Games have trouble satisfying creative urges—to the extent that they do, they’re just a medium for classic creativity, rather than a time-wasting game. It’s no accident that lots of programming talent is being expended on a more dynamic version of Second Life, and I can certainly see game-like (or at least hyper-competitive )features in Wikipedia—which is a lot like a version of trivial pursuit that happens to output an encyclopedia). It’s true that as games get more compelling, they’ll turn into evolutionary dead ends—but I strongly suspect that the most compelling games are the ones that take advantage of our evolutionary instincts by tricking us into doing what makes evolutionary sense.
Games have trouble satisfying creative urges—to the extent that they do, they’re just a medium for classic creativity, rather than a time-wasting game. It’s no accident that lots of programming talent is being expended on a more dynamic version of Second Life, and I can certainly see game-like (or at least hyper-competitive )features in Wikipedia—which is a lot like a version of trivial pursuit that happens to output an encyclopedia). It’s true that as games get more compelling, they’ll turn into evolutionary dead ends—but I strongly suspect that the most compelling games are the ones that take advantage of our evolutionary instincts by tricking us into doing what makes evolutionary sense.