Make your average person a soldier and put them in a combat situation and see how quickly the PTSD's go up. The video/speech/idea is 99% BS. Think of the video games they were playing: most likely first person shooters--games that desensitize people to killing and death... that's why they were less likely to go sour after seeing rotting corpses at their feet during the day and images of their allies' lives jumping out of their chests in their nightmares. I used to be addicted to Counter-Strike. I used to ponder that the military could strike deals with game devs to help them find their best soldiers through game statistics (see Last Starfighter). Perhaps if your XBox Live gamer score could give you an extra rank when joining the military. I think it's a great idea--IF you want to beef up your military but I don't think that is going to save the world.
I didn't have too much money growing up, but I owned a C64 and an NES. I only owned about five NES games. I completed nearly every game I had and the one that I didn't (Battletoads), I was able to get farther than anybody else I've ever met and talked to about that ridiculously difficult game. My friends that had 30 some odd games never beat any of their games. I attribute my value in the small amount of games I had to the amount of return I got out of them. Instead my friends would always get the next best game and forget about the previous five games. This mentality still exists today, as a very small percentage of people complete the super budget video games made now. I didn't have money for Nintendo Power either, the then ultimate source for game cheats and hints. I played without cheats or help. That information is so prevalent today and game design has evolved to the point where sales and shelf life (making a game easier--see Pacman DX) is more important than the challenge. I suspect most perceived "epic wins" these days are false indicators--just as sitting on a couch and watching a football team win a game and then telling your friends that "we won". I have never gotten into a car accident or gotten a ticket. I attribute this to alot of things, but I ultimately think I am a better driver and that can easily translate to video game playing (training). But does this help save the world?
The games Jane proposes are not ones that would be fun and useful to find solutions as the premise would have to also include fantasy elements like aliens or ghosts, etc. People use games like that as an escape from reality. Spending more time playing video games is not what we need. Spending more quality time playing video games is what we need. Don't just increase the game dev's income by spending more time playing subscription based carrot chasers. To improve a person's out of game life while playing games would require an almost direct reward system. I realized real quickly that the time it took to teach my avatar a skill in an MMO, that if I spent perhaps 150% of the time actually trying to learn the skill myself out of game, I would probably have a real world achievement. When you can put you have a 20th level WOW Wizard on your resume and it would help you get a job and not get laughed at, come talk to me.
Consider this: once your character has achieved a significant level of say, Athletics, give the player a real world gift certificate to the gym. And better yet, set up a system where if the player uses the gift certificate and clocks so many hours on exercise machines, give their avatar a bonus in athletics as well. Set up systems where good grades in school in respective courses could define their avatar in game. Suddenly doing your homework never seemed so rewarding. This is the kind of idealistic thinking Jane needs to be talking about, not about how to get people to spend more and give her more of their money. Solve diabetes or literacy first... then we'll save the world.
