If Gamers Ran The World

This is (was) in the news feed as well, but thought it merited calling out:

It has online high-score charts; you can compete against people you don’t know to be the best campaigner. On the sly, they turned politics into an MMO.

Now, politics and elections aren’t games - whilst there might be scores for a while, there are greater things at stake than mere scores. But that’s the kind of thing you build when you look at the world in a gamelike way; incentives, readouts, better feedback loops. That’s the kind of thinking that can only become more pervasive as games themselves do.

-- If Gamers Ran The World [Infovore]

(via Kottke)

There have been other articles like this, talking about how MMO's can make you a better manager, etc. I think it's a solid way to frame a conversation about games and what having games as a hobby amounts to being. It's better than assuming that you can learn how to shoot a gun by playing Quake, for instance.