one of the things that’s interested me recently in some of my writing is this idea that we’re in what I call a Ludic Century. Ludic coming from Ludus which is the Latin word for play. Um, what I mean by that is if you look at the way culture evolves in very broad strokes, um, there was an industrial revolution which was in the late 20th Century, replaced by an information, uh, revolution. And then what’s - what’s after that? What are we in if - if, you know, if the information revolution sort of happened several decades ago with the rise of computers and digital technology. Um, I would argue that we’re in a time that I call a Ludic Century. And all I mean by that is that, um, information has been put at play. And if you look at something like Wikipedia, for example, um, information in the mid to late 20th Century tended to be something that was about experts who created knowledge and then that was accessed by other people, whether you were going to the Library of Congress or just looking inside an encyclopedia. Information was kind of fixed and static and filtered down from above. Today more people research through Wikipedia than any other place where they get their information and Wikipedia has a very blurry line between the - the - the users and -and - and the creators of information. And, in fact, um, it is a community that even evolves its own policies for how they police themselves over time. It’s a messy, fuzzy, playful system, I would say, um, that generates information and that knowing how to use Wikipedia is part of being literate today. That doesn’t just mean knowing how to use a computer. That also means being critical of the information that you find. Understanding that you don’t know who made it and you need to maybe question what are the ideologies behind the people that are doing it. Maybe even going into the source code and looking and seeing who are the people writing - writing this stuff. So, um, the Ludic Century is a century in which I think games are going to be a central part of how we spend our time. I think that games or game-like experiences, in other words experiences that are participatory, interactive, modular, that connect us with each other rather than experiences that are more about receiving information, um, are going to dominate in the next hundred years. Um, and I know that’s kind of a grand statement and, uh, it’s obviously a ridiculous kind of prediction to make but I think I’m just trying to point towards the idea that games are central in our culture now and - and becoming more important. And I think that that’s a really wonderful and - and interesting thing. Um, in the 20th Century, although there were, were many, many forms of culture, from architecture and music and poetry and literature and theater, um, the moving image really in my mind was - was the dominant one in the sense that our main ways of getting news and information, or ways of people telling personal stories, our - our grand cultural epics were all carried through the moving image, though - through film and video. Um, and I think that while none of those earlier forms of culture are going away, games are bringing a new kind of experience to people so that - that if the moving image was the dominant form of culture in the 20th Century, I think in the 21st Century we’re going to see that shift towards games. And, uh, or things that again are more game-like, things that are participatory and interactive and why does that make me excited? Well, um, if you think about what play is, because the Ludic Century is - is about play. Um, um, we use in English the word play to mean like a steering wheel where you have a little bit of play there. No, why, what is this? What is this play? Why do we call that play? Well, there is some kind of structure there. There’s a steering wheel which is connected to a, uh, a drive shaft, connected to an axle and some tires, you know. And so by - by turning this I can turn the wheels on - on my car. Um, but the play in the system, it’s like the - the functioning of the system in way that doesn’t have to do with its purely utilitarian function, right? The, the, uh, the idea that the little bit of play in the system is the amount that I can move the steering wheel before I’m actually engaging the tires. So, play is something that, let me park my car over here so I can talk to you directly again. Uh, play is something that, um, is in between existing structures. Right. But that the play of the - of the car, the steering wheel, is only there because there’s some -some structure within which we’re playing. And so I think for me that’s the promise of play, that these structures, whether they’re structures of language, whether they’re social structures, structures of power, cultural structures, as we get more playful in this Ludic Century perhaps through play we can find a way of thinking about, um, not tearing down structures, but playing within them. And through play transforming them. For example, slang is a wonderful example of how play and language transforms language over time. Something that is - that is a weird word like Google becomes, you know, eventually adopted and in the center. Um, other maybe less appropriate words that I could say in this interview also, you know, are slang and become - become part of language. That’s how language grows, and changes, and evolves over time. Um, and I think it’s exciting to think about how in our Ludic Century, um, some of these structures might grow, and play, and change. And I think in my own small way being a game designer, I’m part of this, uh, idea of sort of promoting in play, creating new forms of play, and spreading play throughout the world. And I’m grateful that I can, uh, spend my time doing that.
