I like special missions and secret objectives.

So here's my special mission for this talk:

I'm going to try to increase the life span

of every single person in this room

by seven and a half minutes.

Literally, you will live seven and half minutes longer

than you would have otherwise,

just because you watched this talk.

Okay, some of you are looking a little bit skeptical.

That's okay, because check it out --

I have math to prove that it is possible.

And it won't make a lot of sense now.

I'll explain it all later,

just pay attention to the number at the bottom:

plus-7.68245837 minutes

that will be my gift to you if I'm successful in my mission.

Now, you have a secret mission too.

Your mission is to figure out how you want to spend your

extra seven and a half minutes.

And I think you should do something unusual with them,

because these are bonus minutes. You weren't going to have them anyway.

Now, because I'm a game designer, you might be thinking to yourself,

I know what she wants us to do with those minutes,

she wants us to spend them playing games.

Now this is a totally reasonable assumption,

given that I have made quite a habit of encouraging people

to spend more time playing games.

For example, in my first TEDTalk,

I did propose that we should spend 21 billion hours a week

as a planet playing video games.

Now, 21 billion hours, it's a lot of time.

It's so much time, in fact, that the number one unsolicited comment

that I have heard from people all over the world

since I gave that talk, is this:

Jane, games are great and all, but on your deathbed,

are you really going to wish you spent more time playing Angry Birds?

This idea is so pervasive -- that games are a waste of time

that we will come to regret -- that I hear it literally everywhere I go.

For example, true story: Just a few weeks ago,

this cab driver, upon finding out that a friend and I were in town

for a game developer's conference,

turned around and said -- and I quote --

"I hate games. Waste of life. Imagine getting to the end of your life

and regretting all that time."

Now, I want to take this problem seriously.

I mean, I want games to be a force for good in the world.

I don't want gamers to regret the time they spent playing,

time that I encouraged them to spend.

So I have been thinking about this question a lot lately.

When we're on our deathbeds, will we regret

the time we spent playing games?

Now, this may surprise you, but it turns out

there is actually some scientific research on this question.

It's true. Hospice workers,

the people who take care of us at the end of our lives,

recently issued a report on the most frequently expressed regrets

that people say when they are literally on their deathbeds.

And that's what I want to share with you today --

the top five regrets of the dying.

Number one: I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

Number two: I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Number three: I wish I had let myself be happier.

Number four: I wish I'd had the courage to express my true self.

And number five: I wish I'd lived a life true to my dreams,

instead of what others expected of me.

Now, as far as I know, no one ever told one of the hospice workers,

I wish I'd spent more time playing video games,

but when I hear these top five regrets of the dying,

I can't help but hear five deep human cravings

that games actually help us fulfill.

For example, I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

For many people, this means, I wish I'd spent more time

with my family, with my kids when they were growing up.

Well, we know that playing games together has tremendous

family benefits.

A recent study from Brigham Young University

School of Family life reported that parents who

spend more time playing video games with their kids

have much stronger real-life relationships with them.

I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends.

Well, hundreds of millions of people

use social games like FarmVille or Words With Friends

to stay in daily contact with real-life friends and family.

A recent study from [University of Michigan] showed

that these games are incredibly powerful

relationship-management tools.

They help us stay connected with people in our social network

that we would otherwise grow distant from,

if we weren't playing games together.

I wish I'd let myself be happier.

Well, here I can't help but think of the groundbreaking clinical trials

recently conducted at East Carolina University

that showed that online games can outperform

pharmaceuticals for treating clinical anxiety and depression.

Just 30 minutes of online game play a day

was enough to create dramatic boosts in mood

and long-term increases in happiness.

I wish I'd had the courage to express my true self.

Well, avatars are a way to express our true selves,

our most heroic, idealized version of who we might become.

You can see that in this alter ego portrait by Robbie Cooper

of a gamer with his avatar.

And Stanford University has been doing research for five years now

to document how playing a game with an idealized avatar

changes how we think and act in real life,

making us more courageous, more ambitious,

more committed to our goals.

I wish I'd led a life true to my dreams,

and not what others expected of me.

Are games doing this yet? I'm not sure,

so I've left a question mark, a Super Mario question mark.

And we're going to come back to this one.

But in the mean time, perhaps you're wondering,

who is this game designer to be talking to us

about deathbed regrets?

And it's true, I've never worked in a hospice,

I've never been on my deathbed.

But recently I did spend three months in bed, wanting to die.

Really wanting to die.

Now let me tell you that story.

It started two years ago, when I hit my head and got a concussion.

Now the concussion didn't heal properly,

and after 30 days I was left with symptoms like nonstop headaches,

nausea, vertigo, memory loss, mental fog.

My doctor told me that in order to heal my brain,

I had to rest it.

So I had to avoid everything that triggered my symptoms.

For me that meant no reading, no writing, no video games,

no work or email, no running, no alcohol, no caffeine.

In other words -- and I think you see where this is going --

no reason to live.

Of course it's meant to be funny,

but in all seriousness, suicidal ideation is quite common

with traumatic brain injuries.

It happens to one in three, and it happened to me.

My brain started telling me, Jane, you want to die.

It said, you're never going to get better.

It said, the pain will never end.

And these voices became so persistent and so persuasive

that I started to legitimately fear for my life,

which is the time that I said to myself after 34 days --

and I will never forget this moment --

I said, I am either going to kill myself

or I'm going to turn this into a game.

Now, why a game?

I knew from researching the psychology of games for more than a decade

that when we play a game -- and this is in the scientific literature --

we tackle tough challenges with more creativity,

more determination, more optimism,

and we're more likely to reach out to others for help.

And I wanted to bring these gamer traits to my real-life challenge,

so I created a role-playing recovery game

called Jane the Concussion Slayer.

Now this became my new secret identity,

and the first thing I did as a slayer

was call my twin sister -- I have an identical twin sister named Kelly --

and tell her, I'm playing a game to heal my brain,

and I want you to play with me.

This was an easier way to ask for help.

She became my first ally in the game,

my husband Kiyash joined next,

and together we identified and battled the bad guys.

Now this was anything that could trigger my symptoms

and therefore slow down the healing process,

things like bright lights and crowded spaces.

We also collected and activated power-ups.

This was anything I could do on even my worst day

to feel just a little bit good,

just a little bit productive.

Things like cuddling my dog for 10 minutes,

or getting out of bed and walking around the block just once.

Now the game was that simple:

Adopt a secret identity, recruit your allies,

battle the bad guys, activate the power-ups.

But even with a game so simple,

within just a couple days of starting to play,

that fog of depression and anxiety

went away. It just vanished. It felt like a miracle.

Now it wasn't a miracle cure for the headaches

or the cognitive symptoms.

That lasted for more than a year,

and it was the hardest year of my life by far.

But even when I still had the symptoms,

even while I was still in pain, I stopped suffering.

Now what happened next with the game surprised me.

I put up some blog posts and videos online,

explaining how to play.

But not everybody has a concussion, obviously,

not everyone wants to be "the slayer,"

so I renamed the game SuperBetter.

And soon I started hearing from people all over the world

who were adopting their own secret identity,

recruiting their own allies, and they were getting "super better"

facing challenges like cancer and chronic pain,

depression and Crohn's disease.

Even people were playing it for terminal diagnoses like ALS.

And I could tell from their messages and their videos

that the game was helping them in the same ways

that it helped me.

They talked about feeling stronger and braver.

They talked about feeling better understood by their friends and family.

And they even talked about feeling happier,

even though they were in pain, even though they were tackling

the toughest challenge of their lives.

Now at the time, I'm thinking to myself, what is going on here?

I mean, how could a game so trivial intervene so powerfully

in such serious, and in some cases life-and-death, circumstances?

I mean, if it hadn't worked for me,

there's no way I would have believed it was possible.

Well, it turns out there's some science here too.

Some people get stronger and happier after a traumatic event.

And that's what was happening to us.

The game was helping us experience

what scientists call post-traumatic growth,

which is not something we usually hear about.

We usually hear about post-traumatic stress disorder.

But scientists now know that a traumatic event

doesn't doom us to suffer indefinitely.

Instead, we can use it as a springboard

to unleash our best qualities and lead happier lives.

Here are the top five things that people with

post-traumatic growth say:

My priorities have changed. I'm not afraid to do what makes me happy.

I feel closer to my friends and family.

I understand myself better. I know who I really am now.

I have a new sense of meaning and purpose in my life.

I'm better able to focus on my goals and dreams.

Now, does this sound familiar?

It should, because the top five traits of post-traumatic growth

are essentially the direct opposite of the top five regrets of the dying.

Now this is interesting, right?

It seems that somehow, a traumatic event can unlock our ability

to lead a life with fewer regrets.

But how does it work?

How do you get from trauma to growth?