About 7 years ago I met a UPenn PhD student (Linguistics) writing his thesis on the subset of language and social interaction norms, behaviors, etc. entirely contrived through headset gaming and community play.

The disturbing thing is that all of the devices and media formats society continues to expand upon developing are serving the same purpose – but the audience is growing into adults, business people, mothers, toddlers, etc. The entire life experience of our generation is conditioned into touch-screens, displays and “video-game” formats for experiencing our world.

The presence of “ease” and immediate formats compromises our ability to truly “learn” through experience – which is personal error, success, pain and happiness. There have always been “cheats” – but my 120 stars are still worth something damn it. I found Yoshi pre-Google.

We need more handles and less buttons.