Video games are more than part of our culture, they extend into areas far beyond just entertainment.
Games are a way of understanding dynamic, hopelessly interdependent systems whether in an attempt to predict how dynamic situations with multiple actors with differing objectives will turn out or better understand history as a living dynamic thing that happened to occur one way (see Cole Werhle’s board game Pax Pamir 2e or John Company as perfect examples of this).
The evolution of good game design and the general progress of most games getting better UI systems over time as designers figure out how to best represent complex situations and choices to players is also FAR more important than just a nice consequence of iterative design, it is the groundwork for good architecture in the software realm in terms of how software is experienced by humans.
longer thought
This is why I find the dismissiveness of virtual interactive experiences as somehow lesser to “real” experiences so insulting, video games make us more human by making us able to express ourselves more truthfully, intuitively and vividly in digital spaces… providing entirely new ways of people finding theirselves, which is the most human thing to do! The rest of systems in modern society DESPERATELY need to learn from good video game design and UI principles, and this lame attempt to “gamify” things is such a superficial phoned in movement that I can’t even use the word “gamify” without putting quotes on it… it doesn’t count.
Learning from the wisdom of game design is NOT just making everything into a points system that constantly prods you with rewards and goals like a casino, that is an insult to actual good video game design… but I digress…
The biggest mistake people will continue to make in the early 21st century is to treat the medium of video games as purely an expression of artistic pursuit, it is that and so much more. I mean… look at Ukraine… who do you think has been training to fly FPV drones for hours and hours in abstracted contexts that nonetheless drill the same core competencies you need to be able to fly FPV drones aggressively?
What pushed the development of graphics cards for years and years before anyone thought to apply them to machine learning?
It wasn’t war, it wasn’t business, it was video gaming
I got a book recommendation for you, I really liked this one: Games: Agency as Art
Games, then, are a unique social technology. They are a method for inscribing forms of agency into
artifactual vessels: for recording them, preserving them, and passing them around. And we possess a
special ability: we can be fluid with our agency; we can submerge ourselves in alternate agencies
designed by another. In other words, we can use games to communicate forms of agency.
Games turn out to be part of the human practices of inscription.
Video games are more than part of our culture, they extend into areas far beyond just entertainment.
Games are a way of understanding dynamic, hopelessly interdependent systems whether in an attempt to predict how dynamic situations with multiple actors with differing objectives will turn out or better understand history as a living dynamic thing that happened to occur one way (see Cole Werhle’s board game Pax Pamir 2e or John Company as perfect examples of this).
The evolution of good game design and the general progress of most games getting better UI systems over time as designers figure out how to best represent complex situations and choices to players is also FAR more important than just a nice consequence of iterative design, it is the groundwork for good architecture in the software realm in terms of how software is experienced by humans.
longer thought
This is why I find the dismissiveness of virtual interactive experiences as somehow lesser to “real” experiences so insulting, video games make us more human by making us able to express ourselves more truthfully, intuitively and vividly in digital spaces… providing entirely new ways of people finding theirselves, which is the most human thing to do! The rest of systems in modern society DESPERATELY need to learn from good video game design and UI principles, and this lame attempt to “gamify” things is such a superficial phoned in movement that I can’t even use the word “gamify” without putting quotes on it… it doesn’t count.
Learning from the wisdom of game design is NOT just making everything into a points system that constantly prods you with rewards and goals like a casino, that is an insult to actual good video game design… but I digress…
The biggest mistake people will continue to make in the early 21st century is to treat the medium of video games as purely an expression of artistic pursuit, it is that and so much more. I mean… look at Ukraine… who do you think has been training to fly FPV drones for hours and hours in abstracted contexts that nonetheless drill the same core competencies you need to be able to fly FPV drones aggressively?
What pushed the development of graphics cards for years and years before anyone thought to apply them to machine learning?
It wasn’t war, it wasn’t business, it was video gaming
I like to say, half joking, that no one should be allowed to hold high ranking offices if they can’t win every victory condition in civilization.
I got a book recommendation for you, I really liked this one: Games: Agency as Art
Hell yeah thank you!