Even When You’re Not Playing, You’re Playing: On “Critical Hits” — Cleveland Review of Books

Very few traditional game developers have experience designing and controlling gameplay/gamer psychology when the game becomes exposed to the forces of speculators, investors and arbitrageurs who have their own out-of-game incentives that move around the game’s token and NFT prices.

Likewise, players lose hours inside god games. They are sometimes referred to as “time-sweep” games and noted for their addictiveness. Crucially, time moves faster in the god games. Years pass with one turn of Civilization or SimCity. One Sims day is equal to 24 minutes in our world. There is also a particular kind of time-abolishing focus required... See more

What's the best theory on why games have such a low cultural footprint despite the incredible economic prowess?

In this human-made apocalyptic context, it seemed to me that interactive participation by the viewer made the more sense, by putting them in a situation of urgency rather than passively absorbing content. The game forces you to make choices and decisions. That's how the world works. This need for real, urgent action is just as true in reality as it... See more