I was just telling some friends that I thought the future of gaming would have more impact on the real world. My wife has been playing a lot of Farmville on Facebook recently and it got me thinking that if we could harness the power of games like that to make people desire with such gusto to sit and click through such menial tasks, we could convert any kind of work into a game. Maybe all jobs in the future will be games–and all schools and lessons will be too. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could learn to write code by playing a game?

Well, Jane McGonigal already has games that affect the real world.
Check out Evoke: http://www.urgentevoke.com/ to take a crash course in saving the world.

Synopsis of this talk on TED:

Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.