Everything is a game

I have a weakness for powerful, confident, reductionist theories that seek to explain everything through one single factor or dynamic. In college, it was Marx, Freud, Durkheim, Smith, Mill, Weber and deTocqueville. Now, its all about the fundamental game dynamics that drive all successful applications.

Here are some posts about China:
Living is China is like a Role Playing Game (RPG) - Sinosplice
Travel in China is like a Fantasy Novel - VioletEclipse

Here are some posts about social applications:
Ebay and MySpace are Games - BusinessWeek about Amy Jo Kim
In fact, every great consumer social application is a Game - See Amy Jo Kim's eTech preso at Shufflebrain.

Today, I was talking with an entrepreneur about some exciting mobile ideas...everything is under NDA so I can't share! But I find myself evangelizing this insight that I originally got attending Kevin Werbach's Supernova 2006.

UPDATE: Just found a link to Wired's guide to Second Life. I've been wanting to go to Second Life for a while and this might give me the impetus to go explore there.