Software for Play: Beyond games

Games can therefore be understood as imagination infrastructures—engines for imaginative engagement. There are so many games out there these days, endless virtual worlds, that the utopian potential of this medium to break far beyond the limited possibilities for collective imagination in “normal” society also seems endless.

What does it look like wh... See more

For instance, sometimes we create abstraction layers that allow people to create things on top of them explicitly without having to understand anything beneath them. We call those “platforms.” The expectation is that when we create abstraction layers like that, we should see an explosion of creativity, since now people can focus only on the creativ... See more

Take the humble “document” as an example. For decades, document editing programs like word processors effectively emulated a printed sheet of paper, onto which the user typed with an emulated typewriter. Other software tools like spreadsheets did better, managing to escape complete skeuomorphism in favor of an infinite canvas. Notion is another goo... See more

So all you need to do is understand the mechanics of the software, and the rest is pretty much collage. You don't have to actually build anything. All you have to do is paint the landscape in your own colors. It's perfectly possible to make a very professional game with an army of one. I simply call on a friend and collaborator who knows how to mod... See more