…and you know who you are…here’s a quote I found interesting. It’s from a fun novel I’m reading, and the quoted part is a bit long, but I wanted to be sure to include the whole concept. The first speaker is a game designer:
“‘My feeling about it – history goes through different stages. Right? From the eighteenth century the world’s dominant paradigm went from a religion thing to a science thing. Right? And now in the twenty-first century I think it’s shifting to a game thing.’
“‘Okay.’
“‘Games are kind of a third category. They’re between art and science. But they’re not just a mixture of them either.’
“‘That sounds right,’ I said. ‘I mean, I’m big on games myself-‘
“‘Sure. But what I’m getting at is, there’re all these people out there now, and they’re playing games all the time. To the exclusion of almost anything else.’
“‘Yeah, that’s true. That’s good for you guys, though, isn’t it?’
“‘Oh, sure. But the thing is, I kind of think there’s a reason for that.’
“‘Like what?’
“‘Like – well, maybe this sounds kind of girlie and spiritual…’
“‘No, no-‘
“‘Just that, doesn’t it seem to you that a lot of these people are playing these games almost, I don’t know, desperately?’
“‘Like how?’
“‘Just, really intensely and with a big sense of urgency.’
“‘I don’t know. But I’ve always played a lot of games, so I may not be the right person to ask-‘
“‘Just that they’re all kind of looking for something,’ she said. ‘Or another way of putting it is that a lot of other things, other media or activities or jobs or whatever, they’re all starting to seem obsolete. People intuitively know that the games are the future. In fact, maybe they’re going to be the whole future. The whole social future, anyway. The whole human future.’”
from the novel In the Courts of the Sun by Brian D’Amato (page 155-156)
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