Insightful bit about social online games from Cory Doctorow

In discussing some weird policies in the World of Warcraft online game, Cory Doctorow nicely articulates an important insight about environments like WoW:

Online games are incredibly, deeply moving social software that have hit on a perfect formula for getting players to devote themselves to play: make play into a set of social grooming negotiations. Big chunks of our brains are devoted to figuring out how to socialize with one another — it’s how our primate ancestors enabled the cooperation that turned them into evolutionary winners.

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/27/world_of_warcraft_do.html

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