Videogames' 'true impact'

This is an interesting, maybe even exciting, prospect to consider: Because our children are growing up with videogames, "they'll treat the world as a place for creation, not consumption," writes Will Wright, creator of The Sims, in Wired magazine. If we watch our kids playing videogames, we'll notice, he says, that "the last thing they do is read the manual. Instead, they pick up the controller and start mashing buttons to see what happens. This isn't a random process; it's the essence of the scientific method. Through trial and error, players build a model of the underlying game based on empirical evidence collected through play. As the players refine this model, they begin to master the game world. It's a rapid cycle of hypothesis, experiment, and analysis. And it's a fundamentally different take on problem-solving than the linear, read-the-manual-first approach of their parents." He explains how game design and production is changing - how, increasingly, the player is actually participating in game development, as gameplay and community are combined (in massively multiplayer online game worlds).