"Shall we play a game?"
For those of us who grew up playing videogames in arcades, hearing that computerized voice in WarGames was the moment when gaming became more than a frantic quest for quarters. That voice — tempting Matthew Broderick into nearly setting off a global thermonuclear war — signaled a new epoch: Reaching the next level in Donkey Kong wasn't enough anymore. Games could be serious.
Two decades on, that revelation is now conventional wisdom. From the military's use of America's Army for recruiting to quarterbacks researching tactics via Madden NFL, we've gone from games representing life to becoming life. Ask yourself: Do you believe that your club moves have improved from playing Dance Dance Revolution? Have your driving skills matured because of Gran Turismo? Does cleaning out your RSS reader remind you of playing Pac-Man? Does the action of the iPhone's bouncing icons recall Mario Bros.? Have you tried to convince your friends that the invasion of Sudoku and Tetris into your dreams is proof of high-level brain activity? Welcome to the arcade called you.
Of course, the basics of gameplay — competing against opponents, setting records, winning prizes — are as old as human civilization. But the gaming mindset has now become pervasive. We use game models to motivate ourselves, to answer questions, to find creative solutions. For many, life itself has turned into a game. Our online lives are just twists on the videogame leaderboards, where we jockey to get our blog a higher rank on Technorati and compete to acquire more friend-adds on MySpace than the next guy.
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