Our Human Games: games are everywhere, and they matter more than most people think

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Games reflect an important part of human psychology. One broad way to think about "games" is that they are any situation that has: (a) a set of rules (explicit or implicit) that are made up by humans, (b) a scoring system (explicit or implicit) for determining how players are doing or for deciding who wins, (c) participants who are trying to increase their "score," and (d) a game context (outside of which the game rules stop applying). So, by this definition, games include ch...
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Deconstructing Accomplishment

Accomplishments are usually only achieved when a number of factors all come together. Take, for example, a tennis player. It is unlikely that he will accomplish a lot if he doesn't have ambitious goals. If he only plays for fun, or to be the best player in his tennis club, it is very unlikely he'll put in sufficient effort to win a major tournament. So ambition will be an important ingredient in determining his level of success. What's more, to attain great things in tennis, the player need to s...
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