Games are the future, and the future is now

Don't get left behind

If you are not already thinking about the world through the lens of Games, you are already dangerously behind. But it's not too late to catch up.

Games in some form have always been an inseparable feature of human life, but they are now exponentially more important due to the new dimensions available through modern multimedia. Games are no longer confined to the purview of youth; they are everywhere, at all times, whether we realize it or not. They are now embedded in the design of almost every piece of software, every company strategy, every form of entertainment.

This is a considerable double-edged (and double-handed) sword; for by failing to realize the significance of Games in our world, we will be utterly dissected by the weight of the weapon as it falls back upon us. But, on the other hand, if we can learn to utilize this powerful tool, we will be able to carve a path through any obstacle and build our idealized future. There's a reason that Games have become so ubiquitous, and it has to do with our fundamental ability as humans.

Noticing the shift

It takes someone deeply involved in Games to notice this unprecedented shift. I've been heavily involved in Games since my childhood, and during that time they were mostly confined to the domains of the playground, the gymnasium, the kitchen table, or the television. But it's striking to me to see these same systems appear in other domains: rewards programs, app notifications, school curricula, online marketplaces, and workout classes.

But I need to clarify what I mean by all this, because many are probably still thinking about Games in the traditional manner. These Games are useful from the standpoint of analysis, because their simplified and obvious nature makes them easy to observe. These are the Games that filled my time as a youth. I played almost every American team sport you can think of: soccer, football, basketball, baseball, etc. I played made-up games with my two brothers and the neighbors who lived in our cul-de-sac: freeze tag, sardines, cops and robbers, cowboys and indians*. I played with action figures, I played with Legos, I played with trading cards.

Though this kind of experience with traditional Games may be familiar to many people, I went deeper as I got older. My brothers and I got heavily involved in Board Games and Video Games¹. After school was done and we finished sports practice, we'd play games late into the night. We played Halo, Smash Bros, Call of Duty, Star Wars Battlefront, Legend of Zelda, Rainbow Six. We'd wake up early on Saturdays and Sundays to play some more, and when our parents founds us at dawn after hours of Gaming, we'd tell them we'd only just gotten up too. I'd go over to friends houses and have all-night tournaments, full of shouting and running around.

My rebellious behavior in high school was not sneaking out to light up a joint and get high, but sneaking in to light up the plasma screen and indulge in an even more stimulating mindset: sights, sounds, haptic feedback, exploring unprecedented and impossible worlds, fighting epic and earthshattering battles, experiencing the literal fantastic.

Our primary ability

Years later, as a young adult (and still an avid gamer), I began to study two very interesting fields that form the basis of this argument. The first was Game design. There's an entire science dedicated to the creation of the kinds of experiences described above, tailoring them to be as fun and engaging and (occasionally) educational as possible. There's also an art to it as well, as opinions vary on the optimal balance of many different elements.

The second field I began to study was evolutionary psychology, which reveals to us common threads of our minds that have existed for millennia, and to try to theorize as to why they are so². For example, evolutionary theory may helps us to use sexual competition as an explanation for why are males so competitive and females so choosy. It's from the study of these two fields that I finally realized that I was seeing Game design slowly creeping into my everyday life (beyond just the domain of my traditional Games). And it all stems from our primary ability as humans.

Humans are fundamentally problem-solvers. The first problem we face is the same one faced by all of life: Survival. For most plants and animals, this is a constant and desperate struggle, with populations teetering on the brink of homeostasis or extinction, fighting tooth and nail for another month of life, any slight disturbance to their ecosystem spelling possible disaster. Fortunately, humans have the benefits of complex languages, advanced technologies, and economic systems, so survival is relatively easy. Sure, raising an infant is still difficult, but the mortality rate is so drastically different now compared to 3000 years ago. [fact vs. other animals?].

As a result, we have the unique opportunity to move beyond Survival and to tackle other problems (arguably more difficult, but more fulfilling). We climb Maslow's Hierarchy by further fortifying our survival resources, building more and better relationships, developing meaningful and lucrative careers, refining our hobbies and tastes to the point of extreme sensuality, maximizing the potentials of our lives.

But notice this: When we solve one problem, are we satisfied? That thing we were working so hard for, which we said, "Once I get this done, then I'll be happy, then things will be alright" -- what happened when we got it? We got bored again. And that's ok. So now it's onto the next problem. When they aren't problems around, we make new ones.

In the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes predicted that due to the ability of technology to simplify and obviate our tasks, we would be working 15 hours per week by the 1960s. And that was before the internet revolution. But what happened? We have even more technology than Keynes could have dreamed of, and yet we are MORE busy, not LESS.

When we have free time, we fill that time with something. Sure, there are intermittent periods where we relax and goof off for hours or even weeks. But eventually, that old desire returns: "let's make things better. This is what David Foster Wallace calls "the Dissatisfied Infant part of me, the part that always and indiscriminately WANTS." But rather than fearing this indelible part of our psyche, we can use it to our advantage:

"Happiness comes from solving problems. Don’t hope for a life free of problems, but one full of good problems." - Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

The best problems

Games are purest form of problem-solving. Through the art and science of Game design, they are literally designed by their creators to be as fun as possible to keep people engaged for hours on end. They have interesting premises, entire worlds and backstories built around their action, tight and balanced rulesets (from thousands of hours of playtesting), intriguing tradeoffs between risks and rewards, and satisfying interactions between the players we choose to include.

In contrast, in the rest of life, we are usually confronted by problems without choosing them. We don't always get to choose the rules of our jobs, our neighborhoods, our cities, our own bodies. We don't get to choose the people who playing with us (either for or against us). Sometimes the rewards of these problems only barely justify the sacrifices necessary to solve them. Or rather it's that if we don't solve them, the consequences are so painful that we'd rather just deal with them (for example, cleaning up around the house, paying taxes, getting a check-up).

Flow is commonly understood as peak mental experience, and it occurs automatically once the conditions for deeply engaging work have been met. Though we can encounter this in many kinds of ways throughout life, the most readily accessible forms come from games. Games inherently include many of the prerequisites for Flow.

The easiest way for us to understand the power of Games is through the analysis of Video Games, because these are the most distilled and dense Games, leveraging all available dimensions. They are so powerful that Video Game addiction is now a recognized, diagnosible mental illness in the DSM IV.

Video Games as source of Flow can be problematic they become all-consuming, but it can also be powerful if leverage correctly. One of the most popular Video Games of all time is the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The game is quite unoriginal in its general properties: You as the protagonist are the savior of the world, one very Tolkeinesque and full of swords and arrows, magic, dragons, ogres, etc. But what makes it so addicting is its system of progression. Almost any action you perform in the game will enable you to develop one of about 100+ skills. If you’re running, you build up your athleticism, jump down from a bridge, acrobatics. Cast a spell of flames, you level up your destruction magic, cast this spell of invisibility, you improve your illusion magic. Everything in the game is rewarding, and it’s very obvious to you that you’re making progress.

About a year ago, I revisited this game from 2011, and I was shocked to see myself swallowed up in its amazing system. Even after having played it many times before, I still couldn't help myself but to get absorbed. And I began to wonder why. I wanted to see if I could figure out how to take the addicting mechanisms of Skyrim and put them into my own life. And suddenly I realized what they were. The game rewards you for getting better at things, and it makes it very clear to you how to do that. So I began to see my life as like Skyrim- instead of improving my swords skill, I would improve my physical fitness through martial arts. Instead of focusing on my magical prowess, I would develop my intellect and wisdom through reading and writing better. Instead of enhancing my persuasion and barter skills, I would build real-world Charisma through having small talk with anyone I saw, and calling my friends more often. I took the principles of Game design that made Skyrim a blockbuster, and I put them into my own life so that I would be addicted instead in polishing my own real-world skills.

Transforming everyday life

But the most novel invention of the 21st century is not some radical creation, but merely the application of Games to domains outside the traditional. One aspect is the trend of Gamification. Designers of all sorts have realized the benefits of building their products or services like Games, which naturally take advantage of our proclivity for problem-solving, inducing us into Flow as we complete whatever action they intend for us. Depending on their intentions, this could be helpful, harmless, or even dangerous.

Gamification has now infiltrated all of our lives, whether we realize it or not. All smartphone apps operate on this principle: they give you a task to do, and you have to complete it. The task often involves simply removing the notification bubbles by interacting with the app. In social media, you can increase your "high score" by getting more likes and more followers (which tend to compound each other). But but of these design choices also keep us enthralled to the social network and the advertisers who live there, who are fighting to capture our attention and our money and our time. The more time you spend in the network (whether instagram, reddit, netflix, or the New Yorker), the more chances they have to make money from your precious time.

Moreover, with algorithmic recommendation systems, these services subtly suggest more content without your conscious input. Recommendation are so powerful because they are practical: they tend to be actually quite helpful in referring you to the next interesting thing. But this is also somewhat insidious if you don't recognize the game design behind it. They are also subtly taking away your control and choice, nudging you down paths of confirmation bias. It's been proven that the best way to combat this most common of all biases is to simply take a step back and recognize that it's happening. If you are familiar with the principles of the Game design behind this, it's much easier to notice this.

In my favorite Video Game of all time, the protagonist (you) has been brainwashed since birth to follow the commands of others whenever a certain phrase is uttered ("would you kindly..."). Once you realize this, you struggle mightily against your programming, and if you play the game right, you can actually break free from your mental bondage. It's the main villain (who turns out to be your ally) who reveals this power to you, as he says this iconic quote: "A man chooses; A slave obeys." If we don't realize the subtle influence of Game design, we will unwittingly become the slaves of others³.

But Gamification is more than just a subliminal marketing technique; it is also a powerful tool for unleashing good intentions. The most popular learning language method in the world is Duolingo, a free game you can play on your phone. It's no longer the traditional classroom method of lecture, memorization, homework, exercises, and exams. Instead, it's all of that crammed into 5 minutes a day of playing a video game on your phone.

We also see this encouraging all kinds of development, from physical (group classes like Crossfit, Peloton, Orange Theory) to mental (meditation apps like Headspace). You might even see websites that have a progress bar on the top that encourages you to finish the article.

Gamification is the most obvious example of how the future of Games is already here now. If we aren't paying attention to it, we will be subject to the design choices made by others. Moreover, if you want to have any influence in the future, you will need to learn to appreciate how Game design can be used to develop your communication, your products and services, your reputation. If you don't, you will be left behind by those that know how to use it better than you.

Getting left behind

The perfect analogy for the relevance of Game design is the story of the computer. Both of my grandmothers are alive today, but they have very different lives due to their experience with the computer. One of them had an antique business 20 years ago, and she started learning the computer in order to use eBay and email to sell her art online. The other one never needed to use the computer, so she never learned it. Now, in their 80s, the former one keeps up with the world by sending emails and reading articles online and sharing them. The latter is unable to pay her bills, check her bank statements, or do anything online. So many services now require an online interaction; it's basically assumed that that's the one and only method people will use. She is completely hamstrung by her inability to use the computer; she is isolated and lonely and left behind. She is computer illiterate.

The word illiterate is not an exaggeration. It is almost the same as truly being unable to read or write. It totally limits your ability to interact with the world. I have a student right now who is a freshman in college, and he is studying business. Although I am teaching how to use software for complex simulations, he doesn't even understand the questions being posed to him because he never learned algebra.

How is he supposed to do an investment analysis when he can't answer this question: "You have $10,000. How many stocks can you buy if they cost $100 each?" He honestly doesn't know where to begin-- "10,000 plus 100? minus? I don't know." It's a real shame, because he is unable to keep up with his classmates, and hard as I am trying, he is already left behind.

Both of these stories are really sad, but I tell them because the same thing could happen to us if we don't keep up with games as an information source. David Perell was asked if he feared GPT-3 (an AI that can create compelling textual stories, sometimes indistinguishable from humans), and he responded that technology is only scary if you are switched off and out of touch. Otherwise, it becomes a tool that you can leverage. The same is true of Game Design.

What’s coming next

But Games have evolved beyond traditional leisure activities into the predominant form of media, and this is because modern multimedia offers many more dimensions of interaction. We've had books since Guttenberg in the 1500s (scrolls before that for millennia). We added audio with radio in the xxx? We added video with Television in the 50s, then color (!) in the 70s. The internet gave rise to text blogs in the late 90s, then Web 2 added back in images, audio, and video (think youtube). Now it's web 3 and what do we have? Games.

We've seen how modern Games are evident both explicitly through Video Games and implicitly through Gamification, but as the future arrives, we have to use our imagination to anticipate their next evolution. We have hints of Virtual and Augmented reality, and these might be our best clues. But we can also use the imagination of science fiction to help us envision what's next.

Consider Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, in which a young boy saves the entire human race through a pivotal spaceship battle. How does he do it? He is deceived into thinking he is simply playing a Video Game, a Game he had been trained from his childhood to master. Thinking he was just playing the Game, the stakes were lowered in his mind, and he was able to make the decisions to sacrifice thousands of human lives in order to achieve a narrow but crucial victory.

We see this already today, with simulations being used to prepare people for more dangerous scenarios. Pilots use flying programs, the Army uses all kinds of games, Nasa, engineers, etc.

Or consider The Matrix: when Neo is rescued into the real world to be the savior of humanity, he has no survival skills. His muscles and nerves are completely atrophied from spending his entire life in a coma. The solution? Let him play a bunch of Games. The jump program, the lady in the red dress, the dojo duel with Morpheus, etc. In the click of a button, Neo learns a martial art with a thousands of years of history: "I know Kung Fu."

This may seem so futuristic as to be unrealistic, but I've been learning skills from Video games since I was a kid. The earliest game I remember from my childhood is Math Blaster, a game which taught me how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. My older brother, in the next room, would play Command & Conquer Red Alert, a military strategy game. He later served in the Army as a Captain and now is an FBI Special Agent. Games were an inherent part of my development process as a child, and I learned a lot of skills (including social skills from team sports). Is it any wonder that the future of learning will be through interactive Games and simulations?

Responding

Games are like nuclear science: it can be used to unleash devastation through nuclear bombs, or to provide a miracle of unimaginable opportunity through nuclear power. Though traditional Games are a simply a leisure activity, modern Games take advantage of new dimensions to spread throughout every aspect of our lives, influencing our behavior in subtle ways, engaging us in peak mental experiences, and providing us with amazing simulations to learn new things.

How will you respond to this opportunity?

First, and easiest, just pay attention and try to view everything through the lens of games. Not everything is a Game (for example, relationships are often just difficult and confusing; please don't assume your partner is playing a game with you.), but more often than not, some element of Game design is present. Try to see the mechanisms that might be trying to encourage you to act in a certain way. You might still choose to act that way, but if you at least go into it with eyes wide open, you won't be falling prey to another's influence without your consent.

Moreover, realizing that you are “playing a Game” is a different mindset; you are more relaxed, willing to make mistakes, try new things. What if doing chores was a Game, and you tried to get them done as efficiently as possible, but also having fun doing them (like singing or dancing to music)? What if negotiating for a better position or a pay raise was a game? What if improving a skill or a hobby of yours (such as learning the guitar) was a game? Then you might be less frustrated as you fail over and over.

A second response, and the hardest, is that you could dive deeply into the art and science of Game design. You could spend more of your time consuming and considering Games, maybe even making some of your own. This is probably the best thing you could do, but I imagine most won't have the time or the desire to commit so completely.

Instead, if you enjoyed this essay, you could simply continue following my writing. I am and have always been fascinated by Games, as I hope you can clearly see. I already do to activities I recommended above, and I love to write about what I have learned through those experiences. If you want to keep your finger on the pulse of Games, then keep following along with me. And participate in the discussions by bringing your own experiences to the table. If you can do that, then you won’t be left behind. Rather, you will be at the forefront of the future, playing all the way, and carving your own path through the mountains in your way.

1. I've played over 300 video games, and my brother now has a collection of over 150 board games

2. "When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man." - Clockwork Orange

3. The connection may be even stronger than we imagined. Eric Conway's Game of Life might demonstrate that the fundamental mechanism of all life and evolution is actually a game.