就可以看到这些东西，并且它们也同样会让你有所感触，但只有亲身经历，才会让这段历史更加栩栩如生，让你深刻感受到由某人创造的历史时刻——你也可能成为历史创造者。”

她在不久前推出了一本新书《破碎的现实：游戏何以改变世界》（Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World），并曾通过TED和SXSW大会的发言，宣传了数字游戏有助于激发人们采取现实行动的观点。

游戏邦还获知她在2007年曾与美国公共广播公司合作，创建了一款启发人们珍惜石油的游戏；她在去年还与世界银行组织联手推出了另一款旨在帮助非洲人民开创事业的游戏。

这种创意正是SXSW大会的“游戏化”这一关键词的演绎，SCVNGR创始人Seth Priebatsch也将现在称为“游戏时代”，其推出的应用也同样是通过提供积分等奖励手段，让用户完成各种生活挑战。

麦格尼格尔很推崇游戏让人们自我完善的说法，她认为游戏玩家天生就具有激情，应该鼓励他们将虚拟世界的激情释放到现实生活的行动中。（本文为游戏邦gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Mobile game aims to spice up the library

When Jane McGonigal was 21 and a bit listless, she went to the New York Public Library to reinvent herself. She read up on computer science and physics and used that knowledge to apply to a graduate program in game design in California.

“It’s just the kind of space where you come inside and you feel something,” she said of the library. “You almost feel like you could think bigger thoughts or dream bigger dreams.”

Now one of the world’s hottest game designers, McGonigal is trying to recreate that experience with a smartphone-based game called “Find the Future,” which combines a real-life scavenger hunt at the library with digital challenges.

The game’s website goes up Friday at 9 a.m. ET and the actual game begins on May 20. Starting Friday, though, people can enter a contest to become one of the game’s first 500 players. Those people will get to stay in a New York library overnight on May 20 to kick off the game, which continues through 2011.

Players download an app on their Android or iOS phones and then go to New York’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building to play. As they wander the halls of that landmark structure, which celebrates its centennial this year, they take pictures of QR codes that are attached to 100 of the library’s notable objects.

At each object, players meet a challenge.

When they find writer Charles Dickens’ letter opener, which, bizarrely, is made out of his dead cat’s taxidermied paw, they get a prompt that asks them to write an open letter to someone they love.

When they find a draft copy of the Declaration of Independence, which has scribbling in the margins that suggest Thomas Jefferson was trying get the Founding Fathers to ban slavery, they’re asked to write a declaration of their own.

“You see that and you think this wasn’t just some moment in abstract history. This was a man who was trying to stand up for what he believed in,” she said.

Players can submit responses through their phones or online, and other people can view these posts on the project’s website. For those who can’t go to the library, certain challenges will be “unlocked” online as the year goes on.

If players complete enough challenges, they can compile their writings and the writings of others into a book, which they can have printed for a fee. The book that the first 500 players compile together will be bound and stored in the library.

McGonigal hopes the challenges will bring history to life and inspire people to create some history of their own.

“The library’s collection has all of these rare and just precious, awe-inspiring objects that you really have to come face to face with,” she said. “It’s one thing to look at it online and it can really have some impact, but when you’re there it really becomes clear that for every moment in history there was a person who set that moment in action — and you could be that person.”

McGonigal, author of “Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World,” and a speaker at brainy conferences like TED and SXSW, is known for creating digital games that compel people to take real-world action.

In 2007, she created a game with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that encouraged people to imagine a world without oil. Last year she developed a game with the World Bank Institute that aimed to empower people in Africa to start businesses.

These ideas fit within a category of technology that some people are calling “gamification.” At a keynote address at South by Southwest in March, SCVNGR founder Seth Priebatsch declared this the “decade of games.” His app, like others, gives people points and rewards for completing everyday challenges.

McGonigal is fond of saying games inspire the best in people . Gamers are passionate by nature, she says — they just need to have those passions unlocked in the real world as well as the digital one.（source:cnn）