We've been playing games since humanity had civilization - there is something primal about our desire and our ability to play games. It's so deep-seated that it can bypass latter-day cultural norms and biases.

When you strip away the genre differences and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.

Games that make you feel good about yourself are good games to be playing.

The real world just doesn’t offer up as easily the carefully designed pleasures, the thrilling challenges, and the powerful social bonding afforded by virtual environments. Reality doesn’t motivate us as effectively. Reality isn’t engineered to maximize our potential. Reality wasn’t designed from the bottom up to make us happy.

I see a future in which games once again are explicitly designed to improve quality of life, to prevent suffering, and to create real, widespread happiness.

I didn't accomplish what I set out to do, but I realized I had set out to do the wrong things

It seems like what happens when we play games is that we go into a psychological state called eustress, or positive stress. It's basically the same as negative stress in the sense that we get our adrenaline up, you know, our breathing rate quickens, our pulse quickens.