Puzzled?

As previously stated in the last note, games have been around for thousands of years. Many of their purposes had form in one way or another to train the body or the mind in a social activity. The ancient Greek Olympics was a test to find the master athletes in the fighting ranks of the Greek legions. Chess was invented to show Japanese military the power of strategy over their opponents, and so on and so on. What all these games were though, in times of old, where side activities to take away from social inaction. Society has developed a great deal over the thousands of years and social interaction has become variant in the sense it draws from group activity in a lot of senses to mono-dependant activities, which to the fault of society has been a key to the growth of technology.

People, although still able and willing to participate in social activities such as sport, card games, board games, etc, have a new reliance on technology as a stimulus. There have been very strong evidential reports that define the connection between technology abuse in adolescents and attention issues. With no fault of their own, the technology has become too much of a stimulus. However, in the same light as feature films have become overwhelmed with more and more stimulating effects over story, the same occurs in the premise of games design in modern technology.

There is a puzzle to the heart of all great games. Whether a mental game such as the one portrayed in the Nine dot Puzzle, to Analytical theory based puzzles, through challenges of mathematics, logistics and linguistics in games such as Sudoku, crosswords and chess. The heart of a game is in the clever puzzle it defines. The motivation to beat that puzzle and the sense of achievement. What is occurring in this new technology epoch is the need to draw in to the values of what is classed as entertainment, a greater need for a game design structure that is about education. About relevant social comment. About looking at the future and making the puzzle about growth and difference. It is a strong and hard challenge, but with the use of creative thinking the patterns will and can emerge to designate a entertaining value that can also make a difference. That is the future puzzle.