My first book, PLAYING WITH REALITY: HOW GAMES HAVE SHAPED OUR WORLD comes out next week! I was constantly surprised while researching this book—and learned so much about people by studying something that fascinates them (thread)
When lockdowns hit, I turned to games to pass the time (like a lot of people) and rediscovered their brilliance. Not my proudest moment, but my sisters could tell how depressed I was by how elaborate I’d made my Animal Crossing garden. (Yes, I bred blue roses.)
Games are one of our oldest cultural institutions: Archaeologists have found what appear to be ~7000+ year old game boards, making games older than written language. Today games are one of the dominant forms of media, and growing.
Play is much older than humans. It’s such a deep instinct that scientists have surgically removed the cortex from newborn rats—the part of the brain we think of as being responsible for intelligence—and those rats still play. Birds, reptiles, even bees play!
What makes play so compelling? Why have people continued to be drawn to games for thousands of years? What can we learn about people by studying what fascinates them?
A lot, it turns out. PLAYING WITH REALITY explores the history of games and the many ways they secretly power the modern world. The study of games yielded deep mathematical insights, from probability theory to game theory.
German officers perfected Kriegsspiel, or “war game,” a battle simulator that helped them reshape the face of modern Europe. The fate of the world has—more than once—literally hinged on the outcome of a game.
Evolutionary biologists made huge progress when they discovered that life can be modeled as a repeated game.
From the first days of computers, researchers used games as the substrate for AI. They hoped games would be for intelligence what the prism was for light. Just as the prism broke light into its constituent parts, they hoped games would break intelligence into basic algorithms.
As a bonus, neuroscientists discovered that the brain may use the same learning algorithm that AI researchers devised to teach a checkers playing program how to improve by playing against itself.
Today, games are everywhere in our technology. Games dictate what ads were served, how we’re paired on dating apps, how we’re matched with jobs. It’s time we took games more seriously—not just as an art form, but as a science—and as a technology of control.
Because ultimately, games play us. When you play monopoly, you have to act like a cutthroat capitalist, even if you’re actually a hippie at heart.
If corporations are designing the hidden games we move in, we need to know what their rules are, and hopefully figure out how to build better games where everyone can win.
If this sounds like a book you’d like to read, ask for it at your local library, or buy from any of the links here (US): penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700440/p…
Or here (UK): penguin.co.uk/books/446802/p…
And, if you’re near London and this sounds fun, come see my talk at @Ri_Science this Saturday at 7pm! rigb.org/whats-on/how-g…
My eternal gratitude to everyone at @riverheadbooks who made this book possible, with special thanks to my editors @courtneyyoung and Laura Stickney, and my brilliant agent @zcosini!
Finally, my eternal thanks to the amazing team at @AllenLaneBooks and @SloanPublic. This book was generously supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's grant for Public Understanding of Science & Technology–an incredible program!
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