"What are the silos? Control. The silos are computer-generated dream worlds built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this.

[holds up chart showing clicks on ad units]"

"Play: Play, therefore, introduces something that can be called “second reality” (Vygotsky, 1978). In this reality the life is going on as if it is the “primary reality,” but with the nice difference that whenever I don’t like what happens, I simply stop the process and go out, or start it anew. This makes play suspiciously like consciousness

Tools:... See more

"Human consciousness emerges on the interface between three components of animal behaviour:

Communication

Play

Use of tools

Behaviour, in this context, is a biological adjustment by means of movements and all kinds of movement-related physiological activity

Communication and play yields symbolic games and, more importantly, language

Interaction between s... See more

"Striving play: pursuing winning for the sake of the struggle and the intrinsic act of playing the game itself.

Two clear parts:

In order to engage ourselves in striving play, I must be able to take on a disposable end that is treated as final. It builds the capacity to submerge ourselves in narrowed agential modes.

Being unable to do this leads to th... See more

Open-ended meaning-making, shared world, scarce real-estate. These three properties are crucial. Every game with more than one player becomes a game about the interaction between those players. Without shared scarcity, there is no incentive to join our realities, and meaning-making becomes fork-only.

As it turns out, there is no unifying theory of game design. To create games, we have to draw upon the art and science of psychology, mathematics, interaction design, and storytelling.