If you are a gamer, it’s time to get over any regret you might feel about spending so much time playing games. You have not been wasting your time. You have been building up a wealth of virtual experience that, as the first half of this book will show you, can teach you about your true self: what your core strengths are, what really motivates you, and what make you happiest.

Cory Doctorow is a fast and furious storyteller who gets all the details of alternate reality gaming right, while offering a startling, new vision of how these games might play out in the high-stakes context of a terrorist attack. Little Brother is a brilliant novel with a bold argument: hackers and gamers might just be our country's best hope for the future.

When we play games, our brains respond differently to stress and obstacles. We're better able to control our attention and ignore distractions.

Games are unnecessary obstacles we volunteer to tackle.

Game developers know that people have more fun when they're in large groups. They feel more fired up when the challenges are more epic.

If you can manage to experience three positive emotions for every one negative emotion … you dramatically improve your health and your ability to successfully tackle any problem you're facing.

We have to accept as a society that games are not escapist. They really do change us.