Games are now being designed to teach people about life. In creating the ‘long zoom’ of spore Wright wants to give people a sense of infinity, something larger than themselves and ultimately help them find their place in it...

To me this is just age old philosophy, the question of ‘is it all connected’?

Or is the universe, like the spore planets with their seeded creatures, something that resembles connectivity but is actually just massively single player. Will negotiating a place in the universe for your creatures actually help you understand the place any better - I think it’s still just a little further than what you can reach.

They say it’s the journey that’s important. The fact that you actively try to figure it out yourself, that’s being autonomous, thinking for yourself, and if you think for yourself then you exist. So, if you game then you exist.

Life, like game is about constructs, performance and strategy. Like a performance, we choose a character and we act it out within the boundaries of societies, the rules - well some people are hackers who rewrite the rules. We choose our allies and our enemies (NPC’s) and we play.

As a child of post-modernism I am critically aware. I have been taught by society to deconstruct, to question and yet live within the capitalist lie that if you work hard enough you’ll make it to something better. This world is just like a game world - you do what you do because you have to whether or not you understand the reasons given, whether or not they’re valid. Sometimes there’s morality, right and wrong, sometimes not.

But really - to me life is just a game, you reach levels, you get special powers and in the end the only thing that is important is that you enjoyed it.

I game therefore I am.