Can we learn something about software if we think of gaming software as paradigmatic?

Gaming is exploratory.

Once the player learns a small set of rules so they can get going, they ... get going. The trick to great game design is to provide incentives and rewards at every stage of the experience.

The incentives lead the player into further exploration ... and additional rewards.

If the new goals are too difficult or there is no clear pathway to achieving them, most players will give up .... or look for cheat codes.

If the goals are too simple, the game becomes boring and repetitive.

This is not only the case for Halo or Civ III but for OSX, Windoze, MS Word, C#, Java, Frontier or Radio Userland.

It suggests that the user interface, documentation and ongoing enhancements need to encourage exploration, experimentation, discovery and - at every step - the reward of a concrete victory point.

An "aha".

Software-as-games comes across as trivial, frustrating and inane to many people over the age of 30? 40? 50?

We have "stuff" to do. We have paid "good money" for this software. It needs to "work the way we want it to work."

I am profoundly sympathetic to that viewpoint. It's almost correct.

Fortunately, software is more interesting than that.

feedback:   4:33:29 PM