Why should we be taking video games more seriously? In 2008
Nintendo overtook Google to become the world’s most profitable
company per employee. The South Korean government will invest
$200 billion into its video games industry over the next 4
years. The trading of virtual goods within games is a global
industry worth over $10 billion a year. Gaming boasts the
world’s fastest-growing advertising market. In addition to these
impressive statistics, video games are creating a whole new
science of mass engagement which is beginning to revolutionise
the way we research and understand economics, human behaviour
and democratic participation. Games are used to train the US
Military, to model global pandemics and to campaign against
human rights abuses in Africa. Journalist and author Tom
Chatfield visits the RSA to examine the ways in which virtual
game worlds can function as unprecedented laboratories for
exploring human motivations, and for evaluating economic
theories that it has never been possible before to test