In Free to Learn, Gray quotes Karl Groos who says that biologically, we use play as a way to learn. His evidence is that lower forms of intelligent beings - insects, reptiles, fish, etc. - don't have the same need for adaptive learning, and so they don't really play much.

Mammals, on the other hand, have greater need to learn. So they play more. And the higher the more complicated the mammal's learning needs, the longer they play into adulthood.

Based on the amount of information we're innundated with (Getting Things Done), my conjecture is that we as a culture need to play more (Play is serious business) to stay abreast of everything. This is corroborated by Jonathan Blow in a talk (Video Games and the Future of Education) he gave about the future of education.

He says that the element that games teach best is the deep-in-the-bones understanding of the underlying systems. He calls it learning "the spirit" of the system in question. Ha says that because we live in a global system driven society, learning systems is somewhat an emergency.

Playing games can fill this need. And not just specific games, but games that allow us to get used to thinking in systems - PUBG (PUBG Battlegrounds), Fortnite (Fortnite), etc.

Citations

#education #gamedesign #toolong