Changing the World Through Video Games

First of, I am a gamer, and not just the kind that plays exclusively CoD and other popular first person shooters.  Iv played games from almost any genre I can think of and while I like some more than others and definitely have my preference (I love story driven games as well as those where you compete against others) I can appreciate most of them.  As a gamer, naturally I was thrilled that someone was finally taking a pro-game stance, it was a nice change from the constant claims that games cause people to bring guns to school and shoot people.  (Say what you will but I have never heard anything that has even made me consider this was true.)  As much as I would like for McGonigal's theory to be true, I really can't bring myself to believe that it is true.  (Anyone else notice that her name sounds like "Professor McGonagall" from Harry Potter?)  Yeah, I have noticed the different traits we discussed in class in myself and some of my other gamer friends, but I think most of the social characteristics in myself carried over to gaming from "real life," not the other way around.  Also, any of the "skills" I have learned from games, while valuable, really won't change the world.  

In addition, I think her idea for the "Long Game" is theoretically really cool but she has no idea what that would look like.  That and most of her other lofty ideas seem to me like just that, ideas.  She has no real, and tangible ideas for the implementation of her theories.  The closest she got was a couple "games" that seemed to lack the fun aspect, which in my mind is a required quality for a game, let alone a good one.  If its not fun or entertaining, it isn't really a game. (I am not saying that just because I don't find a game fun, its not a game.  That is a completely different discussion, suffice to say that if nobody finds it fun, it really isn't a game.  If it is, its a bad one.)  Lastly,  another big flaw in her plan is the nature of video games themselves as programs.  Programs can only do what they have been programmed to do in the first place, so if there isn't a solution programmed into the game its not really gona work right, which kinda defeats the whole purpose of her idea in the first place doesn't it?