On GamesIndustry.biz: How We Evolve Fun

I’ve got a new article online over at GamesIndustry.biz:

In software development, the individual is not each install of the software, for these are just clones from the same source code (or genotype). In software the individual is each iteration or version of the program in question. It is then the desirable traits that version displays (its phenotypes) such as functionality and gameplay which determine its fitness. The landscape is not the forests, fields or oceans but the mass of potential users with their functional, economic and political demands. It is their wishes and whims that create the environment in which each individual iteration of software is born and so may thrive or die. Two thirds of all apps released are never downloaded more than a tiny handful of times; to paraphrase Darwin, many more individuals will be born than the environment can sustain and so the differences between them will determine their fate.  (More)

(image, the machinc evolution of Cylons via popsci.com)