Few people have made more effort to speak positively about video games in public than game designer, author, and researcher Jane McGonigal. She's the opposite of all those people who trash games in the media and, in this week's Quick Q&A, she's got four answers for us and one big question for all of you.

The usually-optimistic game designer Jane McGonigal has been thinking about whether those of us who love to play video games will regret it in the end. She keeps meeting people who think gamers will. She keeps meeting people who doubt any of us will wish we played more games.

Game designer and champion Jane McGonigal advocates games as a tool for making the world a better place. She has a book and a pile of research explaining all of the ways in which games can be beneficial for players' physical and mental health as well as for the wider world.

Gamification is the act of applying video game-like rewards to non-gaming situations as a form of motivation. Imagine earning experience points for taking out the trash, or scoring well on a customer service survey, or learning how to create homemade explosives for use in terrorist acts.

Game designer Jane McGonigal tried to convince Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert yesterday that playing video games helps people to be more confident. He's got his unique way of interpreting things.

In one frame, a mom who cut her kids off from video games and other electronics for six months. In the right frame, a game designer who says kids benefit from up to three hours of gaming a day.

Only video games can save the world, says Jane McGonigal, but only if we dedicate more time to playing them, some 21 billion hours of game time per week needed to survive the next century.

Jane McGonigal believes in gamers, because they're trained to believe they can win. She's built an alternate-reality game to tap that confidence and channel it into good works benefiting gamers' communities, with the larger goal of fostering empowerment in Africa.

Yesterday we reported that Ray Kurzweil had launched a futurism-themed MMO - Superstruct. By 'launched' we of course meant 'blogged about'. Superstruct is in fact a product of the Institute for the Future and is directed by Jane I Love Bees McGonigal. Apologies for the confusion. [Superstruct]