The following post is an excerpt from Public Engagement: Survive and Thrive in a Bigger Society Volume 3. To read more essays from the Public Engagement series, visit the Edelman Digital SlideShare channel.

During a recent talk at TED, psychiatrist Stuart Brown used a series of photographs taken by Norbert Rosing at a kennel outside Churchill, Manitoba, to demonstrate the power of play.

The images show a polar bear taking an unexpected interest in one of the tethered dogs. While the other dogs became agitated as the bear approached, one, named Hudson, “calmly stood his ground and began wagging his tail.” To Rosing’s surprise, the two “put aside their ancestral animus,” gently touched noses and apparently made friends. They began playing together “like two roughhousing kids,” tumbling around in the snow while Rosing photographed the surreal encounter. The bear returned to play every afternoon for ten days in a row.

The science behind this seemingly strange behavioural change can be explained with a more familiar example: a mother and baby playing together. The mother’s cooing and smiling triggers a harmonious attunement of the pair, which can be recorded by electro-cardiograms and electroencephalograms.

In both humans and animals, Brown asserts, the act of play can induce altered physical and psychological states.

Researchers and psychologists have long accepted these effects, and the associated benefits – particularly the links between play and the development of social constructs. If we want to belong, we need social play. Rough and tumble play develops our social, cognitive, emotional and physical traits. Spectator play, ritual play and imaginative play all develop our imagination and our capacity for storytelling, among other things.

Until recently, play – and particularly its most modern iteration, gaming – were considered the preserve of children or immature adults. Now, however, the increased availability of high speed internet access across much of the developed world, combined with the ubiquity of social frameworks such as Facebook, has created a new, demographically inclusive category of games: Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs). Games like World of Warcraft, Second Life and Farmville are partly responsible for the fact that we now collectively spend 3 billion hours a week playing computer and video games. The average person turning 21 will already have spent 10,000 hours of their life playing games online – only 80 hours fewer than children in the United States spend in school from fifth grade to high school graduation.

To some, these figures may seem worrying – but gamers might be on to something. Game play is extremely productive: it produces the positive emotions scientists say are crucial to our health and success. In ‘This Might Be a Game’, Jane McGonigal suggests that positive traits induced by gaming include the energetic willingness of players to attack problems that they are confident of solving; the strong sense of community and trust felt by game players; heightened productivity, and the empowerment and optimism experienced by gamers, who “believe they’re individually capable of changing the world”. Similarly, research from major universities such as Stanford and MIT shows that we like and trust others more after we’ve played a game together – even if they’ve beaten us – and are more likely to help someone in real life after we’ve helped them in a co-operative game. Games aren’t just making us happier – they are also helping us to engage with others.

In ‘Total Engagement’, Prof Byron Reeves anticipates that companies and brands will soon borrow heavily from game worlds and their mechanics by introducing elements of sophisticated play” into their communications and messaging. Some of these ideas have begun to gain traction over the past year or so, and have given birth to a new trend, known as gamification, which is increasingly being adopted by consumer brands. 7-Eleven has gamified the in-store experience through collaboration with MMO powerhouse, Farmville, and Toyota has used iPhone apps to gamify its efficient driving initiatives, while H&M’s recent “The Blues” campaign targeted mobile shoppers to increase their retail store footfalls.

Bridging the gap between online and offline, location-based services such as Foursquare or Gowalla are awarding virtual badges for real-world accomplishments. Meanwhile, a flurry of angel and venture-backed startups, including BigDoor, Reputely, Badgeville, and OneTrueFan, are offering services to help content publishers add badges, virtual currency, and other game mechanics features to existing websites. These services may be basic, relying on social competition and the premise of exclusivity, but they have all successfully created a game layer in the real world.

Introducing elements of games into the real world – positioning tasks within stories, creating internal economies, and implementing participant-driven communication systems – can further boost engagement, enhance collaboration and encourage creative leadership. A renewed interest in play and its concrete applications has the potential to bring about a more meaningful level of engagement: gamification can create an experience which is so pleasurable that we choose to participate for the mere sake of enjoyment.

The question is, are you ready to play?