"Okay, I had a revelation.

Games like 'Superstruct' and 'The Lost Sport' and 'World Without Oil' and 'Reverse Scavenger Hunts' and 'Tombstone Hold 'Em' and 'SF0 missions' and 'The Go Game' are "experience grenades".

That's a new term. I throughly Google-checked it.

Experience grenades: You play them, and that's like pulling the pin on the grenade. Nothing has to happen right away. Nothing has to change or be solved right away. Then, you wait. It's later -- an hour later, a day later, a week later, a month later... it goes off in your head, like the delayed explosion of a grenade.

You realize: You've learned something. Your cognitive patterns are different. Your view of the possibilities in the world around you has changed. Your sense of your own potential is changed. You're ready for something you didn't even know was coming. You understand something intuitively that seems alien or confusing to others

The thing is: This doesn't necessary happen DURING the game. During the game, you might not believe the game is working. in the best case scenario, you might think you're JUST having fun. Worse, the game might seem silly. You don't trust the design, it seems to be asking things of you that you don't naturally want to do. Or it might seem abstract -- what's the practical takeaway? IOr even worse, it might seem wonky or arbitrary or broken from your POV.

But it's working. If you're playing, the pin has been pulled. If you're really participating and immersed in the game, the work is happening in your brain. It just is. I've seen it again and again. The experience happens now, the payoff comes later.

Sometimes I know what the payoff will be, sometimes I just trust that a good game will produce something interesting. And the best thing that can happen in a game community is for players to trust that something interesting will happen, and to play as if it's an experience grenade, rather than instant satisfaction.

That's a strange thing to say about a game -- something we play to produce in-the-moment fun. But some games are fun later. They just are. Like trying adventures you have that you hate at the moment but looking back they are the adventures of your life, the stories you cherish, the bonds you made and the way you discovered who you could be.

Yes, that's a different kind of fun, a different kind of payoff. But games can be that, and it feels different in the moment than immediate and obvious fun (like Rock Band or pinatas).

I see a new class of trusted game designers who are like personal trainers. The trainer tells you to do something, and you do it -- even if it HURTS! Even if it isn't fun in the moment! And the benefits come later. Not necessarily during. You trust the trainer's process and you do it to be a better person and a happier person in the long run.

There are a few designers that I trust like this. Simon Johnson, who made the Comfort of Strangers and Hip Sync. The SF0 designers. Kati London at AreaCode. If they make it, I know I can show up and play it and I will have an experience that explodes later in my mind and stays with me. I trust them and don't care what they want me to do. I know they have a design process that works and that they're tring to make people happier and more aware of the possibilities in the world around them. And I am trying to be that kind of trusted designer myself to as many people as possible.

So I thank people who show up to play my games and trust the process. People who played Superstruct -- I know that experience grenade will be going off literally for months and years to come. We've already celebrate how much we've achieved during the game - -but the real effects will unfold for years. That's just how they work. That's just how they're designed.

Someday I hope game designers really are seen as trusted personal trainers, and that we have the chance to take people through proven processes that pay off in the long run. More gamesight, a surprising social safety net and support system, a more engaging environment, a higher quality of life."

What are Future Studies?

Beside's Worldwatch's State of the Planet reports, we today have State of the Future reports, by the United Nations University's Millenium Project www.millennium-project.org. They describe trends, and also create future scenarios for the next 50, 100 and 1,000 years. These help us take a general overview of things so big and far we usually don't see them, but also a look at what's happening in this extremely rapidly evolving and declining societies! They help us re-think 'what is actually happening?' 'what are we doing?' 'where are we heading?' and : 'where do we want to go?'.

Do we wish to go towards a scorched planet by 2050, with a few rich dictators directing humankind's fate from orbital space stations, a robot future, a green democracy, a green dictatorship, whatever... Such a picture of the future can help us much better assess 'where' today's decisions are actually leading us. And, based on this, we might just as well choose the preferred direction 'right away' and 'live it'!

That which we call the future--the present at a later time--is not predictable. Nonetheless the fundamental unpredictability of the future does NOT mean that we should not concern ourselves about the future and merely trust in luck, god, or fate; or else to just prepare ourselves to muddle through when new crises suddenly arise. Rather, it means that we need to take a more appropriate stance towards the future. But what might that "more appropriate stance" be?

First of all, "the future" may be considered as emerging from the interaction of four components: events, trends, images, and actions.

Events --- are those things which make many people doubt the efficacy of thinking about the future at all. Things just seem to happen. What is going to happen next seems to be utterly unknowable. Who knows when the next war, assassination, earthquake, decision by your boss is going to toss society into a completely different direction?

Trends & Emerging Issues --- On the other hand, many planners believe to the contrary that it is possible to discern the major contours of the future, and to plan effectively for it. They would have us focus on trends in order to anticipate and prepare for the future. But there seem to be at least three types of trends, each requiring different methods of comprehension:

A. There are trends which are a continuation of the present and the past. In order to understand these trends, we need to understand what is happening now, and what has happened before.

B. Other trends are more or less cyclical. They thus are not part of our own personal experience, but they were part of some aspect of the more distant past.

C. But there may be things in the future which are completely new; which have never before been humanly experienced. These trends might better be called "emerging issues" because, though potentially looming in the future, they are barely visible in the present, and non-existent in the past.

Actions & Images --- Now, the third and fourth major factors influencing the future are the images of the future which people hold and the actions which people take on the basis of those images. Some of these actions are taken specifically with the intention of influencing the future. Others are not. But all DO influence it - though seldom ever as intended!

Thus, one of the things futures studies tries to do is to help people examine and clarify their images of the future - their ideas, fears, hopes, beliefs, concerns - so that they might improve the quality of their decisions which impact it.

Another thing futures studies tries to do is to help people move their images and actions beyond an attempt passively to forecast the future and then to develop plans of action on the basis of the forecasts.

The next step is to generate positive visions of the future, steer towards and create preferred futures.

This means actively helping choose the positive future, enabling the choice. This is why we at Youth Leader Magazine are very much into Positive News Culture!

There are many different futures for different people and regions, and we may not reach the exact future we are planning for, but one needs to aim high in order to arrive somewhere near.

Then, each of us is to take concrete steps in the chosen direction and make it become real. Individually, and collectively as citizens.

Future Studies are therefore a veeery precious asset to anything to do with environmental education, social education, sustainability education! And sound decision-making. Arthur B. Shostak advocates Futurist High Schools. You know people in charge don't yet understand the relevance of such. But maybe You will be part of introducing a paradigm shift in schools. After all, the idea of 'where are we heading' is spreading. What's more fruitful now would be a 'where do we want to go' and 'which are the good steps to take, and 'which steps must be clearly avoided' - which has much to do with the precautionary principle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle