
Why Everything Is Becoming a Game - Wump
http://gigaom.com/2010/03/19/why-everything-is-becoming-a-game/
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fnid2
Everything has always been a game. Life is a game. Reading books about
successful market traders, the best ones treat it like a game.

The difference now is that we are able to calculate points for things we
normally didn't. Every action can be quantified and rewarded and used to
compare us with others.

~~~
barrkel
Everything isn't a game, if the word is to have any meaning at all.

~~~
derefr
"Game" has two meanings, and they're both very explicit. One comes from "game
theory"—a game is a triple of a set of players, a set of moves, and a function
mapping (player, move) tuples to payoffs. The other comes from "fun theory"—a
game is a subset of human experience which is optimal in providing choices
that are on the edge of being predicted by our instincts, allowing us to get
into "the zone" as we follow different paths to try and find rewards.

Life itself conforms to the second definition—our instincts evolved
specifically so that life would _be_ the "best" game; games are, thus,
microcosms or reimplementations of life (see, for example, The Sims, or WoW,
but even an RPG with inventory management will reflect this clearly.)

~~~
barrkel
I think at a minimum, a game needs some kind of structure, and that the
consequences of the game - the outcome - isn't particularly important. The
structure is necessary to prevent people from going too far - "fair play" -
and the outcome needs to be relatively irrelevant - "it's only a game" - so
that people don't take it too seriously, precisely so they can have fun.

I don't think either of these things is true about life.

I think games are a human formalization of the animal notion of play, which is
about developing reactions and experiences in a safe way, unlike how they will
be used for real stakes as an adult. Play fighting isn't real fighting, but
uses many of the same reactions and develops techniques.

But real fighting isn't a game.

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Sansdiego
This growing sentiment that everything is a game is annoying and troublesome.
Annoying in that this style of unoriginal regurgitant blogging is just plain
terrible, and troublesome in that the tech-exit-inspired delusion of grandeur
has spilled over into personal manifestos of life.

Games are games. Sports are games. Conveniently enough, we invented sport to
be tangible versions of our dreams; a dry run to test hypotheses, so we don’t
make the same mistakes in life, when it counts.

This is profound? I’ll play cranky old man’s advocate: If this doesn’t
irritate you, something’s wrong.

