The Magic Circle

Game rules, therefore, create a kind of artificial reality in which those rules exclude other equally valid or defensible rules. In other words, there is no place for a chess piece in backgammon, baseball isn’t played with a hockey puck, a player can’t die in Candy Land, and there are no sugarplum fairies (to date) in World of Warcraft. The way each game’s rules and equipment combine to define the unique experience of playing that particular game is referred to by theorists as the magic...

 Evolution as a Constant Arms-Race

One of the peculiar features of history is that time always erodes advantage. Every invention sooner or later leads to a counterinvention. Every success contains the seeds of its own overthrow. Every hegemony comes to an end. Evolutionary history is no different. Progress and success are always relative. When the land was unoccupied by animals, the first amphibian to emerge from the sea could get away with being slow, lumbering, and fishlike, for it had no enemies and no competitors. But if a...