Remember when it just used to be mind blowing to simply “feel” like you were “flying” an A-10 in A-10 Tank Killer? Who cared if you actually killed any tanks.

Now gaming is all about flow theory and keeping players reaching for the next carrot on a stick.

Reading through World of Warcraft’s patch notes over these so many years is like a history of this shift in thinking. Many of the tweaks Blizzard has done to the game have involved changing out what they thought would be “realistic” fun with “efficient” fun. The epitome of this is Blizzard’s recent decision to remove the need for ammunition for the hunter class.

Think about what excited people about Spore before it came out…. Will Wright was basically going to achieve his masterwork: simulating an entire planet. What we got, though, was a bunch of typical, safe, and “engaging” game types put under one roof. A popular theory about where Spore went wrong is that it was too ambitious. I can’t help but wonder what really happened was that the Spore team realized no one wanted to play a simulator anymore. That no one had the time or imagination to enjoy something like that these days.

Other examples: Microsoft Flight Simulator team cut. The mockery around NASA’s MMO (read the comments).